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You are here: Home » BlogHeist Blog » SEO » Yoast SEO Plugin

How to setup Yoast SEO plugin

How to setup Yoast SEO plugin?

written by Nirmal Kumar | Last updated on December 10, 2020 | 26 Comments

Blogheist is a recognized blog delivering its readers the best tips to make money online. We regularly partner with brands that have products and services useful to our readers. Some of the links inside the article are affiliate links and we receive a small commission if you purchase through the link. No extra cost to you.
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WordPress is very famous for its easy SEO configuration when compared to other blogging platforms. There are many SEO plugins for WordPress, but the one which is very common among WordPress users is the Yoast SEO plugin. In this post, I will explain you the features of the Yoast SEO plugin and how to configure it for better SEO.

Table of Contents

  • What is the Yoast SEO plugin?
  • What are the features of Yoast SEO plugin?
  • How to install & Configure the Yoast SEO plugin?
    • General Settings:
    • Social Media:
    • Google Search Console:
  • Play with Advanced settings on Yoast:
    • Titles & Metas – Yoast SEO:
    • Social Settings:
    • XML Sitemaps settings:
    • Advanced settings in Yoast SEO plugin:
    • Tools available at Yoast SEO:
    • Search Console Menu:
  • Conclusion:

What is the Yoast SEO plugin?

Yoast SEO ( formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) is a complete WordPress SEO plugin. This plugin is updated every time to match Google’s SEO updates.

What are the features of Yoast SEO plugin?

Some features of the Yoast SEO plugin are:

  • Easy webmaster tools verification for Google, Bing, and Yandex.
  • Allows you to choose title format for each post types, taxonomies, archives etc
  • You can easily connect your social media pages to your website.
  • Setup default social media images for posts.
  • Helps you to complete Pinterest website verification.
  • Gives you the complete control of sitemaps on your website.
  • Helps to set up breadcrumbs
  • Allows you to create a default  header/footer before RSS feeds
  • Helps you add Google Analytics code to AMP using Glue for Yoast SEO and AMP plugin.

How to install & Configure the Yoast SEO plugin?

Step 1:

First, you will have to install the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress site. If you need help in installing a WordPress plugin, you will have to refer to this guide.

Once installed Activate the plugin.

Step 2:

In your WordPress dashboard sidebar, you could notice SEO menu. Under the SEO menu opens Dashboard -> General.

Then Click “Open the Configuration Wizard“.

 

Open the configuration wizard in Yoast SEO plugin

 

General Settings:

Step 3:

Now, you are taken to the Yoast SEO Configuration wizard. Yoast will show you newsletter subscription form. If you are interested in receiving SEO updates from Yoast, fill the form. Else, you can skip it.

Click Next in Yoast SEO configuration wizard.

 

Yoast SEO configuration Wizard

 

 

Step 4:

Now you are brought to the Environment page. Here, you need to choose the current stage of your website.

  • If your website is live and you are getting traffic, Choose Production.
  • There are certain hosting companies which offer you a blog testing platform. The test carried out will not impact the website. If you are using one such test platform, choose Staging.
  • If you are building the website right now, or if your website is under maintenance, choose Development.

Click Next once you have chosen the environment.

Environment in Yoast SEO configuration wizard

 

 

Step 5:

Now, you need to choose your site type. It can be :

  • Blog
  • Webshop
  • News site
  • Small business site
  • Other corporate site
  • Other personal site

Once, you have chosen your site type, Click Next.
Site type in Yoast SEO configuration Wizard

Step 6:

Now, in this screen, you need to choose whether you are a company or a person.

If you choose “Company”, you need to enter the name of your company and your company logo.

 

Company metadata in Yoast SEO configuration Wizard

If you choose “Person“, you just need to enter your Name.

Person metadata in Yoast SEO configuration Wizard

 

Click Next to progress to the next screen.

Social Media:

Step 7:

Now, you have come to Social Profiles page. Here, you need to enter your social media details like Facebook page URL, twitter username etc.

Social Profiles in Yoast SEO configuration Wizard

 

It’s not necessary that you need to enter all those details. If you don’t have an account on a particular social media platform, just skip that one and proceed further.

Once, you finish them all, click Next.

Step 8:

Now, you have come to an important page. Here, you can choose which post types Google should index and which types you shouldn’t.

Post type visibility in Yoast SEO configuration wizard

Once, you finished the selection for the Post type visibility section move on to multiple authors section.

If you are planning to allow guest bloggers to blog on your website, you need to choose Yes. If you are going to be the only blogger on your website, just choose No.

