How To Setup Yoast SEO Plugin Settings- Best Methods 2024

How To Setup Yoast SEO Plugin?

Yoast SEO is a very powerful WordPress plugin. One of the best in the world. And the most widely used by publishers/blogger. How to set Yoast SEO and how to use it correctly to get extraordinary benefits from this great SEO tool. Initially, I will answer some common questions related to the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. This is also a basic description of our material this time.

FAQs Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO’s General Description

Yoast SEO is very popular and the best SEO plugin available in the market. It comes with many advanced features for an easy website optimization process & SEO content. So it appears perfect for users and can be read clearly by robot crawlers.

Yoast SEO itself is available in free and paid versions. I’m not exaggerating. But, just using the Yoast SEO-free version, is more than enough for you to compete in SEO strategies.

Once again I emphasize, that the free version is enough for a site. However, if you want more advanced features, then you need to upgrade to the premium version.

Yoast SEO Features

• You can change the SEO title and meta description on each content post.
• You can add Focus keywords.
• The XML Sitemap / Sitemap creation function.
• This also includes the .htaccess and robots.txt editor.
• You can use Title and Meta descriptions for taxonomies (categories and tags) and more.
• Full control over your site’s breadcrumbs.
• Automatically set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content.
• [Premium] Redirect manager
• [Premium] Automatic internal linking suggestions
• [Premium] Synonyms & related keyphrases
• [Premium] SEO News, Video SEO, Local SEO, and WooCommerce SEO functions

Read More: Rank Math Vs Yoast SEO Plugin- Which Is Better For Rank On Google In 2023

How To Use Yoast SEO?

There is no doubt Yoast SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. But the right SEO Yoast settings are very important. Because, only by doing techniques and the right way, which allows this tool to provide maximum benefits.

Here’s how to set the best SEO Yoast :

First, install the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress site. Once activated, it will add a new menu item to your WordPress dashboard with the Yoast SEO logo.

How To Install The Yoast SEO Plugin?

1. General / General

Dashboard

You don’t need to do anything here.

Features

SEO Analysis – This shows the optimization of your content with Green (good), Orange (medium), and Red (needs work) and offers suggestions to improve the SEO of your content.

Readability analysis – These are suggestions for improving the sentences and paragraphs (Short, Long, and Transitioning words) of your content.

Cornerstone Content – This allows marking cornerstone content (valuable content) on your website.

Text link counter – This shows internal links on your pages and posts.

XML Sitemap – Let’s you create XML sitemaps for sites that you can post on Google, Bing, and Yandex webmaster tools for better crawling.

Ryte Integration – This will detect every week whether the website is indexed by search engines.

Admin bar menu – Add a drop-down menu on the WordPress dashboard.

Security: no advanced settings for authors – Allow users to delete posts from search results or change canonical. and only allows editors and administrators to do this.

Webmaster Tools

Here, register for each webmaster tool and verify with the HTML Tag method.

Webmaster Tools Verification

• Register for Google Search Console.
• Add Your Site
• Select the “HTML Tag” verification method.
• Copy the code and paste it here (Yoast Google Search Console field).
• Click the Save changes button in Yoast.
• Click “Verify” in the Google Search Console tool.
• Now you have successfully verified your site in the Google Search Console tool.
• Repeat the same process for Bing / Yandex.

2. Search Appearance

In the Title Separator option, you can choose the symbol you want to use as a separator between words. For SEO Title, homepage & FrontPage, it is a function to create a Title and meta description for the homepage of your site, you can do this when creating a landing page for your homepage or page.

Knowledge Graph & Schema.Org

This data is displayed as metadata on your site. This is intended to appear on the Google Knowledge Graph. You can choose the organizational options for company-type sites or personal ownership for blogs.

In this field, you are also asked to enter the main logo of your site.

Content Types

This settings page gives you control over posting and indexing pages. Just follow the screenshot below.

You can prevent your posts and pages from being indexed in search engines. Add the date. This helps to increase the clickthrough rate on your content.

Additionally, you can write a special meta description for each of your posts and pages.

Note: You can also hide ( Date in Snippet Preview ) Date in Preview Preview for pages.

Media

Just follow the settings as shown below. This is possible when people do a version search for images on the search engine, and when they click on your image, it automatically enters your post.

Taxonomy

This gives you control over the categories and indexing of tags. Just follow the screenshot below. To avoid duplicate content.

If you display tags, categories, formats, etc. in the search results, then that will create duplicate content problems. This will reduce your search ranking and Google can even penalize your site.

So I suggest that you don’t index tags, categories, and formats for search results.

Archive

The default settings work well for most websites. However, if you are running a single author blog, just deactivate the author’s archive page from the search results.

On a single author blog, the contents of the author’s archive page and blog homepage will be the same. As a result, it can cause duplicate content on your site. So let them be disabled.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are the best for internal links. This helps users find out where they are on your site. And also helps search engines understand the structure of your site. But, if your theme has this function, you can deactivate it.

RSS Feed Setting

3. Search Console

The Search Console section allows you to connect your WordPress site to the Google Search Console tool.

