Marketers know that organic search visibility is essential in the overall mix of brand awareness and customer loyalty in digital marketing. If you have a self-hosted WordPress website, the Yoast SEO plugin can be a valuable tool in search engine optimization (SEO). The benefits of Yoast SEO are its ease in use and effective performance. Best of all, it is free for the basic functionality that allows you to set page titles and descriptions, identify and track the use of targeted keywords, manage sitemaps, and more.

Getting started with Yoast SEO 

Installing Yoast SEO — WordPress is quick and easy. 

1. From your WordPress site admin dashboard, navigate to Plugins on the left side of the screen and click Add New, which will appear when you hover over the word Plugins.
2. A page with multiple plugins will appear. If Yoast SEO is not one listed under the Featured, Popular, Recommended, or Favorite sections, use the search box to find it.
3. Click Install Now on Yoast SEO and WordPress will automatically download and install it and then prompt you to activate.
4. When activation is complete, you will see SEO on the left sidebar menu on your admin dashboard and on the horizontal menu at the top of your screen. For example:

(Image Credit: Neil Patel)

Setting up Yoast SEO — WordPress

Now that you have downloaded and installed the tool, you must set it up. This can seem overwhelming, but follow the step-by-step instructions for a seamless process. First, if you have been using an older Yoast plugin or another SEO plugin, consider importing the settings and save yourself some time. To do this, go to SEO in your menu and select Tools > Import and Export > Import from other SEO Plugins. If the plugin you previously used is not supported by the import function, refer to the SEO Data Transporter plugin recommended by Yoast.

If you have no settings to import, then you will want to follow these instructions:

1. From the admin dashboard, go to SEO from the menu and select General. This is where you can revert to default settings if ever necessary in the future.
2. Select Your Info. Complete the information about your website name, if it is for company, and other information. You also can add a logo to personalize your reporting.
3. Website Tools is where you will verify your site for use with other tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Alexa, and others. For Google Search Console, go to Manage Property and then select Verify this Site for the website you are adding. Choose HTML Tag verification and copy and paste the code into the Google Search Console box. Be sure to Save Changes and then click Verify on your Google Search Console dashboard. For instance:

(Image Credit: Kinsta)

1. If you are the only person authoring the content on your website, then you can leave the Security box unchecked. When this box is unchecked, any person with access will have an open door to the advanced options. If there are multiple authors or admins accessing the website, you may want to address this section.

Adding Page Titles and Metas

You have progressed through the set-up so it is now time to get into the work that truly improves SEO. The Titles and Metas section is where you provide the text and descriptions that search engines see and what is used in the algorithms that determine the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings.

1. Go to Titles and Metas from the SEO option of your menu. In the General section, you will identify the format for your paper titles. For example, if you select Your Site Name | Page Name, then every page title will include your website name followed by the | symbol and the page identifier. Select the Force rewrite titles option to automatically correct potential issues with the website name appearing twice in the page title.
2. To edit the Homepage title and description, click the Homepage tab and then the Editing the front page link.
3. The Post Types tab is where you will create the templates for page titles and meta descriptions for your website. Individual page titles and meta descriptions that are SEO-optimized can be written for each page, otherwise, these templates will be used as a default. If you do not create a meta description, search engines will use a piece of text from the page content.
4. Meta Robots is where you will indicate any pages that should not be followed. You will want to leave the Noindex, follow option unchecked unless the page is duplicate content or older content that should be archived.
5. The Date in Snippet Preview will result in a date that the page was created being shown on the search results page. This is a good option for pages like blogs or press releases with frequent updates being made but should probably not be enabled for other content as users may see an older date and not click on your website.

Creating Taxonomies

The Taxonomies tab allows you to organize your content in categories, making title and meta descriptions easier to create. This section is particularly helpful for websites with blog content as they often use different categories and tags. If your website uses the same categories and tags, you may need to review the Noindex, follow option to avoid a penalty for duplicate content.

Utilizing Archives

A website with a large amount of content may need to have an archives section to keep information fresh and current. Yoast allows you to tell search engines if you want archived pages indexed. You also can tell search engines to not index special pages like 404 error pages.

The most extensive part of the set-up is now complete. Moving through the other sections should be quicker and easy to understand. Yoast SEO Reviews reveal why digital marketers appreciate this tool so much.

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Social

By completing this section, search engines will see your social accounts to associate them with your website. In the Accounts tab of the Social section, add the URLs for your social media accounts. For Twitter, only your username is needed. You can add Open Graph (og) meta tags for Facebook and Twitter card meta data. For example:

(Image Credit: Kinsta)

XML Sitemaps

Be sure to enable the XML Sitemap functionality. This will make managing your sitemap very easy as the Yoast SEO tool will automatically generate a new sitemap when you update content and will alert search engines to the updated sitemap. This will spark search engines to crawl your site and index the new pages.

Connect to the Google Search Console

You only need to connect to the Google Search Console if you use it. If you are not using it, you should be. Connecting to the Search Console allows you to see the errors your visitors are encountering so you can immediately fix them and create redirects for broken links. To complete the connection, do the following:

1. Click Get Google Authorization Code and Accept to give Yoast SEO access to your Google Search Console.
2. Paste the code into the Authenticate box, select your website, and click Save Profile.

Be Aware of the Tools

Bulk Editor: Under the Tools section, you will want to be aware of the Bulk Editor. If you ever need to make changes to multiple pages titles and descriptions, this will allow you to bring them all up at the same time so you can make the necessary changes at once rather than having to go to each individual page to apply the changes. For instance:

(Image Credit: InMotion Hosting)

File Editor: The File Editor allows you to make changes to the robots.txt file and the .htaccess file. The Import and Export function allows you to export your settings so you can save them as a backup.

