How to Install and Setup Yoast SEO Plugin in WordPress

Over the past decade of running WordPress sites, we’ve tested pretty much every SEO plugin out there. Yoast SEO was my go-to choice for years, and it’s still what I recommend to WordPress beginners who want to improve their search rankings without getting overwhelmed.

These days, we use All in One SEO here on WPBeginner because it offers more advanced features. But with over 5 million active installations, Yoast SEO remains one of the most trusted ways to optimize your WordPress site for search engines.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through exactly how to install and set up Yoast SEO the right way. We’ve helped countless WordPress users with this process, and we’ve broken everything down into simple steps that anyone can follow – even if you’re completely new to SEO.

What is Yoast SEO and What Are its Features?

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins, with many built-in tools and features. Here is a quick overview of some of those features:

• Change the post’s SEO title and meta description on a per-post basis.
• Title and meta description support for taxonomies, such as categories and tags.
• Google search result snippet previews.
• Focus keyword testing.
• Meta robots configuration:
  • Easily add noodp and nodir meta tags.
  • Easily noindex or nofollow pages, taxonomies, or archives.
• RSS footer/header configuration.
• Breadcrumbs support, with configurable breadcrumbs titles.
• Advanced XML sitemaps.
• The.htaccess and robots.txt editors.
• Ability to verify Google Search Console, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Schema markup support.

The premium version of Yoast SEO comes with even more features.

It includes a redirect manager for easily setting up redirects, the ability to use multiple focus keywords, and internal linking suggestions to improve site navigation.

You can also export focus keywords for analysis, access video tutorials that explain various features, and enjoy priority support for any issues or questions you may have.

For the plugin’s pros and cons and detailed analysis, you may want to see our comparison of Yoast SEO vs. All in One SEO.

How to Install the Yoast SEO Plugin

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll notice a new menu item labeled Yoast SEO.

Upon clicking on it, you’ll be prompted to run the ‘First-time configuration’ wizard.

Simply click on the link to run the first-time configuration wizard.

How to Set Up the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast

Yoast SEO comes with a basic setup wizard that will guide you through the initial setup.

If you are setting it up on a new WordPress website, then you can skip Step 1 and directly run Step 2 in the first-time configuration wizard.

However, if you are setting up Yoast SEO on an existing website where you have previously used some other WordPress SEO plugin, then you need to import your existing SEO data first.

In the following sections, we’ll share the instructions on how to set up Yoast SEO. Here’s a quick overview of all the steps we’ll cover:

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Importing Your SEO Data

You can skip this step if you are setting up Yoast SEO on a new WordPress website or blog.

Other users who are installing the plugin on an existing website may have been using some other WordPress plugin for SEO, like All in One SEO for WordPress, RankMath, or a theme framework like Genesis to deal with their SEO data.

If you want to use Yoast SEO properly, then you need to make sure that all of your previous SEO data has been transported across before you deactivate the other plugin.

Luckily, Yoast SEO comes with a built-in SEO data import/export functionality.

Head over to the Yoast SEO » Tools page and click on the ‘Import and Export’ link.

This will bring you to the import/export tool.

From here, you need to switch to the ‘Import from other SEO plugins’ tab.

First, you will be advised to create a full database backup. We recommend using the Duplicator plugin, which is the quickest way to do this.

Under ‘Step 2: Import’, you’ll want to choose the SEO plugin you used before from the dropdown menu.

After that, just click on the ‘Import’ button to fetch SEO data.

Next, you can edit a blog post or page and scroll down to the Yoast SEO section. There, you can see if the plugin correctly imported SEO data, such as the SEO title and meta description.

If everything looks good, then you can switch back to the ‘Import’ tab.

Step 4 will ask you to run the first-time configuration wizard now. We will show you how to do this in the next step of this tutorial.

After that, you can switch back again to the ‘Import’ tab.

You’ll need to select your previous SEO plugin under ‘Step 5: Clean up’ and then click the ‘Clean up’ button.

This will clean up the database and delete the old plugin’s data. After that, you can safely deactivate and delete your old SEO plugin.

