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How to Install and Setup Yoast SEO Plugin in WordPress

Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on WPBeginner. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations. Learn more about Editorial Process.

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.

Properly installing and setting up the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress

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 complete Yoast review or 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.

Yoast SEO plugin installed

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.

Close set up wizard

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.

Enable or disable Yoast features

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.

Yoast SEO integrations

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.

Verifying webmaster tools in Yoast SEO

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.

Search appearance settings in Yoast SEO

On this page, you can also choose the SEO title and meta description for your website’s homepage.

Adding homepage title and description

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.

Knowledge graph and schema options in Yoast SEO plugin

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.

Search appearance settings for each content type on your website

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.

Disable attachment pages

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.

Taxonomies

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.

Disable author archives from appearing in search results

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.

Breadcrumbs displayed in search results

The default settings should work for most websites, but if you want to change something then go ahead and make your changes.

Breadcrumbs settings in Yoast SEO

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.

RSS settings in Yoast SEO

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.

Add social media accounts in Yoast SEO

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&gt section.

Enable Facebook Open Graph in WordPress using Yoast SEO

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.

Setting a default image to be used on Facebook

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.

Set up Twitter card in Yoast SEO

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.

Confirm your site on Pinterest using Yoast SEO

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.

Tools Yoast SEO

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.

Import Export SEO settings

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.

Edit robots.txt and .htaccess files

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.

Bulk edit SEO title and description

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.

Bulk description

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.

Redirects manager in Yoast SEO premium

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.

Yoast SEO meta box below a 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.

Optimizing a category or tag in Yoast SEO

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,

Optimizing products for SEO

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.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how WPBeginner is funded, why it matters, and how you can support us. Here's our editorial process.

Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

252 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. 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!

  2. jackson says

    \my yoast is written on the dash board

    The following file(s) is/are blocking your XML sitemaps from working properly:
    /home/hanseltr/public_html/sitemap.xml
    Either delete them (this can be done with the “Fix it” button) or disable Yoast SEO XML sitemaps.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      It seems that another plugin has added a sitemap.xml file to your website. You can need to find out which plugin added it and disable the plugin. Alternately, you can connect to your website using FTP and then locate the sitemap.xml file and delete it manually.

      Admin

  3. Anubhav says

    So here is my issue. When I am sharing my website on facebook, it automatically shows a thumbnail of a random shop product and a random product description. I did make that change under Social->Facebook and added the appropriate image and description, still nothing has changed. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

  4. danu adji says

    please help, why the blog description still does not appear, whereas I had to apply the existing arrangements in this article

  5. Tara says

    I’ve just got wordpress, the free version which says you can’t add plugins.
    Can you confirm that if I upgrade wordpress then I will be able to use yoast SEO?
    I can’t seem to find that piece of information!
    Thanks
    Tara

  6. jasmine says

    thanks for the detailed tutorial.
    i would really appreciate if you share FREE video sitemap creator.

  7. Ahmed Nasr says

    Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    Hi, thank you for this post

    i have one question

    i’m using Yoast plugin in my site but i want to entry meta code

    meta name=”Googlebot-News” content=”noindex, nofollow”

    to some posts to Exclude it from Google News

    how can i do it

  8. Brenda says

    Thank you SO much! For reasons like this article, you are the first “assignment” I give new clients when they are WordPress users.

    Google wants me to verify all the versions of my URL (http, https, www, -www). Where would I put the verification codes for all these different versions? Different “alternative methods”?

    Many thanks indeed!

  9. Jaswinder says

    I am using All in One Seo Pack.

    Actually I tried both, but I like All in one Seo Pack more than Yoast Seo.

  10. Nicole says

    Thanks so much for your help!

    I have installed Yoast on my wordpress site however am still battling with trying to clear up my ‘tags’ pages on Google. How would I go about this? I think that the numerous tag pages relating to my site might be related as to why Google Adsense keeps getting disapproved. Please could you advise me?
    Thanks so much :) Nicole

  11. Rashed says

    thanks
    your post is more descriptive for the beginner which seo plugin is the best for seo ultimate or yoast please suggest me which one should i use

  12. Rithika says

    Thanks for sharing information on Yoast ,but as i am using genesis theme for my blog, So is there any extra features you know which is not there in genesis .because these features are i think there in genesis.

