Image-Yoast SEOInstall and Activate the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. Yoast SEO key features include the snippet preview that shows how your post will look in search results. Content analysis furnishes info on the focus keyword, post length, meta description, etc. Create XML sitemaps and direct them to Google and Bing. Other features are Add Basic Schema, Social Integration to link SEO and Social Media, Multi-site compatibility, Breadcrumbs, Permalink cleanup, Edit robot.txt & .htaccess files, Head section cleanup, Import & export functionality, and more. Your Google Console account can be synchronized with the Yoast SEO plugin. Advanced options are available with the premium plugin. Boost your SEO with specialized plugins such as Video SEO for visibility in Google video search results, Local SEO for local search results, News SEO for optimizing your content for Google News, and Yoast WooCommerce SEO to find and buy products on your website.
To get a quick overview of what SEO is all about, click on the link SEO-fundamentals.
General
Go to the Y-SEO General tab fig1.
Next select SEO settings fig2 in your WordPress dashboard.
Configure the Yoast settings fig3 through the configuration wizard 1-Environment 2-Site type 3-Organization or person 4-Search engine visibility 5-Multiple authors 6-Title settings 7-Help us improve your Yoast SEO 8-Continue learning 9-Success by following the prompt Yoast SEO integrates with Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools). Connect Google Search Console to your site by verifying ownership. Click on ‘Alternate methods’ in the Search Console to obtain the meta tag. Next click on HTML tag. Copy the meta tag generated and paste it (a) in the head section of the WordPress website and (b) in the Google verification code box by going to the Yoast SEO dashboard under the webmaster tools fig2 and save changes. Go back to your Search Console and hit the verify button which will now confirm the verification of your website ownership.
Next click ‘Continue’ to see the displayed data about your website in Search Console.
Configure the features by clicking on the features tab fig2 in your Yoast SEO dashboard. Enable/ Disable the feature as per your preference. Keep “On” the SEO Analysis, CornerStone Content, and the XML Site Map features. Save changes.
Yoast SEO Search Appearance
Under Search Appearance we have 7 tabs – General> Content Types> Media> Taxonomies> Archives> Breadcrumbs> RSS
Search Appearance – General
Title
Homepage – Optimize your home page. This page is seen by default.
Users search for your brand and the home page is shown in the search result.
SEO title > default settings are site title> page> separator> tagline.
Below configuration apply to my website –
site name – separator- site description
%%sitename%%%%sep%%%%sitedes%%
Meta description
Use the keywords your website is all about
Save Changes
Search Appearance – Content Types
Settings for single Post URLs
Show Posts in search results? – For “Post” setting [Yes] as you definitely want to show post in your search.
Date in Snippet Preview – Show
Yoast SEO Meta Box – Show
You can Configure title template and meta description.
Title template will be site name – separator- site description and
Meta description template – %%excerpt%%
Customize the title and meta description for each of your blog post individually. Under Pages Settings
Show Pages – No
Date – No
Yoast Seo Meta box – hide.
Save Changes
Search Appearance – Media
Media settings can be left at the default settings.
Search Appearance – Taxonomies fig9.
Show categories in search results – Yes
Title template
%%term_title%% – %%sitename%%
Meta description template
%%category_description%%
Yoast SEO Meta Box – Show
Under Tags settings
Tags – No
Yoast SEO Meta Box – Hide
Under Format settings
Format based archives – disable
Category URLs – Remove
Save Changes
Search Appearance – Archives fig10.
Author archives settings – Disable if you are the author or enable multiple blog authors.
Date archives settings – Hide.
Special Pages Archives – Set as per default.
Search Appearance – Breadcrumbs fig11.
Use of breadcrumbs enhances website usability.
The default settings hold good. fig12 shows what breadcrumbs are?
Install the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin fig13 if you choose to enable breadcrumbs on your WordPress website. After installing and activating, this plugin is located under Settings. For more information go to – https://mtekk.us/code/breadcrumb-navxt/breadcrumb-navxt-doc/
Search Appearance – RSS fig14.
The RSS settings help with content scraping (for people wanting to steal your content) and can be left at default.
Yoast SEO Search Console
The Search Console shows data such as a page, post, image or a video on your website fig15 after this data has been crawled on your website by a search engine and has some issues.
You will see the response code to the extreme right which is normally 404 – not found, 400 – bad request, 403 – forbidden, list of other HTTP status code, etc.
