One thing that scares every Blogger is the word ‘SEO’. You cannot just ignore it. SEO is the main factor to bring your blog in top pages of search results, improves Alexa ranking and makes your blog popular.
SEO is a very huge term to understand, to learn, to implement and to get succeed.
WordPress provides free (&paid) which helps to rock the SEO without any effort. You just need to install this plugin and it takes care of everything once after the activation.
You might have already guessed it. Yes, it is Yoast SEO, developed to help millions of people like you and me. It is universally accepted and appreciated by the bloggers.
Today we will see how to install the Yoast plugin along with its benefits.
Installation
Installation
Like all other plugins, Yoast SEO can be installed directly from the WordPress plugin section. Go to Plugins > Add New > Search for Yoast SEO > Click on the first one in the list > Click Install > Activate.
Done! Now you can see Yoast SEO plugin at the end of the Dashboard or under settings.
That’s how easy it is…
Settings
Once after installation go to Yoast SEO plugin and click on Settings.
Under settings, Click on features tab and make sure they are properly set as shown below.
Features settings
If you click on the question mark next to every feature you can read in detail. Let’s just look at the summary here.
SEO Analysis
Optimisation consists of using the right keywords, tags, meta description and lot many other things which are quite difficult to understand and implement.
Enable SEO analysis and leave the SEO job to Yoast SEO plugin while you work on your blog. Yoast plugin allows you to add snippet (single result in a set of search results), meta description (Description Text for the link in search engines) and focus keyword.
SEO Analysis Image1
As you can see in the image once after you click on Edit snippet SEO title (Title of the post for search engines), Slug (URL extension for the post), Meta description (post summary) can be added easily. If the bar is green then you are good to go.
SEO Analysis Image2
As you scroll down you can add focus word which is the deciding factor of SEO analysis. You can also see the analysis report and make the required improvements. Click on the eye (as shown in image 2) and see the highlighted text in the post to see which part needs improvement.
Readability Analysis
If this is enabled Yoast makes sure that your post is easy to read. While you are writing you get feedback on sentence & paragraph length, Use of subheadings, Use of passive voice, Use of transition words and Flesh reading ease score(This score tells how easy is your text to read).
Yoast gives red (Needs improvement), Orange (Ok), & Green (Good) feedback on your post.
Read Analysis Image3
In the image 3, the post contains one problem in the report which is related to transition words. You can highlight the text (by clicking on the eye) and improve your draft.
Cornerstone content
Cornerstone content posts are the one which depicts your business, mission by connecting internally to all other posts. Basically cornerstone content is the top brick of the pyramid.
If you mark your post as Cornerstone content using Yoast SEO plugin it ranks highest in the search engines. These posts would be extremely well written in order to serve their purpose.
Cornerstone Content
Posts that are similar to one another or if your page has many interlinkable topics then create a cornerstone content linking all of them. This way you are telling search engines what has to be looked at first.
Text link Counter
Text link counter is the count of internal & external links to a post. While you are drafting posts, Yoast SEO plugin suggests adding internal links.
Link count
Once the post published internal & External links for a particular post can be seen in all posts section.
Premium Yoast plugin also suggests which links can be used as internal links.
Posts which are not attracting readers can be used for internal links to increase the number of views on such posts.
XML Sitemaps
XML sitemaps
Sitemaps are the agents that communicate between your website and search engines. Sitemap is your site URL list along with the meta description.
Click on the question mark which you see next to XML sitemaps (See your sitemaps). Yoast SEO provides a link where you can download the sitemaps and upload it to search engines like Google search console.
Ryte integration
Yoast SEO plugin provides indexability check. An indexability check is constantly ensuring whether your site is indexable.
This is very easy. When you open Yoast SEO overview you see your website’s Ryte indexability. If its green everything is well and good, Grey says that Yoast SEO couldn’t verify the status and red means danger!
If it is red, Yoast is saying that your site cannot be indexed! This is an alarming alert and action needs to be taken immediately.
Admin bar menu
Admin bar provides useful links to third-party tools for page analysis which makes it easy to see for any new notifications.
Since this doesn’t have SEO or any other benefits to a website you can disable this feature.
Security: no advanced settings for authors
The latest version of Yoast SEO plugin gave an option to hide posts from search engines.
If your website has 3-4 users who are writing posts they will get an option to enable or disable ‘show posts in search results’ checkbox.
As an admin, if you don’t want this you can turn this feature on which blocks authors to do so. Only you get to choose which posts should list under search engines.
