Do you want to properly install and set up Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress?
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins on the market and offers a comprehensive set of features to optimize your website.
However, many beginners are not familiar with the SEO lingo and find it difficult to decide which plugin options they should turn on.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the complete Yoast SEO plugin set up in WordPress and give your website an SEO boost.
Note: We have switched from using Yoast SEO to All in One SEO for WPBeginner website because it has far more powerful features. AIOSEO is used by over 3 million websites, and you can follow our guide on how to install and setup AIOSEO for more details.
Features
Yoast SEO is the most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin with many built-in tools and features. Here is a quick overview of some of those features.
- Change post’s SEO title and meta description on a per post basis.
- Title and meta description support for taxonomies (e.g. category and tags).
- Google search result snippet previews.
- Focus keyword testing.
- Meta Robots configuration:
- Easily add noodp, noydir meta tags.
- Easily noindex, or nofollow pages, taxonomies or entire archives.
- Improved canonical support, adding canonical to taxonomy archives, single posts and pages and the front page.
- RSS footer / header configuration.
- Permalink clean ups, while still allowing for Google Custom Search.
- Breadcrumbs support, with configurable breadcrumbs titles.
- XML Sitemaps with:
- Images
- Configurable removal of post types and taxonomies
- Pages or posts that have been noindexed will not show in XML sitemap (but can if you want them too).
- XML News Sitemaps
- .htaccess and robots.txt editor
- Ability to verify Google Search Console, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Tools
- Basic import functionality for Platinum SEO Pack and All in One SEO plugins. (You can also use the SEO Data Transporter to transfer functionality from themes like Genesis child themes).
The premium version of the Yoast SEO comes with even more features.
- A redirect manager that allows you to easily set up redirects.
- Ability to use multiple focus keywords
- Internal linking suggestions
- Ability to export focus keywords
- Video tutorials to help you understand each feature of the plugin.
- Premium support provided by the folks at Yoast to help you make the most out of your site’s SEO.
For more features and details you may want to see our comparison of Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack.
How to Install Yoast SEO Plugin
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 in the WordPress admin bar labeled SEO with the Yoast SEO logo on it.
Now that you have installed and activated the plugin, let’s take a look at how to properly setup this powerful plugin.
How to Setup WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
You should remember, that the settings that we select are the ones that we recommend. Other experts may have their own preferences and discretion, so advanced users can ignore anything that they do not like.
If you are a beginner, and you want to use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin as we do, then please follow along with the steps carefully.
Step 1. Import your SEO Data
If you are setting up Yoast SEO on a new WordPress website or blog, then you can skip this step.
Other users, who are installing it on an existing website may have been using some other WordPress plugin for SEO like All in One SEO for WordPress, or a theme framework like Genesis dealing with your SEO data.
If you want to successfully use this plugin, then you need to make sure that all of your previous data has been transported to this plugin before you deactivate the other one.
To accomplish this, we recommend using SEO Data Transporter plugin. It allows you to easily transport your SEO data between popular SEO plugins.
Step 2. General Settings
Clicking on the SEO icon takes you to the settings page for the plugin. Switch to the ‘General’ tab and you will notice a button to open the configuration wizard. We want you to ignore this wizard, because we will be taking you step by step through each option.
Step 3. Features
Yoast SEO comes with a lot of features. This page allows you to easily turn those features on and off. By default, all options on this page are turned on.
We’ll talk about some of them later in this article. For now, let’s take a quick look at each item and what it does.
- SEO analysis : Shows the SEO score and analysis for your content.
- Readability analysis : Shows the readabity analysis and score for your content.
- Cornerstone content : This feature allows you to mark and filter cornner stone content. These are your most important pillar articles.
- Text link counter : This feature shows the number of internal text links to and from and article.
- XML sitemaps : Creates XML sitemaps for your website.
- Admin bar menu : Shows Yoast SEO menu in the WordPress admin toolbar.
- Security: no advanced settings for authors : Hides advanced SEO settings from authors to improve security.
- Usage tacking : Allows plugin author to track some usage data. It is turned off by default.
- REST API: Head endpoint : This Yoast SEO REST API end point allows you or anyone else to fetch SEO data for specific WordPress post or page. We recommend that you turn this feature off if you are not building a headless WordPress site.
- Enhanced Slack sharing : This feature adds an author byline and reading time estimate to the article’s snippet when shared on Slack.
Don’t forget to click on the Save changes button to store your settings.