    Thank You..!
    Rithika

    • WPBeginner Support says

      We use Genesis Framework on WPBeginner, but we still use WordPress SEO. While the SEO features in Genesis are quite adequate, Yoast SEO is a much more powerful and robust solution. As soon as you activate Yoast SEO plugin, Genesis will automatically hide all its SEO settings.

      Admin

  13. sugiharto says

    thanks for your info, can ask related Yoast SEO
    am install Yoast SEO plugin win my blog, but i chek in google have problem in Robots.txt fetch and Search Console – Yoast SEO code is different in my google webmaster hot to fix it
    thanks

  14. Emily Johns says

    Thanks For Sharing This. but in Yoast SEO plugin, we can put only one Keyword and in All in One SEO, we can put as many we want, so Here I am confused that which one is exactly the best. Does Yoast plugin drive more traffic to my blog than All in One SEO????

  15. Val Archer says

    Hi – I installed yoast and am trying to find a box where I can enter each post’s meta tag description. You mention:

    >On each post and page editor page, you will see this new box called WordPress SEO that has tons of fields like SEO Title, Meta Description

    I have “Yoast SEO” checked in ‘Screen Options.’ Below my post window is Yoast SEO with 3 icon options: Content, Advanced, Social.

    Under ‘Content” is “Snippet Editor”, ‘Focus Keyword’ and ‘Content Analysis.’ Content Analysis complains “No meta description has been specified” BUT I can NOT find a box/field anywhere for me to enter the meta description. You say “tons of fields” but I see only these 3 under Content.

    Please can you tell me where I can enter the meta description uniquely for each post? Thank you! Alternatively, do you have any code for functions.php that will add a meta description box to the post edit window? So in the dropdown under Custom Fields, I’ll see “Description” and can give it a value there? Then I can uninstall yoast because I really don’t like it.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Yoast SEO has changed the meta box UI since we last updated this article. The description field is in the snippet editor just below the title. You can edit the title by clicking on it. If the description field below it is empty then just click on the empty area below the title and it will become editable. You can then enter your post’s description.

      Admin

      • Val Archer says

        That’s funny. I definitely don’t have any empty area below title. Will email you a .jpg

  16. Patrik says

    Hi,

    How do I set up Yoast SEO plugin to work with Advanced Custom Fields?

    I have searched all around the web and can not find any help/tutorial or information about how to get Yoast SEO WordPress plugin to work with other fields in WordPress, in this case I have a website (or several) that use Advanced Custom Fields to store a lot of content and Yoast can not sense these fields. Yoast have an extra plugin for this (what I’ve understand): YoastSEO.js , but I have no idea how to get this to work.

    1. How do I set up YoastSEO.js plugin (is it a plugin?) to work with Advanced Custom Fields in WordPress.

    Would you at wpbeginner be able to write a proper bulletproof tutorial for dummies about this?

    Regards,
    Patrik from Sweden

  17. Kelsey says

    Hi! Great Post.

    I just downloaded Yoast SEO onto my website, but I now have a message that says this:

    Your theme contains a meta description, which blocks Yoast SEO from working properly, please delete the following line, or press fix it:
    <meta name="description" content="”>

    Warning!

    The Header and Footer plugin(s) might cause issues when used in conjunction with Yoast SEO.
    Both Yoast SEO and Header and Footer create OpenGraph output, which might make Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks use the wrong texts and images when your pages are being shared.

    It then has a button that says to deactivate my header and footer.

    I do have a header and footer plugin by Stefano Lissa. Will I mess up my website if I deactivate the header and footer?

    Thanks!

    • WPBeginner Support says

      You will need to deactivate header and footer plugin. We cannot say what kind of effect it will have on your site. If you were just using it to add Facebook open graph meta data, then you can do that in Yoast SEO.

