Use Yoast SEO Basic And Advanced Features in 2024

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Hey, do you want to rank your website on the first page of Google and other search engines?

As you know, when your website appears on the first page of Google, it will increase your website’s reputation and also help in generating revenue.

For this, you need to apply the proper engine optimization techniques in your web posts and web pages. One of the best strategies for applying SEO is to use SEO-based plugins.

Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most popular SEO-based plugins. More than 12 million websites use Yoast SEO because of variable essential features like help in optimizing the website for ranking in the search engine.

In this article, I will guide you on how to install, set up, and use the Yoast SEO plugin. So, without further ado, Let’s start!

Why Is Yoast SEO Necessary For WordPress Websites?

The criteria of Search Engines for ranking your website are based on the structure and quality of the web pages. Optimized websites that are well-structured easily rank on the top pages of search results.

WordPress is an SEO-friendly content management system. But it doesn’t come with the in-built features that could help you in search engine optimization. So you need to add plugins that are supported by WordPress. The most reputable SEO plugin is Yoast SEO which helps in website performance.

As you know, when you create a website, your foremost priority is bringing organic traffic to your website and, as a result, generating revenue for your business.

Furthermore, Yoast SEO also helps in technical SEO that helps to make your optimized website meet the standards.

This tool analyzes the content on an SEO basis. Yoast SEO uses different parameters for analysis and ensures that your website content is fulfilling the best on-page SEO practices.

With the help of Yoast SEO, you can do the underlying procedures

1. Helps In Search Engine Snippets Previews:

As you know, the first look and appearance of the web page in the search result is the vital factor for getting clicks. In the first look, the audience notices the SEO title, slug, and meta description. And how your web page appearance will look on mobile and desktop view. Yoast SEO works on it and suggests writing an attractive SEO title and meta description within the limit.

2. Readability Of The Content:

Yoast SEO also helps in improving the readability and quality of the content and makes it digestible for the audience. It uses the Flesch reading ease score that helps to identify how much content is digestible.

3. Easy Integration:

Yoast SEO easily integrates with various webmaster tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc. that help in analyzing how well your website is performing in the search engine pages.

How To Set Up A Yoast SEO in 2024?

Now I will discuss different steps on How to install and set up Yoast SEO in WordPress.

Step No 1. Install Yoast Seo On The WordPress Website:

First, you need to install the Yoast SEO plugin. For this, follow the underlying instructions

Log in to the WordPress dashboard via admin and go to the Plugin > Add New
And type the Yoast SEO in the search bar.
Click on the Install button and wait for a while
Now click on the Activate Button

If you are using a plugin other than Yoast SEO, then you need to import your data, settings, and configuration. For this

Log in to the WordPress dashboard via the admin account
Then go to the SEO > Tools option
From here, you need to choose the Import and Export option.
And here, click on the Import from other SEO plugins.

Step No 2. Configuration Wizard:

If you start the new website and you installed the Yoast SEO as your first plugin, then you need to set the configuration wizard.

Yoast SEO offers a configuration wizard that helps in setting up the basics for your website.

When you set up the configuration wizard, you will get the underlying benefits.

You can manage what you want to show in the search results.
You can show the accurate metadata of your website
It also helps in improving the brand exposure.

For this, follow the underlying instructions

Go to the WordPress dashboard via Admin
And click on the SEO in the menu
Here, you will see the First-time SEO configuration section.
Click on the configuration wizard link. Your new page will be opened in which you can easily configure the basic settings for your WordPress website.

Sections In the Configuration Wizard:

There are different sections in the Yoast SEO configuration wizard.

1. Environment:

In this section, you will know whether your WordPress website needs to be indexed or not. If you are not working on the development site or staging server, always choose the first option. In this way, Google and other search engines will easily discover your website.

2. Type of the Site:

First, you need to determine the type of website, whether your website is a portfolio website, personal blog, business magazine, or e-commerce store.

3. Organization or Individual:

First, tell whether your website is representing the person or the entire organization. If your website is business-based and your company is running a website, then you need to put the logo and picture of your business brand and picture. For the personal website, you just need to put your name in the required field.

All this information will be stored in the metadata of the website, so make sure you put the information correctly. This information will be provided to the users who want to know about your website.

4. Search Engine Visibility:

In the search engine visibility section, you need to determine whether you want to show your website content or hide it.

In other words, you need to specify when your content will rank on the top pages of Google and which type of content you want to show on the search engine result pages.

