This is a guide to configuring the Yoast SEO plugin. In the 12.x version, there were some changes to the UI, but the configuration remains the same. I have updated this to edit the meta description and title of a single post, which has changed in the latest version.
Whenever we talk about the best SEO plugins for WordPress , Yoast SEO becomes a prominent name.
Many people who use the All In One SEO plugin should know about this more advanced plugin which is called “Yoast SEO” in WordPress .
Setting up the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin is not easy due to the many features the plugin offers .
For this reason, I am sharing the Yoast SEO tutorial to help you set up Yoast SEO for optimal SEO performance.
Yoast SEO plugin setup guide:
Yoast SEO is a powerful tool for WordPress SEO . However, setting up this plugin can be tricky for some people, and new bloggers or anyone without basic SEO skills may find it difficult.
Improper configuration may prevent search engine bots from indexing your blog, or you may inadvertently allow bots to crawl unimportant sections.
Before we proceed with the installation guide, let’s take a look at some of the SEO features this plugin offers:
- Verify your site in Google, Bing
- Title meta settings.
- Hide RSD, WLW and short links in header.
- Meta control of taxonomies, author pages, home pages, etc.
- Support for Facebook Open Graph.
- Generate a sitemap.
- Advanced permalink control.
- Breadcrumbs support.
- RSS feed footer plugin settings.
- Import settings from other SEO plugins.
- Edit the .htaccess file.
- Hide the date in search engine snippets.
- Add Google Authorship for individual authors.
These are some of the settings this plugin offers . There are many more .
Now let’s start the tutorial and set up this free SEO plugin.
Complete setup and configuration guide for the Yoast SEO plugin:
The first thing you should do after installing the Yoast SEO plugin is to go to the Dashboard > Features > Advanced Settings page and enable this feature.
If you install Yoast SEO on your WordPress blog and you have used other SEO plugins or theme SEO settings before, after activating the advanced settings you should go to SEO > Tools > Import and export > Import from other SEO plugins in the left panel . Select the plugin you want to import settings from.
I recommend backing up your database and then using the "Delete old data after import? (recommended)" option.
WordPress Yoast SEO Dashboard
The first step to start using this plugin is to submit your website to Alexa, Google, Bing, and Yandex. After installing the plugin, click SEO > Dashboard > Webmaster Tools to access this page.
- You can learn how to submit your site to Google and Alexa here .
With that done, let’s move on to the more advanced parts of this plugin.
Title and meta settings
This is one of the most important parts of this plugin, and I will explain most of it with screenshots and some brief explanations below.
After clicking on Title & Metadata, first click on the General tab to see what separator is being used and what that separator does. This will help you quickly set up the Title & Metadata SEO aspect of the plugin.
Home
Click the Home page tab in the Title & Meta section and configure the settings for your home page title and meta description.
- Title Template: The title of your homepage as you want it to appear in Google searches.
- Meta Description Template: Home page meta description for search engines.
Post Types
This is where you will configure SEO for all post types.
By default, you will have Posts, Pages, and Media types. If you are using more custom types in WordPress, you will see their sections here. Here you can define SEO for Posts, Pages, and Media sections of your WordPress blog.
As I mentioned above, be sure to check out the help section to see which templates are available to you. Also, by default, WordPress SEO by Yoast hides the date in search engine snippets, which is useful for bloggers who write evergreen content.
If you are running a news blog and want to display your post dates in search engines, you can check the ‘Date in snippet preview’ box.
This is how I have it configured for my blog:
Taxonomies and Archives
I prefer to keep tags and categories as noindex and dofollow. However, you should set this based on your SEO plan.
If you want to use my settings, just check the boxes for noindex, follow , and hide . Again, you can configure the title templates as needed. Since we don't index tags and categories, you can add more user- and brand-centric title templates.
For example: %%term_title%% archive%%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
Here you can set indexing for author and date based archives . Additionally, you can disable or enable date and author archives. I recommend you check the "noindex" and "follow" boxes and leave everything else as is.
other
This is the last one under the “Title and Meta” settings.