      Admin

  18. Akshay Hiremath says

    In the google search results I want my organic listing to appear like a box with product name & prices in it. Saw this on the search results and want to apply the same for my business.
    Please Help me with this.

  19. Jiten says

    Hey Sayed / Editorial Team,

    I am using All in One SEO plugin, since 2 years for my health blog. I am getting good visitors. I want to change the plugin to SEO by Yoast. Will it affect my rankings? Do i need to rewrite all Meta Title & Description again if I uninstall the older and activate Yoast SEO plugin?

    Awaiting for your reply.

    Thanks,
    Jiten

    • WPBeginner Support says

      No it should not affect your rankings. Yoast SEO has built-in importer, that brings all your All in One SEO settings into Yoast. Simply go to SEO » Tools » Import/Export and then click on import from other plugins tab. You will find the option to import from All in One SEO plugin.

      Admin

    • Mikael Andersen says

      Have you checked all the new rewievs in the plugins reviews. Until 3 days ago I would recommend Yoast SEO. Today I am about to find another plugin, because of all the bugs in the newest update and because a lot of functionality is away and instead you will find a lot of buttons for paid extenstions.

  20. Mikael Andersen says

    Hi

    After Yoast have made a bunch of errors in their new update, can you then recommend an alternative Seo plugin, that is a bit similar to Yoast plugin.

  21. Zuber Shaikh says

    Dear Sir,

    I can use this tool in my website and also all my WordPress Clients Sites. Really Good tools. I m Web Developer and also Internet Marketer last 4+ Years.

    Thanks Regards
    i m Zuber

  22. thousan says

    Hi Wpbeginner support team. I am a newbie to wordpress and website. I have a website on a free hosting service and I did install SEO by yoast and I tried to config the setting as in your video. Yet I still can not find my website and my content in google search result. I don’t know what wrong with this. I hope you can help me to solve this problem.

  23. Jitendra Mahato says

    Hi there,
    I have installed this plugin in my site before 1 year but there is one problem us my site. There is working very good in my site as well. But the breadcrumb is working just in the post or page. It is not working in the google search engine snippet like other. May i why? it there something special to do for that…… I want to have displayed breadcrumb in search engine…….. . I am waiting for your response.
    Jitendra

  24. brian says

    thank you for your instructions.

    in this document you wrote, “The next option is to remove stop words from permalinks. Stop words are common words used in plain language. Yoast believes that by removing these, you will create cleaner URLs. While it does make the URLs smaller, we disagree with Yoast. This is why we have left it unchecked.”

    But, the screenshot indicates that the, “Remove stop words from slugs” is checked.

    If possible, can you please clarify if you meant it is advisable to leave it checked (default) or remove the check?

    thank you.

  25. Marcia says

    I just watched the video and feel like I went through a maelstrom. It was so fast that it raised my blood pressure trying to keep up with it. Therefore, it wasn’t very useful to me. I’m not a beginner. Were I a beginner, it would have been even worse for me. Thank heavens for the printed words that follow it!

  26. Anna A. says

    Hi. Great article! I am just a little confused on 1 thing. I will have a blog with categories. Under each post I will have tags for them. The tags will then become the archived pages for the posts. My question is for these archived pages, will Yoast have the correct canonical? Or will I need to go and manually change something there to refer it back to my category page??

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Seems like you have either already installed the plugin or a previous installation failed to complete. Go to the plugins page and see if you have WordPress SEO or Yoast SEO plugin installed. If it is already installed, then you just need to activate it. If you cannot see it on the plugins page, then connect to your website using an FTP client and go to /wp-content/plugins/ directory. Delete the WordPress-SEO folder.

      Admin

  27. Nelbin says

    I am getting this error message when I try to upload the plugin
    ‘The package could not be installed. PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT(-10): invalid archive structure.’

    Please help.
    Thank you!

  28. Bj aka Bill Brown says

    You make no mention of the noodp or noydir.
    What is your opinion on using / not using these?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      We don’t think that these settings are relevant or affect most sites. However, both of them are harmless if you want to opt-out from ODP or Yahoo Directory descriptions.

