How to use Yoast SEO on WordPress Complete Guide

Apr 6, 2022
Yoast SEO

In the end and despite the fact that the Yoast team has done an amazing job at making SEO beginner-friendly, there's still the chance to receive guidance on how to use Yoast SEO. To give you that help, we've written this monster Yoast SEO instructional.

This is a huge guide that we've split it into two parts:

  • A beginner's guide on Yoast Search This section will provide tips and tricks to help first-time and novice users. If you're already acquainted with Yoast SEO's basic settings along with its meta box, the Yoast SEO meta box, you'll probably find it to be be a bit redundant.
  • The complete guide to Yoast SEO In this section will go over more advanced tactics like meta variables for title and description, nonindex tags and more. If you're already using Yoast SEO on your site it is likely that you will profit from this section.

Are you ready to know how to use Yoast SEO? Go here to the more advanced section. If not, we'll go back to the start!

The Beginner's Guide To Yoast SEO

In this article of the series, we'll go over the basics you should understand if you're new at SEO using Yoast. You'll learn:

  • What is the correct way to enter data in the configuration wizard
  • What is the Yoast SEO metabox is and the way it works
  • The things you can do from the dashboard of your Yoast SEO dashboard

Next, in the section below, we'll take a look at some of the top Yoast SEO features.

Utilizing The Yoast SEO Configuration Wizard

Once you've installed Yoast SEO, you can get access to your Yoast SEO dashboard through it. You can also access the Yoast SEO option on the WordPress dashboard.

If this is your first time making use of the plugin, then you will see a big notice for First-time SEO configuration.

By clicking the configuration wizard button, Yoast SEO will give an overview of the process to assist you in setting up every one of the SEO fundamentals:

Yoast SEO Configuration wizard
What is the best way to access the Yoast SEO configuration wizard

Simply click on the button. After that, on the initial page, click Configure Yoast SEO.

We'll walk you through each of the settings within the wizard for configuration.

Section 1: Environment

If you're working within the zone of the Environment zone, ensure you select Option A or unless you're in charge of developing the site.

Yoast SEO Environment
It is suggested to choose the option A.

Section 2: Different types of web sites

In the Section titled Website Type section, it is important to pick the site type which best fits your website:

Yoast SEO Site Type
Select the one that closely matches your website

3. Organizations and the individual

Choose next whether the website that you're using is either an individual or an organization.

If you choose Organization, you'll be required to input the following details:

  • Name of the business
  • Your logo should be ( 112x112px, at the minimum. We suggest a square logo.)

If you choose Person You'll need to type in your name and the initials of the individual.

Input all social media profiles for your site. If you're developing a website for an organization, this is the organization's profiles on social media. If you're an user, you have the ability to modify your information, including your accounts on social media as well as the username and profile of the user's profile on the WordPress accounts page.

It is not necessary to sign up for each one of them. Just pick the ones which you want to encourage:

Yoast SEO Organization or Person
Determine if your site represents an individual or a company

This feature aids Yoast SEO provide additional information to Google in order to create the Knowledge Graph Card. They look very appealing and each bit of data aids

An Example of a Knowledge Graph card
A sample of an Knowledge Graph card

Section 4: Search engine visibility

99.99 The majority of time, you want to make these defaults. If you do not know how to do it, don't make any changes:

Yoast SEO Search engine visibility
Set these up as standard for the majority of times.

Section 5: Multiple authors

If you're the only one who is the author of your blog, Yoast SEO will automatically mark your blog's archives with the number noindex to stop duplicate data (noindex tells the search engines to not be able to index the page).

Yoast SEO does this because when you go to a specific blogger's blog, the archives of the author are exactly like the actual index page of your blog.

If you intend to utilize several authors choose yes so that users can discover a particular author's posts archives on Google results.

Yoast SEO Multiple authors
Choose if you'd prefer to publish one or several authors

6. Google Search Console

If you're unsure of the meaning of Google Search Console is, don't hesitate to go to next and move on for now. While Google Search Console is definitely something to look into in the future, it's not something that's essential to the operation of Yoast SEO:

Yoast SEO Google Search Console
If you have an Google Search Console account, you should sync it now

7. Set-up of the title

An example of an SEO title
An example of an SEO title

In the default setting, Yoast SEO makes your title: The Title is separated by the separator. Name Web Site Name

Within this area there is the option to pick:

  • The name of your website
  • The *Separator*
Yoast SEO Title settings
Select the title you want to utilize.

For example, if your blog was tagged with the title "How to Utilize Yoast SEO" If you were to set these settings the site will appear similar to this on Google How to Use Yoast SEO? What is Yoast SEO? Demo Site

Finalizing The Configuration Wizard

In sections 8 and 9, Yoast SEO will try to direct you toward:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter, the Yoast SEO newsletter
  • Purchase Yoast SEO Premium, Keyword research and education, or plugin-related training

There is no need to do one of those items unless you'd prefer to.

Keep hitting the button every time until you're in section 10. You've made it! And then click "Close":

Yoast SEO success
You made it!