Multiple authors in Yoast SEO Configuration wizard

 

 

Once, you finished these settings, click Next to proceed further.

Google Search Console:

Step 9:

Next, is the most important step, where you are going to link your website with Google Search Console.

Google Search Console in Yoast SEO verification

You need to click “Get Google Authorization Code“. As, soon as you click the button, you will notice a dialog box opens up.

Here you will have to log in to your Google account.

Once, you log in to Google account, Yoast SEO plugin will request for permission to use your Google Search Console data.

Yoast SEO permission for Search Console

Just click Allow.

Now, in the Yoast SEO wizard, you will have to choose a profile and then click “ReAuthenticate with Google button“.

Select website profile from Google Search Console in Yoast SEO Configuration Wizard

 

 

You will be shown a code in the dialog box that opens. Copy this code and paste it.

Once you finished this, Click Next.

Step 10:

The next page deals with Title Settings.

Title Settings in Yoast SEO Configuration wizard

 

Here you will have to enter your Website Name. Also, you could see a list of title separator. By default, the hyphen is chosen. If you wish, you can change it.

Once, it is over, click Next.

Success message in Yoast SEO configuration wizard

As soon as you click the Next button, you will notice a Success message. Now, you have completed the basic settings for your website.

Wait a minute!

I just said basic settings.

Yoast SEO is a lot more powerful. It has a lot of advanced settings.

Now, we will move on to the advanced settings.

Play with Advanced settings on Yoast:

 

Enable Advanced Settings in Yoast SEO plugin

Sometimes, Yoast will have its advanced settings hidden from users. So, that newbie will not have the fear of seeing the advanced features.

So, if you want to perform advanced operations, you need to enable “ Advanced Settings Pages” under General Yoast SEO page. This is available in your WordPress dashboard sidebar.

Once you enabled the options, click Save changes.

Next, move on to the Titles and Metas section.

Titles & Metas – Yoast SEO:

Yoast SEO has a lot of features. If you try to discover and use all features, you will end up with wasting your time.

So, I will discuss only those important and necessary features.

In this page, you notice tabs like General, Homepage, Post Types, Taxonomies, Archives and Other.

What’s the use of options in these tabs?

Under each tab, you can configure the general syntax for SEO Title and Meta Description for the mentioned pages.

Now, move on to another tab.

Subpages of Archives in Yoast SEO plugin

 

In this tab, under Subpages of Archives, choose noindex.

Why should I choose noindex?

If you choose to index, all your subpages will get indexed. But, we don’t need to index subpages. We need to index only the main page. So, to avoid low-quality pages getting indexed, we choose noindex for this option.

You have few more options in this page, but that’s not necessary.

Click “Save Changes”

Social Settings:

Next, we will look at the social page at Yoast.

Social - Yoast SEO - Accounts tab

Under Accounts tab, you can enter all your social media profile links. If you have already entered these details in the Yoast SEO wizard, they would be filled already.

As you move on to the Facebook tab, you will have to upload a default Facebook image. This image will be used when you share a post without an image on facebook.

Facebook settings in Social tab of Yoast SEO plugin

 

 

You could see a section called Facebook Insights and Admins. If you already have a facebook account with domain insights click ” Add Facebook Admin“.

And those who don’t have access to domain insights (including me), we cannot use this feature, because Facebook domain insights are no longer accepting new domains. Here is a message from Yoast website regarding Facebook Domain Insights.

Facebook Page Insights explained

Next, let’s move on to the Twitter tab.

Twitter settings in Yoast SEO plugin

Here, you can choose your default twitter card type:

  • Summary
  • Summary with large image.

If your blog posts have an attractive featured image, choose Summary with the large image. Else choose Summary. Don’t forget to click “Save Changes”

Next, let’s check the Pinterest settings.

Pinterest settings in Yoast SEO plugin

 

In your Pinterest account, you would have come across website verification, where you would have been provided with a meta tag and asked to place it on your website.

Yoast has just made this work so simple. Just copy and paste the confirmation code and click ” Save Changes”

And the last tab in the Social page is Google+.

Google+ settings in Yoast SEO plugin

If you create a Google+ page for your website, you will have to add it to your website. So that, search engines and other bots will understand that the Google+ page is linked with this website.

Just enter your Google+ page URL and then click “Save Changes“.

XML Sitemaps settings:

Now, let’s explore the XML Sitemaps page.

XML sitemaps in Yoast SEO plugin

XML sitemaps are important for every website. They will let the search engines know the various links present on the website so that these search engines will crawl them.