5. Multiple Author:

In this section, you need to specify how many people can publish the content on your website. In this way, your content will not be updated and published twice on the website. When you have two web pages ranking on the same keyword, then Google becomes confused as to rank which one of the pages.

6. Title Settings:

In this section, you need to decide how you want to display your headlines on the search engine results. It includes the title separator and website name.

Here, you will get different title separators you can choose according to your brand. A title separator actually appeared in between the article or post title and your website name as a snippet preview in the search engine result page.

Now, you have successfully completed the configuration.

Step No 3. Configure The General Setting:

In the general setting, you need to modify your configuration wizard.

You will find the underlying sections in the General tab

1. Dashboard:

On the dashboard section, you will find the notification section. Here, you will get the recent updates and notifications of the plugin. In this section, you will also get a notification of the recent issues you are facing on the website.

2. Features:

In this section, you will get a list of the features of Yoast SEO. You can enable or disable them according to your website goals. If you are curious and know more about these features, then click on the small question to make an icon of the features.

3. Integration:

Yoast SEO easily integrates with third-party software and apps. If you want to integrate, then just enable them.

4. Webmaster Tools:

Yoast SEO is also compatible with different webmaster tools. A webmaster tool helps in monitoring the performance of the website, like how much traffic is coming on the website and the memory of the website. The provided information from the webmaster tools assists you in analyzing and measuring the website performance in the Search Engine result pages.

In this section, you will get the different webmaster verification tools such as Baidu, Bing, Google, and Yandex verification code. If you want to verify the site in any one of the search engines, then you need to enter the verification code.

Step No 3. Configure the Webmaster Tools Or Google Search Console Integration:

You can choose the appropriate webmaster tools because the verifying process is still the same for all webmaster tools. In this, I will show you how to verify the Google Search Console via Yoast SEO.

First, create a Google Search Console account.

After signing up, add your WordPress site to the Google Search Console Account. Follow the underlying steps.

Go to the Google Search Console and scroll down the menu on the left sidebar.
Then, find the Add Property button and click on it.
Now select the property type. Here, you will find the two types of property: Domain and URL prefix.
Choose the Domain option, if you want to grant access to a complete overview of your site. Choose the URL prefix, if you want to include the specific URL prefix.
If you choose the domain name, then click on the Continue button.
Now you will get the verification page and click the verify button.
Copy the TXT record and paste it to the DNS zone editor of your hosting provider. Now go back to the verification page and click on the verify button.
After adding successfully, a new property to your account. Now verify it in the setting of Yoast SEO.
Go to the WordPress dashboard and go to the SEO > General > Webmaster tools. Click on the link under the Google Search Console verification code.
This link will lead you to the Webmaster Central page. Here, you can mark the way for your domain verification.
To get the authorization code, click on the HTML tag. Now paste this authorization code into the Webmaster tools under the Yoast SEO webmaster tool section.
Now click on the Save the Changes button and complete the verification process.

Step No 4. Search Appearance Setting:

Search appearance means how your website will appear in the search result pages. Although the search appearance setting can be set up in a configuration wizard, you can also find the search appearance in the Yoast SEO.

In the search appearance, you will find the various tabs,

1. General:

In the general tab, you will find the basic settings. You will find the title separator and meta description.

2. Content type:

In this section, you can specify which type you want to display in the search results.

3. Media:

It is mostly recommended to keep the setting in default. In this way, whenever visitors click on the media attachment, then google will redirect your visitors to a web post.

4. Taxonomies:

in this section, you can customize the title and meta description for your post categories and tags. In this way, Google can easily recognize your posts and put them before the users who have a certain search intent.

5. Archives:

in this section, you will know the archive types. It is best to turn off the author archive if you are the only one who is managing the website because there will be a chance to create the content twice. If your website is organization-based, then activate it.

6. Breadcrumbs:

breadcrumbs help search engines crawl your website in the search results when you index the website. Enable it by toggling the switch to enabled. Moreover, turning it on also helps your audience understand your website structure.

7. RSS:

This setting helps prevent your posts and content from being published again without getting any permission. If your content is repulsed without any credit or permission, then when someone republishes your blog post, a part of your content will appear below the RSS feed, and it will include a link back to your own website. You can choose from a variable link how you want the link to appear.

Step No 5. Social Media Settings:

As you know, social media is an important factor in boosting the traffic on your website. Use the Yoast SEO social media feature in which you can optimize and make a personalized social media snippet and make content that is visually appealing to attract potential customers.

For this, simply go to the social media tab of Yoast SEO, then go to the meta box, and here you can modify different features and elements to make your post optimized for social media.

