Topics
- What is Yoast SEO Plugin?
- Features of Yoast SEO plugin
- Complete setup and installation guide
- Search appearance
- Search console – Yoast SEO
- Social – Yoast SEO
- Tools – Yoast SEO
1. What is Yoast SEO Plugin?
Yoast SEO is a popular plugin for WordPress, which is a Content Management System (CMS) used for building websites. Yoast SEO is designed to help website owners optimize their content for search engines and improve their website’s search engine rankings.
- It provides a range of features and tools for on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization), such as optimizing meta titles and descriptions, managing XML sitemaps, analyzing content readability, setting canonical URLs, managing social media sharing, and more.
- Yoast SEO is widely used by WordPress users to improve their website’s visibility in search engine results and attract more organic traffic.
2. Features of Yoast SEO plugin
The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress offers a wide range of features to help optimize your website for search engines. Some of the key features include:
- Content Analysis: Yoast SEO provides real-time analysis of your content, checking for readability, keyword usage, and other SEO factors, and provides suggestions for improvement.
- SEO Title and Meta Description: You can customize the SEO title and meta description for each page or post, which are important elements for search engine rankings and click-through rates in search results.
- XML Sitemaps: Yoast SEO generates XML sitemaps, which help search engines understand the structure of your website and index your content more effectively.
- Social Media Integration: The plugin allows you to optimize your content for social media platforms, including setting custom titles, descriptions, and images for social media sharing.
- Redirect Manager: Yoast SEO includes a redirect manager, which helps you set up redirects for broken links or changed URLs, ensuring that your website maintains good SEO practices and avoids broken links.
- Focus Keywords: You can define focus keywords for your pages or posts, and Yoast SEO provides analysis and suggestions based on those keywords to improve your content’s SEO.
- Readability Analysis: Yoast SEO evaluates the readability of your content, providing suggestions to make it more understandable and user-friendly.
- Schema Markup: The plugin supports schema markup, allowing you to add structured data to your website, which can help search engines better understand and display your content in search results.
- Breadcrumbs: Yoast SEO helps you implement breadcrumbs, which are navigational links that help users understand the hierarchy of your website and improve navigation.
- Internal Linking Suggestions: The plugin provides suggestions for internal linking, helping you create a better internal linking structure for your website.
- Advanced settings: Yoast SEO also offers advanced settings for advanced users, allowing further customization and fine-tuning of SEO settings.
3. Complete setup and installation guide
- Go to the WordPress plugin directory: You can access the WordPress plugin directory by navigating to https://wordpress.org/plugins/ in your web browser.
- Search for “Yoast SEO”: In the search bar on the WordPress plugin directory, type “Yoast SEO” and hit Enter or click the search icon.
- Locate the plugin: Look for the “Yoast SEO” plugin in the search results. It should be one of the top results.
- Click “Install Now”: Click the “Install Now” button next to the Yoast SEO plugin listing to start the plugin installation process.
- Activate the plugin: Once the plugin is installed, click the “Activate” button to activate the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website.
- Configure plugin settings: After activation, you can configure the plugin settings according to your SEO requirements. The plugin provides various options and settings that you can customize to optimize your website for search engines.
STEPS:
#Step 1. to the YOAST plugin option from WordPress Dashboard and select General
#Step 2. First of all click on Configuration Wizard.
#Step 3. YOAST SEO Installation wizard will be open
Ask for your website is live or under construction. If your site is live, please select option A and click next.
#Step 4. Then, you have to specify your website type.
If your website is blog type, please select “A blog”.
#Step 5. Select the option, that site represent to “website” or “person”.
#Step 6. Search engine visibility
Please select search result for post and pages in search engine-
#Step 7. Select option for single or multiple author.
#Step 8. Please select the website name and title separator.
#Step 9. Now you can leave your email address in newsletter to study courses.
#Step 10. All done. Good. You’ve successfully configures Yoast Seo.
Click on Close button, you’ll be back to website dashboard.
2. Enables some important features
You can enable or disable Yoast seo features anytime.
- SEO Analysis – Enable
- Readability analysis – Enable
- Cornerstone content – Enable
- Text link counter – Enable
- XML sitemap – Enable
- Ryte integration – Enable
- Admin bar menu – Enable
- Security – Enable
3. Webmaster Tools
Here you can connect your website with Bing, Google, Baidu and Yandex. You can alos put the verification code in head section. But in YOAST there is an option to enter verification code and save.
Search Appearance
Search Appearance – Yoast SEO provides following options:
- General
- Content Types
- Media
- Taxonomies
- Archives
- Breadcrumbs
- RSS
1. General
- Title Separator – This option is for placing a symbol in order to separate title and website name. By default it is “-“.
- Homepage – Here you can add the seo title format and meta description.
- Knowledge Graph & Schema.org – You can choose here if the site represent a person or organization.
- Organization – If your site an organization, then enter organization name and organization logo url.
2. Content Type
This is the most important section. This tab settings allow you to specify what the default search appearance should be for any type of content. You can choose which content types appear in search results and what their default description should be.
3. Media
I recommend you to keep “media and attachment urls” settings default.
4. Taxonomies
Under this section you can configure category and tag for a post and page which result in search engine.
5. Archives
Please configure the archives setting as per your requirement or disable this option as it result duplicate content.
6. Breadcrumbs
You should enable breadcrumbs, as it is good to crawl in search engine.
7. RSS
This feature is used to automatically add content to your RSS.
Search Console
Under this page you’ll get following features to configure
- Desktop
- Smartphone
- Feature Phone
- Settings
Under the section Desktop, you’ll find the broken link or error on page for desktop view. Once you find this error on this tab, you can get back to your post or page and correct that issue.