You've just set up Yoast SEO!

Utilizing Yoast SEO's Meta Box

Every day you will notice that the Yoast SEO metabox will be where you interact with the plugin the greatest. Metaboxes help you by:

  • Assessing your content's quality in SEO as well as its accessibility
  • Setting up settings to control how your content appears in Google and in social media.
The Yoast SEO meta box
The Yoast SEO meta box
  • (1) - allows you to switch between Snippet preview, Readability Analysis, Focus keyphrase, and Cornerstone content
  • (2) - allows you to access more settings to social media
  • (3) - allows you to access other choices

Content Optimization Tab

The Content Optimization tab is a key component of the entire process. Content Optimizationtab will focus on how well the content you have created has been optimized for search engines.

The first section in the tab that is optimized for content will be the preview of snippets.

Yoast SEO edit snippet
How do you manually alter SEO snippets

It's vital to understand this info since it's data that appears on Google's organic results page for searches:

Example of real SEO snippet
An example of a real SEO Snippet

Within the area of Readability Analysis sector, Yoast SEO tries to apply the same idea to human beings. Essentially, it tries to determine the extent of your content's accessible to human readers and offers suggestions for ways to improve the readability of your content.

The suggestions here aren't flawless - do not feel that you're required to achieve an exemplary score. However, they're a good general guide to follow:

Yoast SEO Readability analysis
Yoast SEO Readability Analysis

Within the Focus keyphrase section, you're capable of entering into the Focus phrase for the content you want to optimize to be optimized for.

It will tell you what you're doing right and what can be altered. If you are using the premium version of Yoast SEO it is possible to add a related keyword.

Yoast SEO Focus keyphrase
Yoast SEO Focus keyphrase

It is important to remember that Yoast focus keyphrase doesn't help you rank on Google. This is merely an idea to help you with optimizing your content you publish.

Within in the Cornerstone Content area, you will have the option to decide whether or no you wish to label your article as content that is cornerstone-related.

Cornerstone content
Yoast SEO Cornerstone content
Yoast SEO Cornerstone content

That is, you should pick only the top articles, posts or pages that you will maintain as the cornerstone content. Then, you can easily filter your cornerstone content within pages and posts lists.

Cornerstone content in post list
Cornerstone content included in post lists

Yoast SEO Social Media Tab

Under the Social tab, there is the choice of setting how your content appears when shared on Facebook and Twitter:

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Yoast SEO social media tab
Yoast SEO's social media setting for each article of content

This is the data that a social network automatically generates every time an URL is shared

facebook example
A good example of how setting of social media can affect certain the way that they affect

The majority of the time , there's no need to set this for each blog post since Yoast SEO will automatically generate it on the basis of:

  • The SEO name you've got
  • The main image in your website

But if you want to change the default settings of your browser, this is the best place to do this.

The Advanced tab of Yoast SEO

There's usually not a need to look in this tab. tab is referred to as the Advanced tab. However, if you'd like to:

  • It is time for Google to stop indexing this particular document. Or in other words permit the search engines to block displaying it as a result of search results.
  • Make sure to specify a canonical URL in order to prevent duplicate information.

If so, here's how you can get it done:

Yoast SEO Advanced tab
Yoast SEO meta box, advanced setting

Examining The Yoast SEO Dashboard

After you've had Yoast SEO set up and are familiar with the meta box, let's look at the screen.

On the main screen of the Dashboard (Under General), Yoast SEO will inform you of any possible SEO issues that could impact your website.

You can notice how Yoast SEO doesn't like the way our website's tagline continues to be as the primary text.

Yoast SEO dashboard notifications
Yoast SEO dashboard notifications

Yoast can provide you with instructions for how to solve the issue. It is also possible to take the alert off if you are not inclined to address the issue.

General Tab

Generaltab Generaltab isn't very relevant, however it does permit you to:

  • Use the wizard to configure your PC.
  • Check the number of internal hyperlinks within the blog post you are writing.

Features Tab

The Featurestab contains a little more focus than the prior tab. In this tab, you are able to enable or deactivate certain functions of Yoast SEO.

If, for instance, you do not find Readabilityanalysis in Yoast SEO's meta box useful, you can turn it off. Yoast SEO meta box helpful You can switch it off by clicking here:

Yoast SEO features tab
Tab Features of Yoast SEO

Also, it is possible to deactivate the author's security. The advanced portion in the Yoast SEO metabox lets users to eliminate content from search results or modify the canonical version that is officially available. This is something you would never want an author to accomplish. This is why, by default only editors and administrators have the ability to perform this. Set to "Off" allows all users to modify the options.

In the most recent versions of Yoast SEO, there is no more a area for this. But you can still find a link that will take you to your XML sitemap by expanding your XML sitemaps tooltip by pressing"See your XML sitemap" or the "See your XML sitemap" hyperlink.

Yoast SEO XML sitemap
Yoast SEO's XML sitemap

For the purpose of excluding certain types of posts in your webmaps, it can be done via the search appearance part further below.