Step 4. Integrations
Yoast SEO offers built-in integration for SEMRush and Ryte platforms.
SEMRush is one of the best SEO tools on the market. This integration helps you find related keywords that match your focus keyword and then improve your content accordingly.
Ryte is an online tool that checks your website for indexibility and alerts you in Site Health report when it is not indexable by search engines.
We recommend leaving them both on.
Step 5. Webmaster Tools
Popular search engines allow site owners to add their sites using webmaster’s tools area. See our complete Google Search Console guide to learn more about these tools.
Yoast SEO makes it easier to verify your website with all top search engines. In order to do that you need to sign up for webmaster tools program for each search engine.
After that, you’ll be asked to add a meta tag to verify your ownership of the website. Simply add the meta code that you received from the search engines in the respective fields.
Step 6. Search Appearance
Search Appearance in Yoast SEO settings controls how your website appears in search results. This includes several options for your homepage, single articles, archives, and taxonomies.
We’ll walk you through each one of them. Let’s start with the general settings first,
1. General
Here you can choose the symbol you want to use a separator between titles. The default option is a dash, you can use it if you are unsure which symbol to choose.
On this page, you can also choose the SEO title and meta description for your website’s homepage.
Note: If you are using a static home page, then you can set the homepage title and description by editing the page individually.
After that, you will find the knowledge graph and schema options for your website. You can choose whether your website represents an organization or an individual.
You can also upload a profileo picture for the individual or a website logo for a business.
2. Content Types
You can choose an SEO title and description for each post or page that you write. Yoast SEO also allows you to set up an automatic template to use for them.
In case you forget to add them manually, these options will allow Yoast SEO to use default settings to automatically fill in those options.
You will be able to set search appearance and whether or not to show SEO meta box for each content type. The default options would work for all websites.
After that, you can set SEO title template and a default meta description.
However, we recommend you only tweak the SEO title and leave the meta description field blank. This would allow Yoast SEO to dynamically generate a description from the first few lines of your article.
3. Media
By default, WordPress creates a new page for each image or media you attach to your posts and pages. This page only displays the attachment media.
Those attachment pages have no significant text to provide search engines a context. Such pages are considered low-quality content by search engines and have a negative SEO impact.
Yoast SEO helps you fix that by redirecting users to the attachment file instead of the attachment page. This option is set to ‘Yes’ by default and you don’t need to change it.
4. Taxonomies
On the taxonomies tab, you can configure titles and meta for categories, tags, custom taxonomies, and post format archives.
Default template variables should work for most sites. As for descriptions, please remember that Yoast SEO picks up descriptions from your categories and tags.
5. Archives
The Archives tab allows you to control search appearance options for miscellaneous archive pages on your website. This includes author, date, search, and 404 pages.
The default options will work for most websites. However, if you run a single author blog, then you need to disable author archive pages from search engines.
On a single author blog, the author archive pages are exactly like the date archive or your blog pages. This creates duplicate content which affects your SEO rankings.
6. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are great for internal linking because it defines a clear path or trail to the page you are on. These breadcrumbs also appear in search results giving your site an extra advantage in the search.
The default settings should work for most websites, but if you want to change something then go ahead and make your changes.
Make sure you set the option to ‘Enabled’ to make it visible with your WordPress theme.
If you want more robust breadcrumb features, then take a look at All in One SEO’s Breadcrumbs feature. You’ll get full control of how your breadcrumbs are displayed and you can create custom breadcrumb templates for your specific needs.
Read this tutorial to learn how to display breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress.
7. RSS
RSS Feeds are often used by content scrapers to copy content from your website. Yoast SEO allows you to add a backlink to your own site for each post in your RSS feed.
This way, you will get backlinks from their site, and Google will know that you are the original source.
There are options to add your author link, Post link, blog link, and blog description. So get creative. This can also be used to add advertisements to your RSS feed.
Step 7. Social
As we said earlier, Yoast SEO is a powerhouse packed with many features to provide comprehensive optimization.
One great feature of the plugin is that it integrates your site with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other platforms.
Clicking on the Social link under the SEO menu will take you to set up these platforms. We will show you how to configure each of them.
1. Accounts
The first tab under the social settings is for all your social accounts. This allows Yoast SEO to tell Google about your social profiles. You need to simply add the URLs and Twitter username for the main social profiles of your site.
2. Facebook
You need to make sure that open graph metadata option is enabled under the Facebook tab. It allows Yoast SEO to add Facebook open graph metadata in your website’s <head> section.