Open the Search Console settings tab and click the “Get Google Authorization Code”. That way, you will be directed to the Search Console site, where you will get the code. Copy this code and enter it in the Authenticate box.

Then choose your website from the drop-down menu. That way you will get the search console data here.

4. Social

Here add your social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter Username, Instagram URL, LinkedIn URL, etc. so that Google can find out your profile.

In addition, this allows you to upload data specifically for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Facebook

Ensure that the open graph meta data option is enabled. Then enter your Facebook Application ID.

This gives you more options for configuring posts for Facebook in the WordPress editor. You can take the right thumbnail and page information when you want to share a post on Facebook.

Twitter

On the Twitter Settings tab, you can choose how a post will appear when you share a post on Twitter. I recommend using a summary with large images. So cool.

Pinterest

Pinterest uses Open Graph metadata like Facebook, so be sure to check the Open Graph box on the Facebook tab if you want to optimize your site for Pinterest. After that, you have to confirm your site with Pinterest.

However, based on experience this function is often problematic. So to claim the Pinterest Business feature, you can download the script from your Pinterest account and upload it to your root hosting, via Cpanel.

5. Tools

Bulk editor – Bulk editor allows you to edit the title and description of the posts in bulk. But it’s not good for SEO because it makes the description and title duplicate.

File Editor – With this option, you can edit your .htaccess and robots.txt files. You don’t need to go to cPanel.

That is all. So, this is a set of Yoast SEO settings that are important to do. To help you configure SEO Yoast settings correctly.

We continue to discuss the features of Yoast SEO Premium.

16 Points of Yoast SEO Premium

It turns out that there are 16 benefit points that we can use when using Yoast SEO on our website. To find out more about these 16 points, let’s join the review.

1. Keyword Optimization

A keyword is a key to our website to be searched by millions of internet users. With the right keywords, it’s also easier for users to find our website. With this optimization, it will be easier for users to find our website from the existence of key phrases, synonyms, related keywords, and various other things like it.

2. Show Google What Exactly Is Our Web Content

Google can not necessarily know the actual contents of our website. It is about entertainment, gallery, portfolio, tutorials, and so on. Google can only classify it after there is various input from users related to user experience after exploring our website.

3. There Is No Expired Content

There is a special notification if it turns out there is our content that has not been reformed or updated for at least 6 months.

4. Preview Of Our Page

Google will immediately be able to do a preview when we select the address page of our website. Very easy when we only focus on visual things to explore a website.

5. Check The Ease Of Readers Accessing Content

Content that is difficult to read will make the reader feel very confused. Here is the real role of SEO Yoast which is to better guide us in making content that is easily understood by readers.

6. Full Control Over The Smallest Contents Of Your Web

We can easily set up the main categories of our website. It is also very easy to manage which children are part of each category that we have. We can arrange the smallest root of a category.

7. There Is No Duplicate Content

Google can also be confused. It’s a sophisticated machine, but there are also limits to analyzing the contents of our web content. Google also can be confused, sometimes we make the same two contents that are detected differently. Yoast can handle it by creating an official URL.

8. Work Classically Or Use Help Blocks

For classical writers, writing manually is fun. But for SEO writers, whether they are pure writers or not, the block system is the mainstay.

Imagine the various conveniences that can be done with a block system. One of them is customization per paragraph easily.

9. Technical Aspects Remain In The Background

Maybe some of us are very familiar with the robot algorithm. Automation of web pages, and so on. With Yoast, all these technical aspects are still going well and continue to support collaboration on search engines like Google.

10. Always Update The Google Algorithm

Indexing is one of the main capabilities of Google. For this reason, he became the fastest search engine today. With the collaboration and good adjustments to the Google algorithm. Your website will always be included in the range of this famous search engine activity.

11. Suggested Internal Links

Don’t let readers go away after reading one of the contents of your website. Keep making them feel at home is one of the keys as well so that our web visitors are still happy to linger reading one by one the existing content. With the suggested links that link to other articles on our website, visitors can continue to maintain our web.

12. Insight Into Content

Yoast can tell us the 5 most used words or phrases in our article. This can allow us to find out whether our content is by the keywords that we have set at the beginning.

13. Automatic Redirect When Your Page Is Not Found

It might be very annoying when we have searched for the address of a website but what we get is ” 404 Not Found “.

This is because the page we are looking for has expired or the hosting has expired, or it can also be the content that we divert or delete. With Yoast, readers can be directly herded on a new URL page, so they won’t be annoyed because there are no more error messages they receive.

14. Focus On Export Keywords

We can get a clear SEO score (CSV export) to help us analyze whether our keywords are ok or not.

15. Access Assistance 24 Hours A Week

The Yoast Super team helps you tirelessly, even on holidays or red dates the Yoast team is ready to support responding to your complaints.

16. Ad-Free

No ads will appear making the page you are working on difficult to understand and even shifting your focus.

You can still get points 1 to point 10 when using the Yoast SEO-free version, but for points 11 to 16 you can only use it when you have purchased or purchased the premium version.

YOAST SEO For Ordinary People

As a layman who just entered the world of SEO using Yoast, there are some points that we need to pay close attention to. How do you start this Yoast for maximum results? How to use step by step? What needs to be considered first before paying attention to other points? Let us review with a very detailed explanation below.