The interesting thing about Yoast SEO is that you don’t need to tweak your social media snippets, as Yoast SEO will generate the social media snippet according to your titles and meta tags. But if you are not satisfied with the automatic version, you can tailor them according to your requirements.

Step No 6. XML Sitemap:

For your website search engine optimization, integration of XML sitemaps is important. In the XML sitemap, there is a list of all your important and unimportant pages, and XML makes a complete map of all pages that help search engines understand the structure of the site.

Moreover, it also helps in determining which pages of your websites are more important and need to be crawled on the search engine. In this way, web crawlers easily find the relevant content and rank it in the search engine according to the search intent of the user.

If you want to create the WordPress XML sitemap, then follow the underlying instructions

Go to the WordPress dashboard via the admin account.
Then go to the SEO > General > Feature tabs.
Then scroll down and find the XML sitemap section.
Enable the option.
Now, Yoast SEO will automatically generate the XML sitemap for your website.
Click on the question mark icon, then you will see the link.
When you click the link here, you will see the list of the links that your website has created for your website.
Copy the web address of this website and paste it into the Google Search Console.
On the Google search console, click on the sitemap located in the left side panel, paste the URL link in the required field, and click on the Submit button.
Now your XML sitemap is submitted to the search engine, now your content will easily be found by Google once you index it.

How To Use Yoast Plugin For SEO of Your WordPress Site?

After setting up your Yoast SEO plugin, the next part is to start using this plugin for the SEO of your website content.

Use The Yoast SEO Meta Box For On-Page SEO:

Most of the on-page optimization of the website content is happening in the Yoast SEO meta box and is located at the end of every blog post. This is also called a content optimization tab.

In this section, you need to optimize the different aspects of on-page SEO like title tags, URL, slug, keywords, meta description, and readability analysis.

This section is very helpful for indicating how much your content is SEO optimized and how much more improvement is needed.

When you use the Yoast SEO you will see the 3 different colors just like traffic lights green, orange, and red. These colors are the feedback of the Yoast that helps you indicate the content that has room for improvement.

In the old version of the Yoast SEO plugin, this meta box is located at the end of the post editor. Now, the new version is located on the right side of the post editor.

Here you will find the four primary elements that play the main role in SEO

The focus keywords or keyphrase optimization
SEO analysis
The readability
Google snippet preview

1. Keyword Optimization:

With the help of Yoast SEO, you can know what the frequency of the primary or focused keywords is and how well your content is matched with your focus keyword.

In this section, add the keyword or key phrase on which you want to rank the article or blog post.

It is important to note that adding a key phrase here does not mean that Google or other search engines will know that you want to rank the page based on this keyword. Instead, it just gives you the indication or feedback on how much your content is optimized for that keyword.

In this keyword optimization, Yoast SEO assessed it according to the underlying tactics

Yoast SEO analyzes whether it contains a key phrase in the first paragraph.
Check how many times key phrases appear in the content
Whether the primary key phrase is present in the meta description or not.
The key phrase is present in the subheading.

It checks if there is a link in the content that contains the keyword
Keywords present in the image Alt text, title, slug, and URL of the article.
It also checks how well your keywords are described throughout the blog post or content.

2. Focus On Readability:

Good readability is crucial for the SEO of web content. Readability means how much of your content is easy to read.

The easier to understand your content, the more the audience will want to spend time on your website which decreases the bounce rate. As a result, Google will rank your content on the top pages of Google and other search engines.

The readability section is present below the focus keyword section. When you write the content, it would be best to keep looking at this section. This section also gives you an indication of analysis in three different colors that help you tweak the content to increase its readability score.

If you get the green color, then you are doing great, and if your content readability is getting an orange or red light, then you need to improve it.

For this, click on the eye icon, and Yoast SEO will highlight the parts of the content that need improvements.

Yoast SEO focused on underlying points to make it readability good

It checks

Whether your text has not exceeded the maximum limit.
Your text should not have exceeded the recommended amount of passive voice.
There is a good amount of transition words in your article
According to the Flesch Reading test, how much of your content is easy to read?
It analyzes there should not be more than 300 words under a single heading.
There should be an H1 heading present in the text.

3. The Google Preview:

In this section, Yoast SEO tells how your content will be displayed on Google and other search engines. It gives you a glimpse of how your content title and meta description will be shown on mobile and desktop devices.

So, create the title and meta description that reflects your article or post. But still, it does give the guarantee that Google will display your meta description as a snippet preview on the search engine result page.