For response code 404 you can create a redirect by clicking on “create redirect” link located below the URL, if you have opted for Yoast premium plug
If not install the free Redirection WordPress plugin by John Godley fig16. After installing and activating this plugin you can locate it under Tools. The old URL will go in the source URL and the new URL will go in the Target URL. Click on “Add Redirect”.
By clicking on the view link, the page having the issue will be displayed.
The plugin will ignore this particular issue after the “Mark as
To fix a number of issues with response code 404 check the box next to the issue.
In the drop-down menu of the Bulk Action box select “mark as fixed” and then click Apply.
From the fig15 we have 7 not found issues for the 404 response code. If you have some other response code issues, the same will get displayed as “others” next to not found.
The smartphone tab shows search engines have crawled websites using a smartphone/ screen size. Next, inspect for any broken links. But the Feature phone tab shows nothing. Last go to the settings tab where you can authenticate your profile with Google if not done earlier.
Yoast SEO Social
To set up social media click on the social tab fig1 and under accounts add the page URLs fig17 to your social media accounts and save changes.
The next tab is FaceBook fig18 and by default, the open graph metadata is enabled.
Customize your F
Go to any of your posts and scroll down to the SEO box where you will notice that the Facebook and Twitter icons are enabled.
Add a custom title, description, and image size 1200×630 pixels for this post whenever it is shared on Facebook. You can use one featured image for this particular post and then use a separate image for Facebook whenever it is shared on Facebook.
The same applies to Twitter, the recommended image size is 1024×512 pixels.
The Facebook App ID gives access to Facebook Insights. It shows how many people came from Facebook. You need to create a Facebook app. To do this go to developers.Facebook.com > Sign in to your Facebook account > create a Facebook for developers account > MyApps – to get your App ID. Paste the Facebook App ID fig18 in the box.
In the front-page settings, you can fill in the image URL, title, description, etc, and save changes. Under default settings, the image URL will be the image backup if the featured image has not been added to the post. The same process applies to Twitter.
Pinterest~ Log in > Go to settings > Add URL > Claim website > Get HTML tag. Copy the HTML tag and paste in the Pinterest confirmation box fig20 in the Yoast Pinterest social setting.
Yoast SEO Tools
In the Tools tab by default, there are three major tools fig21 – the import and export, file editor, and the Bulk editor.
Under the Import and Export tool, the settings are-
Import settings
Simply import the SEO setting fig22 of another Web site to yours and vice versa
Export settings
If you are not interested in repeating the configurations for your other websites then export them in a zip file format fig23 and go to the other site and import these settings by choosing the file that was exported.
Import from other SEO plugins
If you have other SEO plugins on your site you will see the list of them listed down here fig24 and you will have the option of choosing all other important settings from them.
Using multiple SEO plugins for your website will create
The file editor tool allows you to make changes to robots.txt and the .htaccess files fig25 on your website. Click on create the robots.txt file. If you don’t see this option that means you already have the robots.txt file. The robots.txt file allows search engines to crawl websites and the .htaccess file handles your permalinks.
The bulk editor tool fig26 allows making changes to the titles and meta tag captions of posts without going to the individual posts. Click on the Bulk Editor that displays the content types.
Under the Title and description tabs, you have the chance of optimizing by adding keywords, if not optimized earlier. In the fig26 note that the posts do not have an existing SEO Title. Type the new title and meta description in the box under the New Yoast SEO title and New Yoast meta description. Save the settings.
Yoast SEO Premium Plugin
The free plugin can handle most of your SEO needs and the premium plugin extends the functionality of the free plugin. Moreover, it permits the use of more than one keyword per post. The redirects feature redirects in the search console or whenever contents get deleted elsewhere on your website. Using WooCommerce on your website, allows you access the Yoast WooCommerce plugin which substitutes the WooCommerce b
Results
By configuring the settings and features of the free Yoast SEO plugin, [refer fig 28- SEO title, Slug and Meta Description, fig29-Focus keyphrase & fig30-Analysis Result], we have optimized SEO for the content of this post.
Readability Analysis- This score in fig31 shows two problem areas, one for consecutive sentences starting with the same word and the other for transition words. For detailed reading, click on Readability-Analysis and go through the post. Select the eye icon next to the issue on the right and the text or sentences will get highlighted in the posts. Rather than pursuing efforts to turn the red button to green, it is best left as it is. Our writing should not represent a robotic style of satisfying search engines. The viewers to whom the content is meant for should understand it.
Cornerstone content fig32 is the ground footing on which all other content has been built upon. It constitutes the core of all your blog posts. Toggle the settings to ON, if you want to make a particular post the cornerstone content.
Another popular plugin for SEO is All in One SEO Pack.