[Plugin: WordPress SEO by Yoast] The keyword doesn't appear in the first paragraph of the copy.

Same issue, although not on every page. I’m trying to figure out what the the difference is….

Ok, so it seems when I have an image (with the keyword term in the alt & caption tags) below the h1 tag, the red light for not having the keyword in the first paragraph changes to green.

More of a workaround than a solution.

@marcusjkw I’ve also found that when I have an image at the top of the post, the plugin thinks the image is the first paragraph. Although annoying, it serves as a good reminder to edit the alt tag to include my keyword.

+1

Same issue. Most pages getting the green light, but a couple of pages getting the red light:

“The keyword doesn’t appear in the first paragraph of the copy, make sure the topic is clear immediately.”

The keyword is on the first paragraph.

I have the same problem. I like how the developer just dropped off the face of the earth in this thread. Left everyone hanging. Nice. Makes me wanna fork over $$ for the paid version. Sarcasm. Will try the above noted work around.

Same with me i have tried in my page https://www.marthajeanshawwebmercial.com/konsumen-cerdas-paham-perlindungan-konsumen. But the result is nothing. Now i am confused…

I have decided to live with this until the developer resolves the issue. If the keyword is in the first paragraph, then the search engines spiders definitely find it. A little annoying maybe, but for me the rest of the plugin’s functionality compensates.

adminda had the right answer. make sure your first paragraph is formatted as paragraph. The tool bar at the top of the writing area has a drop down menu where you can pick types of headings. Make sure your first paragraph is formatted paragraph. If you do not see this drop down menu click show/hide kitchen sink button.

I have my paragraph formatted as a paragraph, but I still see this message. Any ideas why it still thinks the keyword isn’t there?

Same problem!
this is so basic!
I do not understand why this has not been fixed by now…

First start by switching from Visual Editor to Text Editor.
If for instance you start your page/post with an Heading2, you need to correct the coding in the text editor, because you will probably have this: <h2>text+keyword</h2>

when you should have this:
<h2><p>text+keyword</p></h2>

That should solve your problem.

I noticed something that may be affecting this and other problems with plugins identifying specific parts of text, when copying and pasting from Word the formatting of Word is often a huge part at the beginning of the copy. If you copy and then paste from Office 2010 Word documents a large section of code is added with lots of formatting code before the actual stuff you see. If you copy then paste it looks okay in Visual view for WordPress but when you switch to text view the code is there for quite a few lines of formatting code. I remove this code and the red light for keyword not being in first paragraph and even no heading tags goes away.

Same problem. Not really clear why it’s happening or how to fix it, or if I should even be worried about it. I’d definitely like the developer to chime in on this one and share some of his expertise with us. Is this just a silly glitch that needs to be worked out and we shouldn’t worry about it? There seem to be some good solutions to make the light go green in various situations in this thread, but is that fundamentally going to make a difference to SEO? I honestly don’t know the answer.

I may have found the issue/fix.. at least in my case.

It doesn’t recognize the Focus Keyword in the first paragraph when it contains a class in the P tag. If remove the class I get a green icon.

Quick test- it seems any attribute/value in the P tag will cause this.

Confirmed — exactly the same for me. But I still don’t know: should we even be worried about this, or is it just a peculiar quirk of the plugin? It seems likely to me that Google probably doesn’t care if you insert attributes or values into your P tags, and the only reason to do it this way is so that we can “feel good” for getting a green light.