Under Settings tab, you have to authenticate your google account with YOAST plugin. You will get a google authorization code. Just put that code in Authorization box and save it.
Social – YOAST SEO
Under the page Social -Yoast Seo, You can link your website with the social profile.
- Accounts – Here you have to enter all your social media links available for your website.
- Facebook – You can enable this feature if you want Facebook and other social media to display a preview with image and a text excerpt when a link/content from your site is shared.
- Twitter – You can enable this feature same as for Facebook. If you want Twitter to display a preview with images and a text excerpt when a link from your site is shared.
- Pinterest – You can enable this feature same as you’ve done for Facebook and Twitter.
Tools – YOAST SEO
Here you’ll get following features:
- Import and Export – You can import SEO setting from another site. Also you can export this SEO settings for other website.
- File Editor – Here you can edit your robots.txt and .htaccess directly.
- Bulk Editor – Here you can edit title and description for post and pages on the same page.
4. Search appearance
The plugin provides a range of features, including a “Search Appearance” section that allows you to customize how your content appears in search engine results pages (SERPs). Here are the steps to access the Search Appearance settings in Yoast:
- Install and activate the Yoast plugin: If you haven’t installed the Yoast plugin, you can do so from the WordPress plugin repository. Once installed, activate the plugin.
- Navigate to the Yoast plugin settings: In your WordPress dashboard, go to “SEO” in the left-hand menu, and then click on “General” under the “SEO” tab. This will take you to the Yoast SEO settings page.
- Go to the Search Appearance section: Within the Yoast SEO settings page, click on the “Search Appearance” tab. This will allow you to customize how your content appears in search results.
- Customize your search appearance settings: Within the Search Appearance section, you’ll find several tabs that correspond to different types of content, such as “General,” “Content Types,” “Media,” “Taxonomies,” and “Archives.” Click on each tab to access settings related to how these types of content appear in search results.
- Configure your search appearance settings: Within each tab, you can configure settings such as title templates, meta descriptions, schema markup, and other options to optimize how your content appears in search results. You can also preview how your content will look in search results based on your settings.
- Save your changes: Once you have customized your search appearance settings, click on the “Save Changes” button to save your changes.
5. Social – Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO, a popular SEO plugin for WordPress websites, includes a “Social” section that allows you to optimize how your content appears when shared on social media platforms. Here’s how you can access and use the Social settings in Yoast SEO:
- Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin: If you haven’t installed the Yoast SEO plugin, you can do so from the WordPress plugin repository. Once installed, activate the plugin.
- Navigate to the Yoast SEO settings: In your WordPress dashboard, go to “SEO” in the left-hand menu, and then click on “Social” under the “SEO” tab. This will take you to the Yoast SEO Social settings page.
- Configure your social settings: Within the Social settings page, you’ll find several tabs that correspond to different social media platforms, such as “Facebook,” “Twitter,” “Pinterest,” and “LinkedIn.” Click on each tab to access settings related to how your content appears on these social media platforms.
- Customize your social settings: Within each tab, you can configure settings such as default image, title, and description that will be used when your content is shared on social media. You can also set up specific social media settings for individual posts or pages, such as overriding the default image or title for a particular piece of content.
- Preview your social media snippets: Yoast SEO provides a preview feature that allows you to see how your content will appear when shared on social media platforms based on your settings. This can help you optimize how your content looks and ensure it is visually appealing and engaging when shared on social media.
- Save your changes: Once you have customized your social settings, click on the “Save Changes” button to save your changes.
By optimizing your social settings in Yoast SEO, you can enhance how your content appears when shared on social media platforms, potentially improving engagement and driving more traffic to your website from social media channels.
5. Tools – Yoast SEO
The “Tools” section in the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress provides various helpful tools and features to optimize your website’s SEO. Here are some of the tools available in the Yoast SEO plugin:
- File Editor: The File Editor tool allows you to edit your website’s robots.txt and .htaccess files directly from the Yoast SEO plugin. These files are crucial for controlling how search engines crawl and access your website, and making changes to them can impact your website’s SEO.
- Bulk Editor: The Bulk Editor tool allows you to make changes to multiple titles and meta descriptions at once. This can be useful if you want to quickly update or optimize the meta information for multiple pages or posts on your website.
- Import and Export: The Import and Export tools in Yoast SEO allow you to import and export SEO settings, including titles, meta descriptions, and other SEO configurations, from one website to another. This can be helpful if you have multiple websites and want to replicate SEO settings across them or if you are migrating your website to a new domain or platform.
- Search Console: The Search Console tool provides integration with Google Search Console, allowing you to view important data about your website’s performance in Google search results, such as search queries, impressions, clicks, and more. This can help you analyze and optimize your website’s visibility in Google search results.
- Ryte Integration: Yoast SEO offers integration with Ryte, a web-based tool that helps you identify and fix technical SEO issues on your website. The integration allows you to analyze your website’s technical SEO and receive recommendations for improvements.
- Readability Analysis: Yoast SEO includes a built-in readability analysis tool that helps you assess the readability of your content. It provides feedback on factors such as sentence length, paragraph length, use of subheadings, and more, helping you improve the readability of your content for both readers and search engines.
- Cornerstone Content: The Cornerstone Content feature in Yoast SEO allows you to mark certain content as “cornerstone content,” which represents the most important and high-quality content on your website. This feature helps you prioritize and optimize your most valuable content for SEO.
Overall, Yoast SEO is a powerful tool that can assist you in optimizing your website’s SEO and improving its visibility in search engine results. It is widely used by website owners, bloggers, and SEO professionals to enhance their on-page SEO efforts and drive more organic traffic to their websites.