Yoast makes the work of creating XML sitemaps pretty easy.

You can enable this XML sitemaps functionality on this page.

The advantage of using the Yoast SEO plugin is that the recommended settings are prefilled. So, you need not waste your time with that.

User sitemap settings in XML sitemaps page at Yoast SEO plugin

Under User sitemap, you can enable or disable user sitemaps. I have disabled it for my website. Because I write the majority of posts published at OnlineRockersHub. So, I don’t have the need to enable it right now.

Post types tab in XML sitemaps page at Yoast SEO Plugin

You could notice a tab called, ” Post Types“.   Under this tab, you have the options to select if a particular post type should be available in XML sitemap.

Don’t forget to click “Save Changes“, when you made all these changes.

Also, you have features to exclude particular posts from sitemap under “Exclude Posts” tab.

You can find your website’s sitemap using this link structure:

https://blogheist.com/sitemap_index.xml

Here replace onlinerockershub.com with your domain name.

The ultimate aim of creating a sitemap is to let the search engine know your links. Only, if you submit your sitemap to search engine, it will be aware of your links. So you need to submit this sitemap to Search Engine.

Advanced settings in Yoast SEO plugin:

Breadcrumbs tab under Advanced menu of Yoast SEO plugin

Now, let’s move on to the Advanced menu. Under the Breadcrumbs tab, you could notice that Breadcrumbs is disabled by default.

If you are unaware what are breadcrumbs, take a look at this article to get to know more about breadcrumbs. To use this breadcrumbs feature, check a look at this article:

  • How to implement Yoast SEO breadcrumbs?

Permalinks tab under Advanced Settings in Yoast SEO plugin

Next, move on to the permalinks tab.

  • Strip the category base: By choosing Keep or Remove, you can decide whether you want to have the word category in the category URLs. I have set the option to keep them, as they will help in better site structuring.
  • Redirect Attachment URLs to parent post URL: This one is little important. Whenever you upload an attachment to your website, it will have its own URL. However, when someone uses this URL, they will visit the attachment opened in a new tab. But, this will reduce the possibility of conversions. So, you will have to redirect the attachment URLs to the post, where the image has been attached.

Next, move on the RSS feed tab.

RSS feed tab in advacned settings at Yoast SEO plugin

When you publish the post, you have a lot of possibilities that your content can be stolen by someone and post it on their website. Content can also be stolen through RSS feeds.

That’s why you need to protect your RSS feeds. So, by adding your website link and blog post link, it becomes tough for others to steal your content. Even if someone steals your content, you website link and blog post link will help everyone know that your website has the original content.

Under this RSS feeds tab, just enter the content you wanted to appear before and at the end of the blog post.

And don’t forget to click “Save Changes“.

Tools available at Yoast SEO:

Tools menu at Yoast SEO plugin

 

Now, under the tools menu, you could notice Yoast has few tools:

  • Bulk Editor: Suppose, if you plan to update the SEO titles and meta descriptions for multiple posts on your website, it will be difficult to open each and every article and edit the meta data. By using bulk editor tool, you can edit SEO title and meta descriptions of all your blog posts on a single page.
  • File Editor: This tool will help you edit the robots.txt file and .htaccess file of your website
  • Import and Export: There are so many SEO plugins at WordPress. You might have previously been using different SEO plugin. When you move to Yoast SEO plugin, you can import all those settings easily using this tool. Also, this plugin will help you export your SEO settings to use on another blog.

Search Console Menu:

Search Console menu in Yoast SEO plugin

 

Now, let’s move on to the Search Console menu.

Since we have already linked our site to search console to Search Engine, this menu will display all SEO problems on your website, that are mentioned in Google Search Console.

So, you need not visit Google Search Console every time for looking at SEO issues of your site.

Conclusion:

That’s it. You have now learned to configure Yoast SEO plugin completely. I hope, you would have found this tutorial useful. If you want me to post more tutorials like this, let me know in the comments section.

If you like this tutorial, add this pin to your Pinterest Board.

How to setup Yoast SEO plugin_ - Pinterest Image

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Nirmal Kumar
Nirmal Kumar is a Blogger at BlogHeist. He is inspired by a lot of bloggers all over the world. He blogs on Affiliate Marketing, WordPress Guides, Blogging Tips, Money Making Ideas, etc

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Reader Interactions

26 Comments

  1. Nirmal Kumar says

    May 4, 2019 at 10:33 PM

    Hello Rishab, to make sure all new posts visit your inbox, you can subscribe to my blog.

