WordPress
is the best platform out there when it comes to SEO, everyone wants space in
the most premium real estate when it comes to buying a house. Somewhat the same
thing happens when we get our website online. We strive for the highest ranking
on search engines. But how does that happen? There is SEO to get you covered on
that end. And today we will talk about Yoast SEO plugin | Yoast SEO premium.
All
WordPress websites support optimization and for that, they have dedicated
plugins that can help you get your spot on the web!
Yoast
SEO plugin is available for in WordPress
plugin section and the best part about this is, it is free to use. For
the advanced option and better WordPress site support, you can buy their Yoast
SEO premium product.
In
this article, we will discuss all the points, how to install and configure Yoast SEO plugin
for your WordPress site. all the features and Everything You Need to Know about
Yoast SEO Plugin.
KEY FEATURES OF FREE VERSION:
- Keyword Optimization and Google
Crawlers friendly.
- Preview of Social Media Pages.
- Readability check and No
duplicate content.
- Automatic update to next
version.
KEY FEATURES OF THE PREMIUM VERSION:
- Internal linking suggestions.
- Content insights and focus on
keyword export.
- Redirect manager.
- 24/7 support for one year.
DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLING YOAST SEO
Installing
Yoast SEO is easy, just follow these simple steps:
- Log in to WordPress website, after login you will be on
the Dashboard.
- Click on Plugins option: On the left side, you will see
some option, click on "plugin” located on the menu.
- Now click "Add new" and type Yoast SEO on the
search bar.
- After searching it will show some search results, click
on the best rating plugin and install.
- After installation click on the " Activate
button" now it will be available on the screen.
- it is done now; you’ll see an option marked “SEO” on
the left-hand side of the menu.
If
you are using Yoast SEO for the first time, we assure you there is nothing you
can’t handle, I can’t promise you that this Is a nonstop process but is
completely worth the time.
LET’S TAKE A LOOK ON SOME OF THE SETTINGS (IMPORT SETTINGS)
You
can import the settings from another SEO plugin
which will save you time. You just need to do:
- From SEO menu navigate to the
“Tools” option and click on it.
- Then select the import option
to import from settings from another plugin.
SETTING UP YOAST SEO
If
you don’t have settings to import then let’s talk about some general settings
of Yoast SEO.
To
start this first, you have to find the “SEO” option in the Dashboard, then
click on “General.
GENERAL SETTINGS:
YOUR INFO:
If
you want to go back to the default setting of Yoast SEO, the “General” tab is
one option you can do. And if you want to take the other options head on over
to “Your Info.”
here
in this option, you can tell Yoast what your site’s name is and if you have any
alternate name you can provide it here. There is an option where you can tell
whether you are a Company or Person. This will google to make better knowledge
graph results. If you are choosing Yoast SEO for Company website, you will get
the chance to add the company’s logo.
WEBMASTER TOOLS:
The
first thing you have to do is, go to the WordPress dashboard and find the “SEO”
option. You will find mainly 5 options over there, General, Your Info,
Webmaster Tools & Security. We will go to Webmaster Tools to verify your
site for several tools like Alexa, Bing Tool, Yandex or Google Search Console.
To
do this, you have to follow the steps below:
- From your Search Console
dashboard, find (You are required to add your site to Google or any other
Search Console First) “Manage Property” menu
- Select “Verify this site”
option.
- Once completed, select and copy
the HTML tag and paste it in Search Console Box available on Yoast SEO
Webmaster Tool option.
- Delete everything except
things inside the quotation marks after the question mark and in the end,
also remove the quotation marks themselves.
- Click on Save changes and again
go back to your Search Console dashboard click on “Verify” button.
- Once the Search Console is done
with verifying the credentials, you are all set with the Webmaster Tool.
SECURITY:
Lastly,
there is a security tab, this option depends on the number of authors. If you
are working with single author-site you can leave this box unchecked but if you
are working with the site with multiple authors, in that case, this section can
be helpful. If checked, it will stop other users to access the important part
of your site like redirects & no index settings except the admin. All you
have to do is check this box.
TITLES & METAS
Let’s
take a look at “Titles & Metas” which can be found in the “SEO” option.
This is very important for SEO purposes as this option tells how your site will
appear on SERPs. It also has a general option.
GENERAL:
Here
you can change the title display like “Your Site Name, Contact Us” or “Your
Site Name - Contact Us.” There is some title separator in this like -, *, |, ~
and many more. You can enable and disable force rewrite titles.
HOMEPAGE:
What
you see under Homepage depends upon how your site is set up, you can change the
title, meta descriptions for the pages, all you have to do is just “editing the
front page/blog itself” and all the options you get depends upon the site
setup.
POST TYPES:
In
this option, you can set basic templates for the title template and meta
descriptions. With this, a post can follow one format, while page can follow
another format.
There
is Meta Robots with the “noindex, follow” option it is selected if you don’t
want something to be indexed by search engines.
As
for the “Date in Snippet Preview” option if you are updating the content daily
and posting some newsworthy post then you must enable this option. But if you
are using content that will be relevant for many years then you prefer to
disable this.
TAXONOMIES:
This
option is important if your website is something like a blog and uses different
categories and tags to organize post, you can use it for changing the title and
meta descriptions. If you are using exact same tags as you did on Post types
then you can check the noindex, follow” option.
ARCHIVES:
This
helps the user to find the past content, the archive tab lets decide whether
you want your archive pages indexed or not. It contains date archives,
duplicate content prevention, and special pages which contain options like 404
pages and search pages.
OTHER:
Finally,
you have reached to the other option as it contains sitewide meta settings. All
the options in this are easy to understand.
Let’s
get to work on the “Social” section of Yoast plugin:
SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS SET UP
To
open this option, again go back to your WordPress dashboard and find the
“Social” Section. From here, you can enter the URL of your social media account
and you can also control how the content will be shared and appear on each
platform.
There
are lots of URL options:
Conclusion
The
advanced and basic set up of Yoast SEO can be completed by following the above
options and it should work perfectly for your website now. You can also set up
several other options like XML sitemaps, Advanced options, Permalinks, RSS
Feeds, and many more to restore default settings. It is just one of the plugins
that can be used in WordPress.
It
is possible that you might have to put some more efforts with WordPress 5.0 right at the corner but it will all be worth it to improve
the quality of your website.
Other Blog you might wish to read