You can set the image you want to use for your homepage.
This will help Facebook pick up the right thumbnail and page information when a post from your website is shared on Facebook.
Below that, you will can add a title and description for your homepage. This title and description will be used when your homepage is shared on Facebook.
Additionally, you can provide a default thumbnail image URL. This image will be used for all articles that do not have a thumbnail or any other image.
3. Twitter
As for Twitter, you can add Twitter cards into your site’s head section.
You can also choose the card type to use. We recommend using summary with large image.
4. Pinterest
Pinterest uses Open Graph meta data just like Facebook. Make sure that you have open graph meta data box checked under Facebook settings.
After that, you just need to enter the site verification code provided by Pinterest. Simply visit your Pinterest account settings to add and verify your site. You will be provided with a meta tag that you need to enter here.
Step 8. Tools
Yoast SEO comes with some built-in tools that allow you to perform some advanced tasks. Most beginners may not need to use these tools. However, we will show you each tool and what it does.
1. Import and Export
If you previously used another WordPress SEO plugin or a theme with built-in SEO functions, then you can use this tool to import SEO data.
You can also use it to import and export Yoast SEO plugin’s settings and use them on a different WordPress site.
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 of them are configuration files and have a huge impact on your website’s SEO. Yoast SEO allows you to easily 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 title and description for all your blog posts and pages.
Under the Titles tab, you will find a blank field to add your new SEO title for that blog post. After that click on Save link to store your changes.
To add descriptions, you will need to switch to the descriptions tab. Once again, you will be able to add a description for each blog post or page and save it.
Step 9. Redirects Manager (Premium)
Yoast SEO Premium adds a powerful redirect manager. This allows you to quickly set up redirects on your WordPress site.
Using the redirect manager you can quickly fix 404 errors, redirect users from an old article to a new one, and more.
You can also use a dedicated redirect manager like Redirection to manage your redirects. This allows you to keep redirects working even if you stop using Yoast SEO.
For more powerful redirect features, check out All in One SEO’s Redirection Manager. It lets you automatically redirect users to your new content whenever you delete or change a URL. There’s also a built-in redirect checker to make sure your redirects are working properly.
For more information, see our guide on how to set up redirects in WordPress.
Step 10. Optimizing Your Posts and Pages with Yoast SEO
Just installing and setting up this plugin is not enough. In order for you to really maximize the benefit of this plugin, you need to customize the settings on per post basis.
Let’s take a look at how you can maximize the benefits by optimizing each post/page in WordPress.
Simply edit any post or page and you’ll notice a new Yoast SEO metabox below the post editor.
You can start by adding a focus keyphrase or keyword. This is the main keyword, which you think your users will enter in search engines to find this post.
After that, Yoast SEO will check your post content for SEO and Readability analysis. You can view the analysis to further improve your article.
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.
Pro Tip: SEO and readability analysis report in Yoast SEO is quite accurate and immensely helpful in improving your content. However, don’t kill yourself over it or you will be spending more time following the analysis instead of creating better content for your users.
To learn more about on-page optimization, see our article on how to optimize blog posts for SEO.
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 visit Posts » Categories page and click on 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.
You can do that for all your categories, tags, and custom taxonomy archives.
Step 12. Optimizing Ecommerce Products
Yoast SEO comes with full support for online stores and eCommerce websites using WooCommerce. This allows you to optimize your product pages just like you would optimize blog posts and pages.
You’ll find all eCommerce SEO options when adding a new product to your website. You can also edit any old product and optimize it by entering a focus keyword, SEO title, SEO description and more,
For more details, see our complete WooCommerce SEO guide with step by step instructions.
We hope this guide helped you install and setup the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners, and our comparison of best keyword research tools.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Syed Balkhi says
Hey WPBeginner readers,
Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes.
You can get more details about the contest from here.
Start sharing your thoughts below to stand a chance to win!
WPBeginner Staff says
No you don’t.
Yongshuo Wang says
Very helpful article, I have one question, I linked the XML sitemap to Google webmaster. Do I need to resubmit xml file in Google webmaster once there is new post ?
Ted Lienhart says
This is the best guide to setting up a WP plug-in that I have yet seen. Thanks so much!
Shamim Gypsy says
Is there any problem, If I set google analytic or webmaster tool with two email address? Because My boss has set google webmaster with his email address, but now I install Yoast SEO tool and I want to set an analytic. Is there any problem, If I do that ?
pramod baviskar says
nice post.
my question is breadcrumbs really help in seo and there are tag/categories and had noindex status?