Step 2: Running the First-Time Configuration Wizard

Yoast SEO comes with a first-time configuration wizard. To run it, let’s go to the Yoast SEO » General page and switch to the ‘First-time configuration’ tab.

Launching the configuration wizard will allow you to set up some basic SEO settings for your website.

The first step in the wizard is ‘SEO Data Optimization.’ Go ahead and click the ‘Start SEO data optimization’ button to run the analysis.

Don’t worry, because the optimization process will not change any content on your website.

Once the data optimization process is finished, simply click the ‘Continue’ button to proceed.

Next, you will be asked to provide information about your website. This includes whether it is an organization or a person, your website name, organization name, and organization logo.

After entering this information, you need to click the ‘Save and continue’ button.

This will bring you to the next step.

Here, you’ll need to enter social profiles associated with the organization or business behind the website.

After entering your social profiles, you can click the ‘Save and continue’ button.

Next, you will be asked to enter your email address for the weekly Yoast SEO newsletter.

You will also be asked to opt in or out of usage data tracking.

You can select ‘No’ if you are uncomfortable sharing your usage data with the company behind Yoast SEO.

Now, go ahead and click on ‘Save and continue.’

That’s all. You have successfully run the setup wizard.

Next, we will walk you through the rest of the plugin settings. This will help you set up the plugin properly for optimal SEO benefits.

Step 3: Configuring the Yoast SEO Settings – Site Basics

First, you need to set up basic SEO appearance settings.

To do this, you’ll want to go to the Yoast SEO » Settings page and switch to the ‘Site Basics’ tab.

Here, you can change your site title, add an alternate title (optional), provide a tagline, and choose a title separator.

The title separator appears in the browser’s title bar. You can choose any of them, but the dash symbol is the most commonly used.

Below, you can provide a site image. The recommended size for this image is 1200 x 674 pixels.

This image will be used when your website is shared on the internet (not the individual articles, as they can have their own social sharing images).

Under ‘Site preferences,’ let’s make sure that the option next to ‘Restrict advanced settings for authors’ is turned on.

This ensures that authors cannot set up redirects or block search engines when working on an article (editors and site administrators can still access those options).

Don’t forget to save your changes when you have finished making changes.

Step 4: Making Site Connections to Search Engines

The next step is to add your website to search engines. All top search engines allow users to submit their websites and track their search indexing and performance.

For more details, see our complete Google Search Console guide to learn more about these tools.

Yoast SEO makes verifying your website with all top search engines easy.

First, you need to sign up for the Webmaster Tools program for each search engine. After that, you will be asked to add a meta tag to verify your website ownership.

Now, you’ll want to head over to Yoast SEO » Settings.

Then, in the ‘General’ section, you can open the ‘Site Connections’ panel.

Simply add the meta code you received from the different search engines in the respective fields, and don’t forget to save your changes.

Step 5: Setting Up Content Types Display for Search Results

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Content types’ tab in the Yoast SEO settings.

From here, you can set the default options for how different content types will appear in search results.

1. Homepage

First, you need to enter an SEO title and description for your home page.

If you are using a custom homepage in WordPress, then Yoast SEO will use the SEO title and description from the custom homepage.

Below that, you can provide a social media image. Optionally, you can also provide a separate description and title for social sharing.

2. Posts

Next, switch to the ‘Posts’ tab under ‘Content types.’

From here, you’ll want to make sure that the toggle next to the ‘Show posts in search results’ option is turned on.

Below that, you can use variables to set a default format for SEO titles in your posts. This comes in handy if you have older posts without an SEO title or forget to manually write an SEO title for a post.

In the ‘Meta description’ field, you should add %excerpt as the default variable.

3. Pages

After that, you can switch to the ‘Pages’ tab and ensure that the toggle next to the ‘Show pages in search results’ option is turned on.

Then, you can scroll down and use the ‘Insert variable’ button to set up a default SEO title scheme for your pages.

In the meta description field, you will need to use %excerpt to select ‘Excerpt’ as the default meta description.

Step 6: Adjusting Category & Tag Search Settings

Next, you need to configure the default search appearance option for categories and tags.