Analysis Results (Readability)

The most highlighted when we will write content is the analysis page. Here we can find out what we write and whether it accommodates a good SEO layout or not. The readability tab is the first component of analysis that we need to pay close attention to.

In this component, there are some inputs from Yoast that we often see. These input points can help us in revising our writing according to SEO standards. These points include:

Transition Word

Here is how much we use conjunctions in our sentences. Good writing will have enough conjunctions, not too little and not too much, of course. According to Yoast, an article that lacks conjunctions will cause readers to experience difficulties in understanding the contents of the article itself.

Sentence Lenght (Sentence Length)

The length of the sentence also determines whether the articles we make have made the reader understand and are interested in the contents of our article.

Here there will be a lot of control from Yoast, where if the sentence we make is long enough, Yoast will give a warning in the form of a command to splitting the sentence.

Sentences that are too long should be made or done splitting into another sentence body. This will make the focus of the reader be able to sort out information well rather than having to read a long sentence.

Paragraph Lenght (Paragraph Length)

Apart from the sentences that need attention, it turns out that paragraphs are also arranged in such a way that making them in an article can be maximized.

A good paragraph is a paragraph that is not too long and not too short. When we make a paragraph that is too long then there will be a warning message from Yoast that we must reduce or reduce the sentence that is in the paragraph. It might also be possible by splitting or forming new paragraphs with sweetened conjunctions so that they are easy to understand.

Subheading Distribution

The existence of subheadings makes it easier for readers to classify the material they are reading. A good subheading will be structured using subheading governance with a pattern:

Passive Voice (Passive Sentence)

Passive sentences should only be used in a few parts of the article that we make. The function of this passive sentence does not lead the reader to the opinion he formed, but only to the content of the news.

For active sentences why more is suggested, this is because active sentences can make writers and readers communicate with each other. Exchanging ideas and looking for other input from a different perspective, of course.

With so many active sentences, the article that we make seems alive and has a storyline that can lead the reader to their thoughts. Although in the end, the reader will remain on the rail track that the author has made, the interaction between the reader and the writer becomes an exciting thing to discuss here.

SEO

In Yoast, apart from the readability tab that must be considered, so that it can bring up a “green” logo which means that the articles we have made already meet the readability standards that are easy for other people to digest, there is also something called SEO.

This tab will explain the function of this SEO tab itself and its role in the article that we make. This SEO tab is very powerful if we can use it well. On this tab, the fate of a post will be taken to rank on search engines. Is our writing later can appear on the first page on search engines like Google, or maybe the next page.

Key Phrase And Snippet

On the Yoast tab, there is a text box that says Focus Keyphrase. The function of this keyphrase is to connect what is discussed in our article with the content or keywords that we must highlight in the article.

An example if our article has a key phrase with the word “laptop”, then this word must appear several times in our article. The aim is to emphasize the points of the contents of the article that we make indeed discuss on the laptop and not widen everywhere.

Underneath we can see Snippet Preview. This snippet is one of the previews that we can see on search engines for the sentence or title that we want to click on or enter into.

The goal is that with this quick preview the reader can immediately find out what the contents of the article are without having to read the full contents of the article itself.

The role of this snippet is very crucial if the snippet is not by the description of the article it can also be referred to as “clickbait”, and internet users agree that clickbait is very detrimental and can reduce the prestige of the web or an article.

Why prestige can decline, of course, is because readers’ trust has declined since seeing snippets that do not match the actual content of an article.

Because the snippet is a summary of the contents of the entire article, the length of the snippet is also limited. The control bar that shows the colors orange and green will be your guide in making snippets. Do not get them a too minimal explanation and also not too over, stay on the green color as a marker that your snippet has been well made.

Content

Writing SEO does not only pay attention to various conditions that seem rigid to be followed so that the writer is only fixated on the technical aspects of SEO itself. Recall that the author’s task here is to bring the reader into the world we are making. This artificial world that we named “Articles”.

Articles must be communicative and have content that is appropriate and by the purpose of the article. With the right content, we can be sure that readers who just stopped by will be happy and will even look into whether there are similar articles that can be useful for him.

Sometimes some people or writers underestimate content. They do this because they do not consider the impression of the reader and only focus on the content of their writing which is expected to appear to be number one on the front display of search engines.

C’mon actually SEO itself is not only on-page as we discuss here, but good content also includes a part of SEO which is also called SEO Off-page that you can read the reviews here.

There is a website that does not use SEO facilities on the page but can appear on the first page of search engines. Actually what is done is to strengthen the off-page SEO from the web itself.

Back to Yoast SEO, with a strong mix of on-page SEO represented by Yoast and also Off-page SEO which is done by building branding from the website itself, it is certain that your article will be very popular and also become articles that have a high competitiveness among other articles.

Closing

That’s how you set SEO Yoast and how you use it. The point is, that this tool works for you to facilitate overall website optimization. Of course, through the creation of quality content with perfect SEO standards.

You can learn in-depth use of the Yoast Academy technique which is held by Yoast SEO.

Humayun Islam