Yoast SEO: What Is It?
Yoast SEO is a highly sought after WordPress plugin. Its primary use is in enhancing your blog entries’ search engine optimisation.
The Yoast SEO plugin makes it simple to optimise your website for search engines by including features like meta descriptions, an on-page SEO audit, and an XML sitemap.
Yoast SEO is available for no cost, but a paid pro version adds capabilities like in-depth content analysis, helpful hints for constructing internal links, and control over site redirects.
Yoast SEO: How to Set It Up
Having defined Yoast SEO, let’s examine its installation and configuration.
Putting in the add-on
The plugin’s setup process is rather simple. Go to Plugins > Add new on your WordPress dashboard. Try looking up the name “Yoast.”
All it takes is to choose “Install” and “Activate.” Once your plugin is installed and running, you may proceed with the first configuration.
The first setup process will need some standard data from you. When you’re done with them, your installation will be complete.
Even if you don’t do anything further with Yoast once the initial setup is complete, the following will have been done automatically:
Implementing a sitemap.
Making use of the robots.txt file.
Simple frameworks added.
Yoast SEO fundamentals
The settings menu is where you should go once you’ve finished the initial setup. What follows is a look at a few of the more interesting choices.
Ambient Conditions
The “Site features” menu is the primary option for general configuration. In this section, you’ll discover Yoast’s many preset options. With the exception of “Inclusive language analysis,” all of these features are enabled by default; however, you may always check them out and toggle them on or off as necessary.
It’s possible that you’ve already finished the initial setup, in which case the “Site basics” and “Site representation” options will be empty. All you have to do here is specify how you’d want elements like your site’s name, slogan, and logo to show up in search engine results.
Last but not least, choose “Site connections” (formerly webmaster tools) from the main Settings menu. Here, you may check your site’s credentials with search engines like Bing and Google. Yoast will then automatically include a verification meta tag on your homepage.
Tags, categories, and content varieties
To a large extent, “Content types” and “Categories and tags” in the options menu are interchangeable. They give you complete say over which (or if) parts of your site show up in SERPs.
You may customise the structure of your title tags for various content kinds (pages, posts, categories, etc.) and determine whether or not to automatically index them.
You must use extreme caution while adjusting these parameters, since doing so may result in the automated deindexation of large portions of your site. Incorrect schema markup may also have a detrimental effect on your site’s position in search engine results pages (SERPs).
In my opinion, the current configuration is fine as is. You may modify the schema used by search engines for particular pages or posts by editing the settings for those pages.
Superior Choices
If you’re not an experienced SEO professional, you should probably just leave the advanced settings as they are. You should not mess around with “Crawl optimisations” and similar settings unless you know what you’re doing.
Tutorial on integrating Yoast SEO into the WordPress dashboard
We’ve covered the fundamentals of getting started with Yoast SEO in the WordPress editor, so now I’ll show you how to make the most of it.
To access the Yoast settings, either use the “Yoast SEO” meta box at the bottom of the page or click the icon in the upper right of your WordPress editor to expand the sidebar menu.
This is where you will spend the most time in Yoast, since it is here that you will be able to optimise and change the default settings for each page. Learn the most important functions and how to utilise them.
Keywords of Emphasis
The “keyphrase” (i.e., your major keyword) is the first required field. Here you may input the search term you wish to optimise your page for.
Using a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, you may figure out which keywords you wish to rank for.
By filling this out, Yoast will be able to assess the optimisation level of your content.
Search Engine Optimisation Analysis
Yoast’s SEO analysis function provides guidance on how to optimise your content for search engine results for a certain keyword.
The readability and search engine optimisation tools both use a traffic light system to rate content. The more of the recommended components you can include into your article, the better your chances of being approved.
The plugin determines how often a certain keyphrase appears by comparing the total number of words to the following criteria:
Web optimisation title
The Opening Paragraph
Heading(s)
URL’s meta description of page content
Alt Text for Images
The fact that Yoast is so helpful is another one of its many merits. The plugin is useful for those who rely on an employee (like a VA) to upload information into WordPress and want to make sure that crucial details, such as meta descriptions, are not overlooked.
If someone is new to the position, for instance, it might be helpful to have a checklist of what is expected of them.
Yoast’s algorithm takes into account things like sentence and paragraph length and structure, transition words, and passive voice, in addition to Flesch Reading Ease, a standardised measure of textual complexity.
Readability study, like search engine optimisation analysis, highlights strengths and weaknesses.
The highlighter feature in this area is quite helpful for pinpointing specific errors in your writing.
For instance, it may provide a percentage breakdown of the proportion of your text that is impacted by a certain error. You can see where this applies by clicking the “eye” symbol to the right of the problem. This allows you to make edits in the WordPress dashboard with ease.