Webmaster tools tab

In this tab, Yoast SEO can help you verify your site with a range of webmaster tools offered by search engines:

Yoast SEO Webmaster tools
This site helps you connect to a variety of instruments from search engines.


This is the Most Advanced Guide To Yoast SEO

Congrats! You now need to have an adequate knowledge of the Yoast SEO's primary options and settings.

In this part In this article we'll take a deeper look at the more advanced options which Yoast SEO has the ability to conceal.

Search Appearance Options

Do you need to modify the knowledge graph or schema.org data? Perhaps you didn't use the wizard to configure. You can access this through the Search Appearance section. Click on"General" from the menu. You are able to edit your organization and personal information.

Knowledge Graph & Schema.org
Knowledge Graph and Schema.org

Since April 16, April 16, 2019, Yoast SEO version 11+ contains more structured data than it ever had. It is available in JSON-LD format to the code of your website and supports the Organization, Person, WebSite, WebPage, and article schema.

Test your WordPress site using this Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Google Structured Data Testing Tool
Google Structured Data Testing Tool

This site's SEO Appearance section offers amazing ways to streamline many aspects of on-page SEO.

In essence, Yoast SEO lets you define template for your SEO title and meta description for your entire:

  • Posts
  • Pages
  • Post types custom-made for your needs
  • Taxonomies
  • Custom taxonomies
  • Pages from the archives
Yoast SEO Content types
Yoast SEO Content types

The reason it is useful is the fact that you have the ability to make use of a variety of variables that allow the inserting of data in a dynamic manner for example, information that is in specific fields.

The complete listing of these variables clicking the Need assistance? Button and choosing the Snippet variable tab:

Yoast SEO Snippet variables
Templates can be utilized as variables

If you scroll down to section Advanced variablesection, you can find an array of time-saving tricks which are truly awesome.

As an example, say you operate a coupon website and you want to make certain that the title of your post appears in the following format: Coupon Updated In Februaryof 2018

Rather than manually editing the title each month in order to make sure that it's up to date You could utilize the variables %%currentmonth percent as well as the %%currentyear % variables, and let Yoast SEO take care of the task for you.

Other choices you can explore in this field comprise:

  • Tags that are not indexable are a way to control certain types of material. If you create an item noindex, Google won't index this type of content within the results of its search engine. It's a powerful method, so apply the method with care. Make changes to the default settings only when you know how to do it correctly and how it will affect.
  • Decide your preference on whether the Yoast SEO meta box should show for particular kinds of materials.

Taxonomies Tab

One of the greatest features is the option to remove the category name in your URLs:

Yoast SEO taxonomies
Yoast SEO taxonomies

The breadcrumbs feature can be an option to find the breadcrumbs that are like this:

Example of breadcrumbs
Example of breadcrumbs

They're typically thought of as beneficial to help users navigate through your website.

This section will allow you to be able to turn them on using Yoast SEO. However,you'll also need to include a code fragment into your theme to enable the breadcrumb function to work.

Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs
What can you do to add breadcrumbs with Yoast SEO

RSS Tab

Yoast SEO RSS
You can add this information prior to posts or post-posts in your RSS feed.

Social Alternatives

In the Social areais where you'll be able to set more general settings for the way your website interacts with various social websites.

The majority of times, you'll need to remove these as the defaults, but:

Yoast SEO social
Yoast SEO's social media advanced settings

Tools Options

In the final, the Tools area gives you access to various editors, as well as the possibility to export or import the settings of your Yoast SEO settings:

Yoast SEO Tools
An overview of some of Yoast SEO Tools

If you select option to edit the file option to modify the file option, Yoast SEO will help to create the robots.txt file (if you don't have one already). After you've created the file Yoast SEO will let you make changes right on your dashboard:

Edit robots.txt file in Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO lets you modify your robots.txt file directly from your dashboard

If you are unable to get the File editor option It's a signal that you're suffering from one or the other issue.

  1. The installation of your WordPress installation offers the the option of deactivating the editing of your the files.

How to Use Yoast SEO to Boost Your Site's Life

At the close of this article, we'll look back at the information with an understanding of how you'll be able to make use of Yoast SEO within the course of your daily WordPress day-to-day.

The majority of Yoast's SEO choices are "set it and forget it". After everything is set, the only area which will be utilized on a daily day basis will be your Yoast SEO metabox.

In each post, you must, as a minimum:

  • Enter a keyword you want to focus on. It is not necessary to respond to every suggestion of Yoast SEO however, getting approval from Yoast SEO is usually an excellent goal.
  • Create a template to define to set the Meta Description and the SEO Title. Even if you created a template that is good however, you'll need to manually edit these for all posts, in order to make sure they're optimally optimized.

Other things you may have the ability to address could include:

  • Readability
  • Social media settings are especially relevant if you think that an item is likely to do well in the social media.

Any other questions about what you can do with Yoast SEO? Leave a comment below and we'll help you give you a ranking!

Are you interested in learning more about how to bring visitors to your website using SEO?

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