Free plug-in Yoast SEO is one of the most popular for websites based on a content management system WordPress. More than 5 million users have downloaded it! Why install it? What is it for and what benefits will it bring to your website? Read about the number one plugin and how it helps you to rank higher in the search results. Here is our guide!
Why do you need Yoast SEO?
WordPress is not perfect. That doesn't change the fact that it rules the internet. It is on this CMS-based 40% of all network resources. However, it would not have been as successful had it not been for the extensive base of more than 55,000 plug-inswhich significantly expand its capabilities. A special place among them is occupied by Yoast SEO, a real booster to help improve the positions of websites in Google.
Why do you need Yoast? Because its functions have a direct impact on SEO. However, it should be noted right from the start that the plugin is not magic. Simply installing and configuring it correctly will not automatically make your pages climb in search results. Don't count on it. The plugin only (and as much as!) facilitates and accelerates optimisation.
What features does Yoast SEO have?
- enables quick and convenient creation (modification) of title tags, meta description and friendly addresses URL
- controls breadcrumbs (crumb navigation)
- generates a site map (sitemap) in XML format
- analyses the SEO content of the website
- tracks keyword frequency
Yoast SEO plug-in - first steps
Installation
You must, of course, start your adventure with Yoast SEO by installing the plugin. There are two ways to do this. The first is to enter the WordPress database (HERE), download the plugin to your computer and then upload it to your site. There is, however easier method. Just log in to your website, in the left-hand menu find the section "Plug-ins" --> "Add new". Next, find Yoast SEO, the fastest way is to use the search bar. Now click "Install". Done! The last thing you need to do is to go to the "Installed plugins" panel and activate (enable) the add-on.
Configuration
Plug-in installed and enabled. Now it's time to move on to the settings. You will find them in the "Installed plugins" panel next to Yoast SEO. They will take you to configuration wizard. There you must provide some important information, including:
- Should the site already be indexed, or is it under construction and should not yet be indexed?
NOTES: If you choose the first option, you will see the following message in the cockpit when the configuration is complete: "Big SEO problem. You are blocking access to search engines". If you have deliberately decided that the site should not be indexed yet, then you do not need to worry about it. However, remember to change this once you have finished working on your site. How? In the left-hand menu, select Settings --> Reading and uncheck the request not to index.
- what type of site is your site? (e.g. blogshop, news portal, company website)
- how many people will contribute content to the website?
- what should the default title settings be? (way of separating the title from the site name)
- links to social media profiles
What's next? Add the sitemap to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the basic, powerful tools for website administrators. Among other things, the platform allows you to check the status of your site's indexing by Google and provides information about problems related to its status.
How do I generate a site map in WordPress?
However, let us start at the beginning. What is site map (a.k.a. site map) referred to in the headline? It is a file which contains all the URLs of a page. What is it created for? For search engine bots that scan the site and index it (collect information about the content and store it in the search engine's database). Adding a map to Google Search Console is to ensure that robots do not miss any important addresses on the pageand the new site can be indexed more quickly. It is worth doing this, even if you own a "small" site that does not have an extensive structure.
WordPress (from version 5.5) automatically creates a site map. You can find it by typing in the search bar xxx.en/wp-sitemap.xml - with xxx being the address of your site. However, this is a somewhat limited version of a site map. With the help of Yoast SEO, you can generate a sitemap. How do you do this? Once the plug-in is installed, select the following from the main menu in WordPress SEO --> Generaland then, in the window that appears, click on the tab "Functions". There we search in the list for "XML Site Map" and click on the sign next to it "?". You will then see the option "View XML sitemap"which we choose.
Adding a map to Search Console
This brings us to the point - how do I add a site map to Google Search Console? You have to enter the site panel in the tool and from the left menu select the tab "Site maps". Then in the field "Add new site map" you need to paste the address of the map and click "Submit". If you have done everything correctly, the uploaded map will be visible in the "Uploaded site maps" list, and its status will be specified as "Success".
Optimise homepage and subpages
You already know that one of Yoast SEO's functions is to generate a site map. However, its primary 'mission' is to optimisation of published content in terms of SEO and readability. When you go to edit any post or sub-page, scroll under the text editing window. This is where you will find the Yoast optimisation window. In it you will find 3 tabs: SEO, Readability, Communities.
SEO - In order to be able to use the full potential of Yoast, you must first of all enter the keyword phrase for which you want to position the added content. Only then will the plug-in analyse the text and show you the areas that need to be improved. Among other things, it will find out whether the content has the right keyword saturationwhether it appears in the header, title, meta description and address of the page. You can also modify these latter elements in this window. Yoast analysis results are presented in colours. Red dots are errors to be corrected, orange dots indicate suggestions and green dots indicate alignment with the plug-in guidelines.
Readability - this tab analyses the text in terms of clarity and accessibility from the reader's point of view. The recommendations you can see here concern:
- sentence lengths
- sentence variations
- paragraph lengths
- active and passive parties
- connecting words
Communities - This tab allows you to prepare posts for sharing on social media from within WordPress and to create individual titles and descriptions for them.
Yoast SEO - the optimisation pillar of your website
As you may have seen for yourself, installing and configuring the Yoast SEO plugin is not complicated. By following the instructions step by step, you are able to activate it yourself and carry out actions that will optimise your content. And optimised content is another rung on the ladder that will take you up the search results. Of course, if you are interested in additional, more advanced tools, you should consider purchasing Yoast SEO Premium. Among other things, it is equipped with functions to improve internal linking on the website. However, there is no denying that when you are just starting out with your website, the basic version and its capabilities are sufficient.
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