Bryan Richards says
Awesome resource! I do have a question though. I followed the steps to adding Breadcrumbs and they don’t show up. Do I need to also plug in the code mentioned on that screen? If so, where? Thanks!
kristl says
I’ve followed your tutorial and Yoast is up & running on my site. Quick question…is there a quick and easy way to add a focus keyword, or do I have to manually go through 1100+ posts?
Tennille says
Thanks so much for writing this up, it was very helpful for a blogging newbi like me! I was totally lost on the back end of this plugin but you helped get me straightened out!
nicole says
This was very helpful! thank you so much!
Amit Tripathi says
Thank you so much for this important information really its very imp for wp users
WPBeginner Staff says
Deactivate WordPress SEO and Then Reactivate the plugin. See how to fix WordPress SEO Sitemap 404 Error
MArika says
Hello, I’ve used the plugin and now just created and added site map to my webmaster tools on google. It created 4 site maps where 3 out of them giving errors
Missing XML tag
This required tag is missing. Please add it and resubmit.
I’m not sure what to do here?
Thank you
Keith Davis says
As ever you guys have the best info available.
I’ve started to notice that most of the sites ranking above me are using Yoast SEO so if you can’t beat them..
Thanks for a great step by step setuip guide.
Don Ninh says
WordPress SEO does a good job with SEO, but is a little slim on its support for Open Graph and Twitter Cards.
Tony Paull says
Hi there
Very helpful article. I have one question. I am trying to verify my site through the XML sitemap section but when I click on the sitemap button I get a Error 404 – page not found. This appears on the home page of the web site.
Any ideas as to what is causing this problem? Many thanks.
Laila says
You will find answer here.
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-yoasts-wordpress-seo-sitemap-404-error/
WPBeginner Staff says
You only need to use % sign once like this:
/%category%/%postname%
hassan1488 says
ok thanks i can use %title% ? thanks
hassan1488 says
Hello thanks for this article
can you help me to configur my seo plugin?
i have wordpress premalien like this /%category%/%postname%/
and i configured my plugin like this :
article and page title : %%title%%
taxonomies title : %%term_title%%
auder : %%name%%
and a was used all in one seo
is this right??
Frederick Owen says
Thank you so much for writing this, you guys rock. SEO is one of the biggest headaches in the world and your help rocks!
Edmond says
Hi,
Thanks for the helpful article. I’ve one question though. On my main website so far I have been using the All In One SEO Pack and I’m thinking of changing it with the Yoast plugin. I used to run meta keywords for the All In One SEO Pack and the Yoast plugin recommends using focus keyword. I wonder what changes I should make now after the transport. When I check out my old articles, I see none of them has keywords now with the new plugin. I have more than 2500 posts published and I wonder what solution could there be (I just an’t imagine going back and changing the keywords for each post).
Thanks a lot in advance for your reply!
WPBeginner Support says
Edmond you can use SEO Data Importer plugin.
Admin
Edmond says
Thanks a lot for the reply.
I have one more question please. What do you recommend, shall I go back to the old posts and add focus keywords for them too, or there is no point? The matter is that my old posts show only meta keywords now and they have no focus keywords set.
Thanks
Correen says
Ahh! Accomplished a biggie today on my website by installing Yoast SEO and ticking through the steps to setting it up via this post. Thank you…again (and again :)) WPBeginner.
Karan Singh says
before reading your article, i am using ALL IN ONE SEO plugin but, now its time to change it into yoast plugin. I Hope it will help me to make more money.
Phil says
Hi great article, could you confirm i am doing correctly, when i search on google for my site the snippet preview is wrong, when i go into my sites homepage( via wordpress) click home page the snippet preview is correct, so when i type in a search for my site /home it displays correctly.
Any ideas?
WPBeginner Support says
Phil, Yes seems like you are doing it correct. Google generates snippets dynamically depending on the user query and positioning of keywords in your articles. So the snippet shown in actual search results on Google could be way different than what you see snippet preview tools.
Admin
Jagdish Kashyap says
Thanks..!!
This is really helpful for me
dimitris says
Hi. I setup the plugin as you said but i have problem with the RSS. It writes the name of the page twice.
Ashutosh says
Wow man, great article. I was using All in One SEO for long time and this time I decided to use Yoast plugin. In order to understand it i searched and found your article. Detailed explanation i must say. Kudos to you. and Thanks for explaining it so wisely.