Webmaster tools
There are different webmaster tools like Bing, Google etc. Webmaster tools are great ways to submit sitemaps, indexing pages.
In order to do so, we need to add a webmaster verification meta tag to our site homepage.
That sounds extremely difficult, right?
Well, Yoast SEO plugin makes this job easy by allowing to add each webmaster verification code under its setting.
Go to Yoast > General > Webmaster tools tab
Webmaster tools
There you can see Baidu, Bing, Google and Yandex verification code box. Click on each link to follow the instruction and receive the code.
Add the generated code and save the settings. Job is done!
Search Appearance, social & tools
Search appearance is where you can modify your website look when it lists under the search engine. Which means the title of the website, description of the website can be added.
Site description
You can customize the media size, taxonomies, archives, breadcrumbs as you desire.
Social allows you to add your website social media links.
Tools section is where you can export & import settings from different blogs, edit robot.txt file & .htaccess file, Bulk editor allows bulk editing of posts and pages.
You can explore each and every setting of Yoast SEO plugin and get to know more about the plugin.
nice post, very detailed and all in one. i went through so many video tutorials to learn all that. great work
Same with me Richa.. I struggled to find out about each setting. Glad you liked it.
Very informative post. You explained everything in detail:) Thanks!
#MyFriendAlexa #AditiReads
aditikapur.com
Thanks Aditi 🙂
Thank you, this is a nice guide for new bloggers to start on the SEO Plugin.
Yeah Mahesh. I’m glad if people find it useful.
Hello Sanjota, a nice piece of article which will help beginner a lot. I still remember how I did those setting with a shaky hand. I even not registered in search engine for many month with a fear of black marking by search engine as had not knowledge at that time. As a result I fall back in DA. One thing i like to add a adding of title tag. A very useful article as SEO is a must for blogger who wish to grow. Thanks
Good point Bikramjit! I will definitely add it with a few more details. Thanks for the reading and suggestion.
Hello Sanjota,
Informative info you shared here about Yoast SEO Plugin. It is the best WordPress plugin for SEO.
Thanks for sharing valuable info with us…!!!
Thanks Gangadhar. Yeah Yoast is the best plugin I have ever used.
I have been using Yoast SEO for over 18 months now. I agree that it is a blessing for us bloggers and very easy and convenient to use.
Yeah, it is quite useful!
Thanks! I was just installing Yoast SEO this morning and this article was very helpful making the installation process so much easier!
For those looking to grow their blog successfully, this is really great info!
Great information will visit again
This is great! I use this but didn’t know I could do all of this!!
This seems like a very helpful app, thanks for sharing it with all of us.
very helpful plugin for all WordPress users
I had tried premium version of yoast but I didn’t like it actually. Good post though.
How I wish blogger has a counter product.
I’m always constantly trying to grow my blog. These are great tips!
Thanks for such tips. I have always wanted to use Yoast but for some reason my WordPress account doesn’t seem to be compatible with it. Please share your thoughts.
I had been guiding people in terms of SEO and blogging. I can suggest them your post for Yoast SEO.
Such useful information! I will save this for the next time I need it. I’m always searching for plugin how-tos when I’m installing a new one!
These are good tips. I use Yoast and it’s very good! Great post.
Thanks for telling us a new way to find our SEOs. I am still a beginner at SEOs but learning slowly!
This is so helpful! SEO is so tough to master but your tips will definitely help to make it a little easier!
Wow! Thank you for giving tips about SEO this is really helps for my blog.
I love this plugin. I use it for all of my content and I think you explained it perfectly.
Thanks for these information. Good addition in learning how to use WordPress.
Thabk you this was very helpful to me as I am a new blogger. Still a little confused but hopefully soon it will click for me. And when it does I’ll come back here to read this again. ???
I truly agree. SEO is one we need to consider all the time.
This post is so helpful. I was having some issues in installation but got some good tips from here.
Thank you for this detailed information/guide, i’m still struggling to to get some button to turn green.
Such a good post on the yoast plug in. I have it on my site but didn’t fully understand it’s I’ll potential until now.
I love using yoast on my blog.
I use Yoast Seo on my blog and I’ve used it for many years. I love it. It is basic and good for anyone who wants to begin SEO.
This is very really unique helpful information. keep it up. Thank you so much!
What a waste of my time and my money! Trying out the INK for ALL AI because their customer service seems so much more responsive