Using the Yoast SEO Tool

Once Yoast SEO is set up, you will be able to monitor your website SEO from the dashboard. From the admin dashboard choose All Posts or All Pages to a complete list in a table. The SEO column shows a dot rating from Yoast SEO to indicate the following:

• Gray dot: Yoast SEO has no information on the page
• Green dot: The page is well-optimized
• Red dot: The page has significant issues
• Yellow dot: The page can be improved

(Image Credit: tbwhs.com)

Yoast SEO Reviews shows this grading system makes it easy to sift through a website with a lot of content to identify edits that are needed. From here, you can click on the page or post to open and make edits and optimizations as necessary.

General

The General tab is not only where you enter the page title and meta description, but this is also where you identify your target keyword. Yoast SEO will evaluate the page content, title, meta description, heading, and URL to see how often the target keyword is being used. You will be able to determine if the frequency is sufficient or if you are keyword stuffing, something that will negatively affect your SEO. Also, in this section is the Snippet Preview, which shows how your page title and description will appear on search engine result pages. This allows you to ensure they are fully visible and not being cut short.

Page Analysis

You will set your target keyword in the General tag, but the Page Analysis tag provides information on the search engine friendliness of your page. Some information you will see is if your target keyword is being used an appropriate number of times, if keywords are being used on other pages, the length of content, and are there images and outbound links.

There may be times when Yoast SEO provides insight that you believe is not advantageous. The platform is using technology, not a human being, to evaluate your page. There are limitations to machines, and while you are dependent on the search engine for organic search visibility, you need your page to work for the humans who will be visiting it. The benefits of Yoast SEO are its ability to quickly evaluate your page, but you should determine which suggestions to implement and which to pass over.

Social

If you do not complete the Social tab, social media platforms will use your page title and meta description or content from your post as well as a chosen image. To maintain more control over how your page appears, be sure to complete this section and make sure your page is getting noticed.

Publish with Yoast SEO

When you have completed all of the page optimizations, you can either immediately click Post to push your page edits live or you can schedule the post. Yoast SEO will include a green dot if everything is good on the page so you have another opportunity to evaluate everything.

All of the functionality described so far is free of charge. There are additional features available through premium Yoast SEO extensions. These include Yoast SEO Premium, Video SEO, SEO News, Local SEO, and Yoast WooCommerce.

Yoast WooCommerce SEO Plugin Review

If you have an eCommerce website, Yoast SEO and WooCommerce are a great pair. They work cooperatively to add schema.org data to product pages so they are included in Google’s Shopping page and at the top of search engine result pages, above paid ads. With WooCommerce SEO, pages are optimized for easy visibility on social platforms and include additional details like price and availability. An extra settings menu allows more information from the manufacturer like brand and color.

If your eCommerce site has filters for price, color, size, etc., there will be different URLs for each of these variations created by WooCommerce. You don’t want Google to index all of these pages, so Yoast SEO will remove duplicate pages from your sitemap. Yoast WooCommerce SEO Plugin Review makes managing your eCommerce site efficient and effective in digital marketing.

We hope that you found this article useful.

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Yoast Local SEO

This tool is an additional cost so you may ask if Yoast Local SEO is worth it. The answer is yes. It helps customers find your business and get your business to the top of search engine results pages. The tool adds schema.org data to tell Google everything about your business like the name, type of business, address, and business hours. It also includes Google Maps along with the ability to get directions and plan a route. If you have more than one business location, Yoast Local SEO will optimize the Google listing to accommodate all of them so users can select the location most convenient.

Is Yoast Local SEO worth it means determining if your business relies on foot traffic. If you have a brick and mortar business and rely on customers to come to you, then this add on is worth the price. Additionally, the time savings and expertise of the tool is worth the price tag. The image below shows what the Local SEO business form looks like:

(Image Credit: Yoast)

Yoast Video SEO Review

Yoast Video SEO gets more eyes on your video content. It makes videos responsive by enabling fitvids.js, improves video engagement on social channels, and displays videos in the carousel at the top of Google search engine results pages. The only thing you need to do is embed the video, add video titles, tags, categories, and meta descriptions. Yoast Video SEO handles all of the technical set-up.

You will need to make sure to follow the requirements for the plugin. Use oEmbed or shortcode from a supported plugin or a supported platform like YouTube or Vimeo. A Yoast Video SEO Review shows the following benefits:

• Automatically create the XML Video Sitemap
• Add MediaRSS enhancements to your RSS feed
• Easily add Schema.org structured videoObject markup so Google can see your video and index it for search engine results with a video thumbnail in the carousel at the top of the results page
• Add OpenGraph tags to video pages so they can be shared on Facebook

Difference Between Yoast SEO Free and Premium

The free version of Yoast SEO offers everything you need to optimize your website for organic search. The premium version enhances these features to give you more versatility and functionality, such as the following:

• Optimize for multiple target keywords and phrases per page instead of just one
• Preview your social posts for Twitter and Facebook
• Instead of manually searching for internal links, get suggestions from the premium version
• Get alerts for 404 error pages
• Receive 24/7 support for questions at any time of day
• Avoid the ads that are part of the free version

The Difference between Yoast SEO free and premium versions comes down to scale. If you are trying to decide on whether the premium version is worth the extra price, evaluate the size of your website and number of pages as well as the type of website you have. If your website is very large and if you have an eCommerce site, then the premium version may be worth the extra investment.

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