4. SEO Analysis:

SEO analysis is necessary to make your web pages understandable for search engines and potential visitors. There are almost 15 different SEO analyses on Yoast SEO that give you a complete overview of how much your content is SEO optimized and how much it needs further improvement.

In SEO analytics, Yoast SEO analyzes the underlying points

It checks how long is the length of the text
Whether the content contains internal and outbound (external) links.
The length of the title and meta description is good enough
Check if your cornerstone content is updated or not.
It checks where you used the focus keyword in your article.

How to Use Yoast Plugin For SEO? (Advanced Setting):

1. Implement Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs Navigation:

The purpose of the breadcrumbs is to make it easier for your website visitors to navigate the website and its structure to create a better user experience.

With the help of Yoast SEO, you can add breadcrumbs to every website post and page. If you want to enable the Yoast SEO breadcrumbs, then follow the underlying steps.

Log in to your WordPress via admin
Then click on the Yoast SEO located on the left side of the menu
After clicking on the Yoast SEO, click on the setting.
In the settings menu click on the advanced section.
Here, you will see the breadcrumbs option, click on it.
Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and enable the switch of the breadcrumb.
After enabling configure the setting, according to your website preference, click on the save changes button

2. Canonical URLs:

You have noticed that there are many posts and pages on your website that have the same content as you have the same product or articles on more than one area of the website with different URLs.

The same content makes the search engine confused about which needs to be ranked. To avoid this confusion, you need to use a canonical URL that you will find in the advanced setting of the Yoast SEO plugin.

In the advanced setting of the Yoast SEO plugin, enter a different canonical URL for each blog post or product page.

For this, follow the underlying instructions

Log in to your WordPress dashboard
Under the dashboard, go to the posts or pages where you want to add the canonical URL
After arriving on the editing page, go to the advanced setting via a sidebar menu
Now, you will see the advanced section in the meta box of the Yoast SEO
Now, enter the canonical URL in full form along with http/s in the canonical URL field.
Click on the update button.

3. Redirect Management:

Sometimes, you need to delete your old articles or blogs, but deleting them usually comes with several risks. When your old visitors visit the old URL, they get the 404 error not found. Sometimes, you want to lead your audience to the new pages that have more relevant information instead of the old ones. This process is called redirect management.

Redirection is not only important for your audience, but it also needs to be essential for the search engines. You have to inform your search engine robots that there has been a change in your website’s URLs, and they need to go to another URL address temporarily or permanently.

Whenever you undergo this situation, then you need to create the redirect in Yoast SEO. For this, follow the underlying instructions.

First, you must have a premium version of Yoast SEO to find the redirect manager.
Click on the Yoast SEO plugin then you will find the Redirect option at the end of the menu, click on it.
Here, you will need to create the redirect.
First, select the type of redirect.
Then, enter the old URL. Here, you can type both absolute as well as relative URLs. In the absolute URL, write the complete web address. And in the relative URL, write the partial address.
Now, enter the new URL so the old URL redirects visitors to the new URL. in this, you can type either absolute or relative URL.
Now click on the Add Redirect button.

After the redirect creation, an overview will be added under the redirect manager section.

Final Words:

Each WordPress needed to optimize for the different search engines to get a chance to appear in the search engine rankings. So, for limited-time availability, you need to rely on different plugins to optimize your content for Google and other search engines.

When it comes to SEO plugins, Yoast SEO is one of the top plugins in the list. With the help of this plugin, you get plenty of features that pinpoint your weak areas in the content and give you suggestions that make your content optimized. Moreover, it makes your process less daunting and also saves your precious time from being wasted.

In this article, I have covered different features of Yoast SEO that will easily help you understand different features and how to use them. If you find an article on how to use Yoast SEO helpful, let me know in the comment section below.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Does The Color Of The Yoast SEO Need To Be Green?

Not every analytic on Yoast SEO needs to be green, nor is it an indication that if your content gets the green signal light, then your article or blog will definitely rank in the top pages of Google.

But still, these elements play an essential role in ranking your content in the search engine along with other factors.

Can I Use Yoast SEO For Free?

The motto of Yoast SEO is SEO for everyone, which means it is also available in a free version. In the free version, you will get the basic SEO tools. If you really want to make your content SEO optimized, then upgrade your plugin to the premium version, in which you will get the most amazing features.

What Are The Basic Requirements Of Running Yoast SEO On WordPress?

If your WordPress website has a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 7.2 PHP versions, then you are good to go. It is far better that your PHP version should have more than 7.4 or above to easily run the Yoast SEO plugin.

Staff Writer 3 weeks ago