So, let’s switch to the ‘Categories’ tab and then make sure the option ‘Show categories in search results’ is turned on.

Below that, you need to provide a default meta title for your categories using the variables.

For the meta description, you can use %category description as the default meta description for categories.

Next up, you’ll switch to the ‘Tags’ tab and repeat the same steps.

For the meta description, you’ll want to use %tag description as the default meta description for categories.

Step 7: Fine-Tuning the Advanced Settings

This part of the Yoast SEO settings offers advanced, technical SEO features.

They allow you to further optimize your website by cleaning up unwanted options and making it easier for search engines to crawl more of your content.

1. Crawl Optimization

As a website owner, you want Google to crawl more of your pages. However, WordPress generates several pages and RSS feeds that are not important for your website but consume a lot of the crawl budget.

Crawl optimization allows you to fix that. For more details on this topic, you can see our guide on fixing the SEO crawl budget issue in WordPress.

The first option is to ‘Remove unwanted metadata.’ This refers to data WordPress adds to each page on your site, and search engines crawl some of it.

The plugin provides a description next to each option. You can turn the toggle on to remove each item.

After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Disable unwanted content formats’ section.

From here, you can disable unwanted RSS feeds generated by WordPress.

Lastly, you can disable unused resources, such as the emoji script, which is only used by very old browsers.

You can also disallow end-points for the WP-JSON API.

2. Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are great for internal linking because they define a clear path or trail to the page you are on.

These breadcrumbs also appear in search results, giving your site an extra advantage. Here’s an example:

The default settings for Yoast SEO are highly optimized and should work for most websites.

However, if you want to change something, then go ahead and make your changes.

Next, you’ll want to scroll down to the ‘How to insert breadcrumbs in your theme’ section.

Here, you can turn on the toggle next to ‘Enable breadcrumbs for your theme.’

3. Author Archives

The next option in the ‘Advanced Settings’ is ‘Author archives.’

If you run a single-author blog, then you need to disable the author archives. This is important because your blog and author archives will have the same content.

So, if ou don’t disable these archives, search engines may penalize your website for duplicate or low-quality content.

4. Date Archives

WordPress also creates archives based on dates. This may create more duplicate content issues.

Under ‘Date archives,’ you can turn off the switch next to the ‘Enable date archives’ option. This will disable those archives, improve the crawl budget, and avoid duplicate content.

5. Format Archives

Post formats are WordPress theme features that allow developers to add support for different formats. A post type can then use these for styling and appearance purposes.

However, this feature didn’t catch on, and many modern WordPress themes don’t add post format support.

These post formats have separate URLs in WordPress, which search engines can crawl.

You can safely disable those URLs by going to the Advanced » Format Archives tab.

6. Special Pages

Next up, you’ll want to take a look at the ‘Special pages’ tab.

This is where you can provide an SEO title for the internal pages, like the WordPress search result page or the 404 error page.

7. Media Pages

WordPress creates an attachment page when you upload an image or media file to a post or page.

This page only displays that particular image or media file with little to no information. It wastes your crawl budget, adds low-content pages to your site, and negatively impacts SEO.

So, you might need to disable these pages. To do this, you can navigate to the Advanced » Media Pages tab.

When you disable media pages, Yoast SEO automatically redirects users to the media file instead of the attachment page.

8. RSS

Yoast SEO allows you to add content to RSS feed items. By default, it adds a link to your website at the end of each RSS feed item.

You can leave it as is or add anything you want, and it will appear in your RSS feed.

Step 8: Exploring Advanced Task Settings in Tools

Yoast SEO comes with built-in tools that allow you to perform advanced tasks. Most beginners may not need to use these tools. However, we will show you each tool and what it does.

First, you need to go to Yoast SEO » Tools to see the available tools.

1. Import and Export

We have shown you how to use this tool to import SEO data from other SEO plugins in step 1 of this guide.

However, this tool can also be used in other ways. For instance, you can import and export the Yoast SEO plugin’s settings and use them on a different WordPress blog or website.

2. File editor

As your WordPress site grows, you may often come across tutorials asking you to add some code to your website’s .htaccess file or robots.txt file.