    Reply
  2. Nirmal Kumar says

    October 6, 2019 at 11:17 PM

    Thank you Sonya 🙂

    Reply
  3. Peteredb says

    March 8, 2020 at 10:45 AM

    Hello, I like your website, could to share a few handy tool for websites which might help?

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      March 24, 2020 at 10:43 AM

      Sure Peter,

      1) For web hosting, I would suggest Cloudways.

      2) For SEO plugin, I would recommend you to go with either Yoast SEO or Rankmath.

      3) For a complete SEO tool, I would recommend SEMRush.

      4) To keep your website’s content quality high and free from grammatical errors, I recommend Grammarly.

      I hope these tools are more than sufficient.

      Reply
  4. David thodo says

    March 16, 2020 at 4:30 AM

    Have you tried Rankmath plugin? I find it easier to use than Yoast SEO plugin.

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      April 6, 2020 at 6:34 PM

      Hey David,

      I have tried the Rankmath plugin. In fact, I am using the Rankmath plugin on my website as of now.

      Reply
  5. Jason says

    March 22, 2020 at 5:41 PM

    Thanks buddy! I guess Yoast SEO is a nice plugin when compared to Rankmath.

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      April 6, 2020 at 6:21 PM

      It is up to you Jason. But Yoast and Rankmath are equally good plugins. I prefer Rankmath on my website for its good user interface.

      Reply
  6. Jagroop Singh says

    April 9, 2020 at 9:24 AM

    Hi Nirmal. I am almost completely new to blogging and what is SEO. I am planning to use WordPress. Is WordPress a good option? should I go with it?

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      April 15, 2020 at 11:41 PM

      Hey Jagroop Singh, WordPress is definitely a good option if you want to start blogging. We have got a lot of tutorials here. You can use them to create your blog. If you have any questions in creating a blog with WordPress, do let us know, we will be glad to help you.

      Reply
  7. Herman George says

    April 20, 2020 at 1:30 PM

    First You got a great blog.I will be interested in more similar topics. You have really very useful topics.

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      May 6, 2020 at 7:45 PM

      That’s so nice to hear, Herman 🙂

      Reply
  8. Maria Den says

    April 24, 2020 at 1:59 PM

    Thank you so much for the guide. I have been messing up with my Yoast SEO settings. Now, I am aware of how to implement it properly.

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 10:14 AM

      Glad to hear that Maria 🙂

      Let me know if you need help with anything else.

      Reply
  9. Ada Ogala Aleyi says

    April 25, 2020 at 7:45 AM

    Thank you for this really good article. I have followed this tutorial for setting up Yoast and now it works like a charm.

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 10:07 AM

      That’s so nice to hear, Ada 🙂

      Reply
  10. Susan theaf says

    April 25, 2020 at 11:03 AM

    These are some excellent basic tips for setting up the Yoast plugin. But, what are some advanced tips for using Yoast SEO plugin?

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 10:06 AM

      Recently, Yoast has come with up Schema Structured Blocks. Use them to add FAQ schema on your website. It is one of the easiest ways to get more clicks to your website.

      Reply
  11. Michal says

    April 25, 2020 at 11:11 AM

    I am considering migrating to the Rankmath plugin. Is it a good idea?

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 10:04 AM

      It is definitely a good idea, Michal. In fact, I am using the RankMath plugin on my website.

      Reply
  12. Dorothy Morgan says

    April 25, 2020 at 3:48 PM

    Thanks for the tutorial. I just found it really useful. And BTW what SEO plugin are you using on your website?

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 10:03 AM

      Hey Dorothy, I am using the Rankmath plugin on my website.

      Reply
  13. Pamela Morris says

    April 25, 2020 at 9:52 PM

    I was using Yoast SEO but then I switched to All in SEO. Is Yoast SEO really better than All in SEO plugin?

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 9:55 AM

      I haven’t tried All in One SEO plugin recently. But, I have tried Yoast SEO plugin and I am confident you can go ahead with Yoast SEO plugin.

      Reply
  14. Hannah Nom says

    April 27, 2020 at 12:10 PM

    I have been using Yoast SEO for the last few years. And I will continue to use the same. Recently, I am coming across RankMath plugin offering all SEO features that are available in Yoast SEO Premium plugin. Let’s wait and see their performance.

    Reply
    • Nirmal Kumar says

      July 3, 2020 at 9:49 AM

      Thanks, Hannah for commenting. I am using RankMath on my website. It is really awesome. And they keep updating the plugin regularly with new features. I am really excited to see their upcoming features.

      Reply

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