So, you’re writing all kinds of texts for your site. Great! Now, the SEO plugin by Yoast helps you bring your text to the next level. It comes with two extensive analyses.
Yoast SEO plugins are an all-in-one SEO solution for your WordPress site. Unlike other plugins, it allows you to add custom post titles, meta descriptions, an XML sitemap, and much more to your website.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through installing and configuring the Yoast SEO Plugin (latest version) in your WordPress website (screenshot included).
What is Yoast SEO Plugin
Yoast SEO is a plugin used in WordPress, which is used to improve your SEO ranking and make content readable. That is, this plugin is used to make your content and entire page friendly to Google or other similar search engines.
Search Engine Optimization is nothing more than to make your website or articles search engine and user friendly, if we write any type of blog, our main aim is to rank that blog high in search engines. This Yoast SEO plugin will help us to rank our blog on top.
Yoast SEO Plugin Features
- You can add SEO title and meta description for your post.
- Use the focus keyword you want to rank the article.
- You can create a sitemap here.
- Social Integration
- Easily edit .htaccess and robots.txt files without going to cPanel.
- You can write SEO title and meta description for taxonomy (category and tag).
- You can see a screenshot of your website to see what it looks like on Google for the desktop or mobile version.
- Create a Permalinks for your blog URL.
- Using Yoast SEO you can create Breadcrumbs for your website.
- [Premium] Redirect Manager
- [Premium] Automatic internal linking suggestions
- [Premium] Synonyms and Related Key phrases
How to Install SEO Plugin in WordPress
For this step, you need to be logged into your WordPress site. So, let’s do that first.
Ok, so now we are in the WordPress backend. Here on the left, we see a menu with lots of options. One of these options is Plugins, right here, and we’re going to click on that.
So, now check out the free Yoast SEO plugin here in this list. If you don’t see the free plugin here, you can install it by clicking “Add New” at the top, then searching for “Yoast” in this search bar here, and then clicking “Install Now”. Once it is installed, don’t forget to click “Activate”.
Then, one last thing, make sure your Free Plugin is updated to the latest version. This is very important, as your settings and data from the free plugin will be transferred to the premium plugin.
So, if it says “Update”, click on it first.
How to Setup SEO Plugin by Yoast
Friends, now we will show you how to set up your WordPress to Yoast SEO plugin. We will give you the information step by step, then you are requested to read every step carefully and understand it and then apply after that.
Step 1. Data Transfer
If you are using another SEO plugin in your website and now you want to move to Yoast SEO then you can transfer all previous SEO plugin data to Yoast SEO.
When you are going to install this plugin it will ask you at the time of installation if you are using any other SEO plugin then from here you can transfer all the data of that plugin.
Step 2. General Settings
In the General section, you can see Dashboard and other menus you can ignore this Dashboard as there is nothing important to set here.
You can see here two functions one is a problem and the other is notification. If you have any problem related to SEO then it will tell you problems here and if Yoast SEO launches any new features then you will notify here.
Step 3. Features
All the items in this feature section are already set by Yoast SEO, you don’t need to change anything from here.
Just check if some important points are not set, you can set them from here, and Using the XML Sitemap option you can also create a sitemap file.
- SEO analysis: It shows the SEO score for the analysis of your content.
- Readability analysis: It shows the readability analysis and score of your content.
- Cornerstone content: By using these features, you can mark and filter any cornerstone content. Which is the most important content which is present on your website?
- Text link counter: This feature shows the number of internal text links present in your article.
- XML sitemap: With the help of these features, an XML sitemap is created for your website.
- Ryte integration: Friends Ryte is a third-party service, which checks your site every week. If your site gets deindexed or there is some kind of issue, then it informs Yoast SEO.
- Admin bar menu: It shows the Yoast SEO menu in your WordPress admin toolbar.
- Security no advanced settings for authors: It hides advanced SEO settings from authors to improve the security of your website.
- Usage Tracking: This feature allows you to track the data of your website to improve our plugin. This feature is by default off, you need to keep it off.
- Rest API: This feature gives you all metadata for specific URLs. This will make it easy for your site to use Yoast SEO for all its SEO meta output.
- Enhanced slack sharing: It will help you find a rich snippet to improve visibility and click-through rate.
Step 4. Integrations
Earlier I told you about Yoast SEO work with SEMrush integration, using this you can add more key phrases. These are cool features.
These are third-party products. You can easily enable or disable this feature using the Yoast SEO plugin.
Step 5. Webmaster Tools
You can verify your website from here easily in all the top search engines with the help of Yoast SEO. For this, you have to sign up for every search engine in its webmaster tools program.
After that, it will ask you to verify your website by adding a meta tag. All you have to do is simply copy-paste the meta tag code you get from search engines.
When you are going to verify your website it will ask you to add a code in your header. PHP. Just copy and paste that code. Your website will be automatically added to all these search engines.
Step 6. Search Appearance
Using Search Appearance you can control how your website will appear on search engines.
In this feature you have many options like title separator, content type, and media, whether you want to show a category and tag in a search engine or not, you can add breadcrumbs.
General
In general, you can set the separator for your title by default which sets it as a dash. You can sort any separator you want.
After this, on this page, you will also have to choose an SEO title and meta description for your website homepage.
After that, you will get a knowledge graph and schema option for your website. Which you can choose that your website represents an organization.
Here you can upload your business profile picture. If you chose an organization you can set a picture otherwise leave.
Content Types
In Content-Type, you can set the title and meta description for each post and page. Here you have a choice whether you want all the posts and pages to appear in the search engines or not.
If you forget to set up all of them manually. So this option allows Yoast SEO to use the default settings to automatically fill up all those options.