Mirza Arsal says
I have problem with my website ( http://www.enstructive.com ) meta description. I have recently added meta description in WordPress SEO plugin. But i have checked my website through some meta tag analyzer, they says that your website is missing meta description. Kindly suggest me whats the problem. Or should i add meta description manually?
Advance thanks and appreciation for help.
E.S. Ivy says
This was exactly what I needed. I was attempting to go through Yoast’s own post on this and I was totally lost.
I especially loved the statement “…but we will not cover that. Most beginners or even intermediates should not get close to that section.” I need to know what not to touch and mess up!
Thank you!
Bogdan I says
Thanks for the tutorial.
It’s very good.
Andrew says
Hi and thanks for the great guide!
I had a question that I hope you don’t mind me asking.
When I click on an author’s name, it’s going to a 404 page. Is this something affected by SEO?
As an example: http://talkingbit.com/author/andrew-shemo/
I would of thought it showed all posts authored by me, Andrew Shemo…
WPBeginner Support says
Yes it is supposed to display posts written by that particular author. Here are some tips on troubleshooting this issue.
1. If you have WordPress SEO plugin installed and activated go to Seo » Titles & Metas and click on the Others tab. Uncheck the box ‘Disable Author Archives’ if it is checked. Check your site to see if every thing is working fine?
2. Update your permalinks.
Admin
Tina says
Hey guys love this and all the other wonderful posts. I have a question though.
I read that the no-index subpages and the force rewrite under titles & metas should be checked and you guys say no. I’m just wondering why the difference and how do I figure out which to do? I’m doing an informal site on weight loss if this helps
Please keep posting all the wonderful informative post. You guys rock!!!
Kailash says
Thank you.. Useful settings
DHRUV says
Hey i have been working the same instructions but still my website is not visible on even 10th page ,please help
WPBeginner Support says
Dhruv WordPress SEO plugin does not guarantee to land your site in the top results. Search engines have their own algorithms to determine which pages they will display in their top results. If you have unique content that offers value to the users and if you build authority by regularly creating great content and spread it around social media. Then you will start noticing improvement in your site’s position in search results. This might take some time, but you will get there.
Admin
Adrian Tawfik says
Thanks for the update on this post! I have some work to do. Yoast is amazing and I really recommend their website review. Check out my website and let me know if you think it is setup right:
anand om sharma says
thanks for writing this post. this post clarify my doubts about various plugins of seo. thanks alot again
Ahmed says
Thank you very much for the useful information, but I don`t understand when editing under Focus Keyword:(Led Light Bulbs) I get red for the URL even though the keyword is in the URL. How do I correct this please?
I look forward to your answer.
Thank you again
kishor says
Did u face any problem regarding focus keyword??. whenever i tried to put focused keywords,its shows some result and circle is moving round.any it shows that focused keyword not found in meta,content and page Url,even it was ..i mean that that circle never stooped.Is it prob because of my other plugin ?focused keyword not found ..please replay
Bonny says
I just have a question. I just switched from blogger to wordpress and I was just wondering if you should only have one SEO Plugin?
WPBeginner Support says
Yes, other wise there could be plugin conflicts
Admin
ravinder singh says
Thanks, A very useful information .
Vivek Moyal says
I am using the genesis child theme and i dont find that where i have to use the breadcrump by yoast. I am using the genesis breadcrump now. But i want to use the yoast for this. How i can use it over my blog. You can check it here and plz let me know. When i open the editor for page and post i see only a function genesis().
WPBeginner Support says
You can ask in the Genesis support forums or WordPress SEO support forum.
Admin
Nishant Thakur says
Best tutorial website over the internet so far for WordPress and it’s plugin.Keep up the good work guys,You Rock!
Pamela Hopkinson says
I have just noticed that on the advanced tab in the Yoast plug in it now asks for a Breadcrumb title.
Do I need to complete this? Or will the system automatically use the default settings I used when going through your guide?
Also, as a jobsite http://www.jobsinfoodmanufacturing.co.uk posts / jobs expire on a daily basis, should I go in to the advanced tab and enter our home page url into the 301 redirect field? The posts that have expired are sent to the trash on a very regular basis so I am not sure if the 301 redirect field is required – we are currently setting up a 404 Error message page that will again direct individuals to the Home Page.
Hope the above makes sense,…….this is all very new to me!
Thanks
WPBeginner Support says
If breadcrumbs are working fine on your site then you don’t need to update those settings. A 404 error page will result as an error in your Google site crawl. A regular number of pages appearing as 404 could affect your site’s SEO in the long run.
