H

I came across this issue but was able to solve it.

My Focus Keyword: nice dog blog

First paragraph before (not working):
There are many nice dog blogs on the Internet.

First paragraph after (working):
There are many a nice dog blog on the Internet.

Please read on for the explanation.

My focus keyword was nice dog blog (singular). I occasionally used the singular form of this as well as the plural, nice dog blogs. I thought that to be on the safe side, I would make the focus keyword the singular form. I knew for a fact that the focus keyword appears in the first paragraph of the copy (plural form), but this Yoast plugin kept giving me the red light along with the message, “The keyword doesn’t appear in the first paragraph of the copy, make sure the topic is clear immediately.“

I tried everything to make it work. My first paragraph was already between paragraph tags. In the end, the problem ended up being that I was adding an “s” to my focus keyword within my first paragraph (i.e. nice dog blogs), and despite the fact that my focus keyword was contained within this, this was the issue that was giving me the red light! To solve this problem, I simply removed the “s” from my focus keyword within my first paragraph.

This Yoast plugin seems to look for the focus keyword separating words by spaces rather than searching the entire content for the exact focus keyword match.

Hope this helps someone and saves them from some frustration! If you have done what I’ve described and are still not able to get it working, feel free to contact me for help.

Hisham