Media
Well, WordPress creates a new page for every media file and image that we attach to our posts and pages.
This page only displays attachment media, ie images, and media files uploaded by us.
Search engines are not able to provide any significant text in any context to this attachment media.
Because of this search engines find these pages as low-quality content. Which harms the SEO of your WordPress website.
In such a situation, Yoast SEO helps you, it redirects users to the attachment file instead of the attachment page.
This option is set to Yoast SEO by default “Yes”. You have to let it remain as it is, in this, you do not need to change anything.
Taxonomies
In Taxonomies, you can set titles and meta descriptions for categories. You can also check the SEO setting for the category.
From here you can allow categories to appear on search engines or not.
Archives
If you are running a single author blog post which is published by the same author then you can disable the author archive page from the search engine.
Because in a single-author blog, author archive pages are just like any date archive and blog pages.
Because of this it creates duplicate content, due to which search engines feel that you have copied this post.
When this happens, it will affect your SEO ranking and you may lose your ranking position.
Breadcrumbs
By using breadcrumbs you can guide your visitors as to which path they are reading the article.
It is also shown in search results, giving your site additional benefits. Do you have to make sure you leave breadcrumbs enabled?
This default setting works on most websites, but if you want to change something. So you can, but you have to keep in mind that after changing the settings, you must click on the save button.
RSS
RSS feed is used by content scrapers to copy your website content. That’s why Yoast SEO allows you to add backlinks to your own website for every post in your RSS feed.
By doing this, you will get backlinks from their website, so that Google will know that you are the source.
Here all those options are available with the help of which you can add an author link, post link, blog link, and blog description.
It would help if you used it creatively, apart from this you can also use it to add advertisements to your RSS feed.
Step 7. Social
As we have already told you that Yoast SEO provides us with many features. With its help, we can optimize your website without any technical knowledge.
The best feature of the Yoast SEO plugin is to integrate your site with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
For this, click on the SEO option from your dashboard menu and click on the social link.
Where you can link your site to all your social media accounts. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to configure them all.
Accounts
The first tab in the social setting is for all your social accounts. This setting allows Yoast SEO to inform Google about all your social profiles.
You have to paste your social links here. In the case of Twitter, add your username, or else paste the URLs of your social profiles into all of them.
In the Facebook tab, first, you have to make sure that the open graph metadata option is enabled. Because this is what allows Yoast SEO to add Facebook open graph metadata to the <head & gt section of your website.
Whenever a post will be shared on Facebook from your website. At that time Facebook can pick up the right thumbnail and page information from your site.
After that you have to provide a Facebook App ID, if you have it, otherwise leave it blank.
Then after that, you will get to see some Option Show. In this, you will also have to describe your homepage along with the thumbnail and SEO title.
Whenever a user will share the homepage of your website on Facebook. Then this image and description will appear in Share on Facebook.
For Twitter, you can add Twitter cards to the head section of your site. In this, you can choose which card type you want to use. We suggest you use only a large-size image for this.
Pinterest also uses open graphs metadata just like Facebook. You have to be sure that the open graph metadata box should be checked in Facebook settings.
After this, you have to enter the verification code provided by Pinterest to verify your website. For this, you just have to visit your Pinterest account.
After that, you have to visit Pinterest account settings. You will be provided with a meta tag code, simply copy it, paste it here, and click on save changes.
Step 8. Tools
Friends Yoast SEO comes with some built-in tools that allow us to perform any advanced task. Most new users do not know about these tools. But we will show you in this article what all these tools are used for.
Import and Export
If you are using any other SEO plugin then you can import all the data from that plugin into the Yoast SEO plugin.
Apart from this, you can import and export the settings of Yoast SEO plugins with the help of this tool. Then you can use it on many different WordPress websites.
File Editor
In the File Editor section, you can edit and add your .htaccess file and robot file. You do not need to open your cPanel settings.
Yoast SEO provides you direct editing option from here.
Bulk Editor
Yoast SEO allows you to add SEO titles and descriptions to all your blog posts and pages using bulk editor.
Which you will find a blank field under the title tab, in which you will have to add your new SEO title for the blog post. After that, you have to store all the changes by clicking on the Save Changes link.
Now you have to switch to the Details tab to add details. In this also you have this detailed tab available for every blog post and page. All you have to do is add a description and then click on Save Changes and store all the changes.
Step 9. Redirects Manager
Friends, if you use the premium version of Yoast SEO, then you get a powerful redirect manager in it. With the help of this, you can quickly set up redirects in your WordPress website.
You can quickly fix 404 errors using the redirect manager. Apart from this, you can redirect your users from an old article to a new article by using the redirect manager.
Important Note: Friends redirects play a very important role in the SEO of our website. Therefore, you must do it with the most care or take the help of an expert in it.
Step 10. Optimizing Your Posts and Pages with Yoast SEO
When you write a blog post you can see this type of window at the bottom where you can see all your SEO settings and readability.
Write your focus keyword in the focus keyphrase option this will help you to rank that keyword on the search engine and provide you step by step guide.
Now Yoast SEO will analyze your post whether your post content is SEO and readable or not.
By looking at the analysis of your post content through Yoast SEO, you can improve your article even more.
Sometimes it will happen to you that both your post title and your SEO title are not the same. Apart from this, you may also have to write a custom SEO description for your post.
Because Yoast SEO’s excerpt generator automatically selects the first paragraph of your post for post description.
Now the first paragraph of your post doesn’t need to be the most important of your post content. That’s why you should write a custom SEO description for your post content.
Conclusion :
Hope you have liked this article on SEO plugins by Yoast and it must have been helpful for all of you. If you have any questions, please comment below and tell us, we will be happy to help you.
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