Admin
Pamela Hopkinson says
How can I find out if the breadcrums are working okay?
Also due to the nature of the site (it is a jobsite). Is a 301 redirect preferable to a 404 message (in terms of a google crawl and SEO) and if so would I need to not delete expired vacancies? Although would this not lead to the site content being too large?
I really appreciate your help on this.
WPBeginner Support says
Why 301 or 404 are your only considerations? Why not just let users land on expired vacancies showing them a notice that this job is expired? You can also choose to display similar jobs on the page which users can then look at?
Pamela Hopkinson says
I think I need to clear out the expired jobs on a regular basis, otherwise site content will be too great? Therefore it is not always possible to land on the expired vacancies.
However, when searched for expired vacancies should show a page that details that the vacancy has expired and give the individual a link to our Homepage – this should be available in the next few days.
Kevin says
I recently installed WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast and I have a 100 some old blog posts on a website. Is important to go back and SEO your old blog posts or just do it moving forward?
WPBeginner Support says
If you do not have title, meta description for your old posts, we would recommend going back to your posts and edit them. However, if your site is already doing well on search results then you may decide to skip this step.
Admin
Pamela Hopkinson says
Thank you for your informative and very weasy to follow post.
I have not been using many of the enhanced Yoast SEO plugin features on the website as I had no idea how to use them.
I have just followed your step by step guide and feel a lot more confident and I have tailored the sections to our site and hope to see an improved ranking on category searches in the near future.
Thank you once again.
Joseph Nirmal says
I started a news niche blog. I need meta keywords. Yoast SEO is not recommended meta keywords. If I use meta keywords in yoast it affects my organic traffic and page ranking in google or not?
Connal Vickers says
Awesome site – thank you. Your guide to Yoast SEO made a lot of things clear that a lot of late nights had not.
Deidre says
Thank you so much for informative post.
I can not located this step in Yoast or in Page or Post edit screens?
Step 11: Customizing and Maximizing the Benefit
Where do I find this?
WPBeginner Support says
You will find this not on the plugin’s settings screen but in WordPress post editor while writing or editing a post.
Admin
Pat Fortino says
BTW: when I said wp-engine does not allow plugin, I meant google xml sitemaps.
Jeff Guynn says
Thanks for your post on proper Yoast plugin settings. An update was needed, as most posts on this topic are pretty old, and many updates have happened in the interim. I have some questions about some difficulties people experience with Yoast.
For starters, I’m aware that you address fixing the sitemap 404 errors here:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-yoasts-wordpress-seo-sitemap-404-error/
I’m hearing current rubmblings of dissatisfaction with Yoast along the lines found at this reputable source (a Genesis theme user):
http://wpsites.net/seo/genesis-seo-settings-guide/
In particular, he points out the following reasons for preferring Genesis native SEO over Yoast (and this from a long standing Yoast fan):
> Google Web Master Tools displayed hundreds of URL errors which i have been told where caused by the sitemap.
> There are also posts written about sitemap errors experienced when using Yoast’s sitemap which i read about on the forum and other blogs about WordPress.
Curious if you could speak to these issues and offer some additional guidance if necessary.
Thanks, Jeff.
WPBeginner Support says
Jeff, the ability to choose or write your own solutions is what makes open source software so wonderful in the first place. We are using WordPress SEO on our websites without any issues for years now. Her is why we think that WordPress themes should not have SEO options.
Admin
Zimbrul says
Do you recommend using the sitemap feature within the plugin or use a dedicated plugin like Google XML Sitemaps?
Pat Fortino says
RE google xml sitemaps. Since it requires installing another plugin, I’d recommend using Yoast’s sitemaps. Also, wp-engine does not allow this plugin on their servers due to performance issues.
WPBeginner Support says
We recommend sitemaps feature in WordPress SEO.
Admin
James McWhorter says
Nice post, Syed.
One question – why check the meta keywords option when meta keywords are no longer recognized by Google? Even Yoast does not recommend it.
WPBeginner Support says
Even though they are not recognized and not recommended, but there is no harm in adding meta keywords. Apart from Google, there are other search engines and web crawlers that could benefit meta keywords.
Admin
Chinmay Rajyaguru says
I am agree with ‘WPBeginner Support’ reply and want to remind you, ‘Mr.Matt cutts said Google will not udpate Page Rank and End of year – Google updated.’ No-one know, what will happen in future thus, follow -> WPBeginner Support.
Really very useful. Thank you man!