This is the approach I'm using and it seems to be working well, driving about 200,000 page views per month from search engines.
You can ignore “Use the meta keywords tag?” Google has officially stated that they don’t care about the keywords meta tag.
This completes the “Metas & Titles” settings for WordPress SEO by Yoast.
The last option will keep your WordPress blog header section clean by hiding information such as post shortlinks, WLW list links, etc.
Social Settings
Yoast 3.0’s SEO adds Google Knowledge Graph functionality. Whenever someone searches for your brand name, search engines will show your social media profiles.
The configuration is simple. Just add all your social media profiles in the format shown in the image below.
Here you can configure Facebook Open Graph meta tags, Facebook's default image, and Twitter meta cards .
- You can learn more about Facebook Open Graph meta tags here .
I recommend you add a default image, this will help Facebook to display an image when your post does not have an image but is liked or shared on Facebook.
XML sitemap
Enable the sitemap feature and this plugin will take care of the sitemap for your blog. After creating the sitemap file, submit the sitemap to Google, Bing, and any other search engine that accepts sitemap files.
Permalink
Note: Do not confuse this with the WordPress default permalink settings.
In the Yoast SEO plugin you can configure advanced permalink settings. I usually use 2-3 of the settings here to avoid parameters being indexed by Google search. Especially with this plugin it’s easier to get rid of the replytocom parameter which is a headache.
This setting is under Advanced > Permalinks.
Here is a screenshot of my setup:
RSS
This section integrates the functionality of the RSS Footer plugin. Using it, you can add links back to the original article in your RSS feed. You can also use it to add advertisements in your RSS feed.
I just had to add the following line after the post content section:
"The post %%POSTLINK%% first appeared on %%BLOGLINK%%."
NOTE: This setting is also in the Advanced section.
Breadcrumbs (aka internal links)
Breadcrumbs help to let search engines understand your site structure and help users navigate your site.
However, I have never tried and tested breadcrumb navigation on any of my sites.
- You can read the official guide here to get a better understanding of breadcrumbs.
Editing a file
This is another useful feature of the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. You can edit WordPress .htaccess and robots.txt files from your dashboard.
A word of caution: Whenever you edit a .htaccess file from your dashboard, be sure to maintain FTP access, as a misconfigured .htaccess file can cause your site to not function properly. You can read more about robots.txt and .htaccess below:
I hope this tutorial helped you to properly set up WordPress SEO with Yoast.
Once you’ve made all the changes in the SEO by Yoast plugin, go ahead and check the authorship using the Google Rich Snippets testing tool and see how Google displays your blog posts in Google searches.
Note: The following features are included in the Pro version of SEO By Yoast. These are optional and you may or may not need them.
Issues with adding meta description and title in latest SEO Yoast plugin:
Yoast made a major design change in the latest version of SEO that will confuse old users when adding meta titles and descriptions.
You need to click on ‘ Edit Summary .’ Once there, you can enter your ‘SEO Title’ (meta title) and ‘meta description.
Redirect
This is another handy feature of the plugin as it allows you to direct any URL to another URL of your choice.
When you get too many 404 errors (you can check this in Google Webmaster Tools), you can simply redirect them to save your link juice. If you want to learn more about 404 error pages and SEO, you should read this detailed guide .
in the end…
This is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress blogs . I strongly recommend that you make sure you know what you are doing before making any changes. An incorrect configuration can have a negative SEO impact on your blog. But if you follow this guide, you won’t have a problem.
Here are some frequently asked questions related to Yoast SEO:
How long does it take for Yoast SEO to work? It may take 1-2 weeks for you to see the effects of your Yoast SEO settings. You should also make sure that search engines can crawl your site after configuring the plugin. A good idea is to resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console.
How much does Yoast SEO cost? Yoast SEO is free to use and includes almost all the features you need. However, the Yoast Premium version costs around $89.
Tell me: What setup do you use to ensure your blog is properly indexed and optimized for search engines? Let me know in the comments below!
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Further reading:
- How to Write the Perfect SEO Optimized Post in WordPress
- Best WordPress Caching Plugins: We Did the Research for You
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