Both are configuration files and have a huge impact on your website’s SEO. Yoast SEO allows you to edit both files directly from the WordPress admin area.

3. Bulk editor

The bulk editor tool in Yoast SEO allows you to quickly add SEO titles and descriptions for all your blog posts and pages.

In the ‘Title’ tab, you will find a blank field in the ‘New Yoast SEO Title’ column where you can add your new SEO title for that blog post.

After that, go ahead and click on the ‘Save’ link to store your changes.

To add descriptions, you must switch to the ‘Description’ tab.

Once again, you can add a description for each blog post or page and save it.

Step 9: Integrating Yoast SEO With Third-Party Platforms

Yoast SEO has partnered up with a couple of premium SEO platforms to provide more features. It includes two free integrations: Semrush and Wincher.

These integrations are turned on by default on the Yoast SEO » Integrations page.

Keep in mind that you will need to create free accounts for both services to use them, and you will only get limited features with a free account.

Below that, you will find integrations with other premium WordPress plugins.

For instance, if you are using Easy Digital Downloads, then you can unlock that integration by upgrading to Yoast SEO Premium.

Step 10: Optimizing Your Posts and Pages With Yoast SEO

Just installing and setting up this plugin is not enough. To maximize the benefits of Yoast SEO, you will need to customize the settings per post.

Let’s look at maximizing the benefits by optimizing each post/page in WordPress.

Simply edit any post or page, and you will notice a new Yoast SEO meta box below the post editor.

You can start by adding a ‘Focus keyphrase’ or keyword. This is the main keyword that you think your users will type into search engines to find this post.

After that, Yoast SEO will check your post content for SEO and a readability analysis. You can view the analysis to improve your article further.

Sometimes, your post title and your SEO title might not be the same. Every time, you should write a custom SEO description because the excerpt generator only picks up the first paragraph, which might not be the most important one.

Step 11: Optimizing Taxonomies for SEO (Categories and Tags)

Just like your post and pages, you can also override the SEO title and meta descriptions for category, tag, and author archive pages.

Simply navigate to Posts » Categories and click the ‘Edit’ link below any category.

On the category edit page, scroll down to the bottom, and you will see the Yoast SEO meta box.

From here, you can provide an SEO title and meta description for your category.

You can do that for all your categories, tags, and custom taxonomy archives.

Step 12: Optimizing eCommerce Products

Yoast SEO provides basic support for online stores and eCommerce websites using WooCommerce.

This allows you to optimize your product pages, just like blog posts and pages.

You will find all eCommerce SEO options when adding a new product to your website. You can also edit and optimize an old product by entering a focus keyword, SEO title, SEO description, and more.

If you are using WooCommerce, then you will need to purchase the Yoast WooCommerce SEO add-on for extended eCommerce features.

Step 13: Monitoring and Tracking SEO Performance

Now that you have successfully set up Yoast SEO, it is important to start tracking your performance.

First, you need to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

This shows you how your website is doing in search, which keywords you are ranking for, and which pages are not doing so well.

Next, you need to install Google Analytics in WordPress so that you can see your website data from your WordPress dashboard.

The easiest way to do this is by using MonsterInsights. It connects your WordPress site to Google Analytics and shows you how much traffic you are getting, as well as what your users do when they are on your website.

Most importantly, it shows Google Analytics reports inside WordPress in a more user-friendly, intuitive format.

This helps you understand your target audience and make smart decisions to grow your business and improve SEO.

That’s all there is to it!

Yoast SEO is a great WordPress SEO plugin. However, it lacks certain features that could truly help you improve your SEO.

That’s why we recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress instead. We use it on all our brand websites, including WPBeginner. It comes packed with features, including a link assistant, SEO statistics, advanced XML sitemaps, and more.

For more details, you can take a look at our detailed All in One SEO review with pros and cons. You may also be interested in our post about why we switched from Yoast to AIOSEO.

We hope this article helped you set up Yoast SEO properly. You may also want to see our guide on whether premium WordPress SEO plugins are worth it, or see our expert picks of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.

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