      Admin

  29. Sacha says

    Very, very helpful post a video WPBeginner.

    I have been using All in One SEO Pack plugin for a long time a finally decided to switch and I’m pleased I did.

  30. Rich says

    Help me please. I’m another beginner. Them main advertising content of my website is the photos in my gallery showing the work that we can do (a picture paints a thousand words), but the images do not show up in Google. Looking in the Sitemaps it appears that the images are listed with a value of zero. I have done much internet searching and can find nothing conclusive. I am using Nextgen Gallery.
    Any help appreciated

  31. Kregg Hill says

    Question? On the “Edit Page” tab, Yoast SEO section, under “Page Settings” there are 5 Tabs…one of which is SEO where there is a place to input “Keywords”. Is this essentially where you add all keywords for that page, and if so, can you add long tail keywords, is there a comma required after each entry, and is there a lmit to how many search keywords or terms you can add there?

    Sorry, I’m a newby!

  32. Jennifer McNeil says

    Dear WPBEGINNER SUPPORT,

    Well, I must say that your tutorial was very comprehensive and most informative!

    Now all we have to find out is if it all actually works, since I have been ‘fighting’ with our Website,, since last November, trying to get it to rank even a little bit! From all the numerous scans I have done with endless software, it is full of flaws and errors (apparently many of them in the actual code of the THBusiness theme we are using). Will following all your instructions in this tutorial fix these problems, or do I need to look elsewhere for remedies?

    Also, all Pages are showing absolutely horrible Google Page Speed Testing too. All are in the 30’s and 40’s for both Desktop and Mobile and we can’t figure out why!

    If you have any suggestions at all, I’d sure be open to receiving them, as admittedly, I am a bit of a greenhorn. Many thanks in advance.

    Very best regards,
    Jennifer McNeil

    • WPBeginner Support says

      If you believe that the problem is with your WordPress theme’s code, then we would recommend you to consider changing your WordPress theme. You can also temporarily disable all plugins on your site, and switch to a default WordPress theme like Twenty Fifteen. After that test your Google Page speed. If this improves performance significantly then it is your theme or one of the plugin’s fault. To further analyze, you can turn on your plugins one by one, take Google page speed score after each plugin. Do the same for your theme. This way you can find out whats causing low page speed score. Hope this helps.

      Admin

  33. Riju says

    Nicely composed post about seo by Yoast. It will help all of those newbie bloger included me, who like to add this powerhouse seo plugin on their wordpress blog. Now it’s look like that I can easily proceed to setup Yoast. Let’s see…..
    Thanx…..

  34. Manoela says

    Hey!

    Following this tutorial, I’ve just migrated from All in One SEO to WordPress SEO by Yoast! I simply love the analysis function, but there’s something I’m missing: can’t I set keywords for my posts and pages? Isn’t that worse for my SEO? I thought it was a good way of getting the post found by robots. What would you recommend?

    Thanks a lot.

    Manoela

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Actually the author of Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin believes that Meta Keywords are no longer important for SEO. However, we believe that even if they are not important, they are still pretty harmless. If you want to use them on your posts and pages while using WordPress SEO plugin, this is what you need to do.

      Go to SEO » Titles & Metas and click on the Other tab. Check the box next to ‘Use meta keywords tag?’ option and click on the save changes button. You will now see the meta keywords field in the WordPress SEO metabox below the posts and pages.

      Admin

  35. Ralph D. Klonz says

    Yoast is used so much out in SEO Land, but this is really the best how to if seen so far. Have watched a many videos but your blog drives it home. There are still some thing I don’t fully understand. But that’s not the plugin, it’s my limitations.

  36. Tommy says

    Hi guys!
    I have a problem after editing posts using yoast plugin. I can’t then see what I saw before, i.e. my post with gallery only – I can only edit it in text mode. everything else is disabled, and even invisible.
    Same issue with sites – only text editor possible.
    Any ideas?

    Cheers,
    Tommy

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