How to Setup Yoast SEO in WordPress [8 Steps]

Shyam Kumar January 22, 2023 0 Comments

Setting up Yoast SEO in WordPress is a great way to optimize your website for search engines. Yoast SEO is a popular plugin that helps you to optimize your website’s content, meta tags, and other SEO-related elements. In this post, we will walk you through the process of how to setup Yoast SEO in WordPress step by step.

Procedure to setup Yoast SEO in WordPress:

Step 1: Install the Yoast SEO plugin

The first step in setting up Yoast SEO in WordPress is to install the plugin. You can do this by going to the WordPress plugin repository and searching for Yoast SEO. Once you have found the plugin, click on the “install” button and then activate the plugin.

Step 2: Configure the plugin settings

Once the plugin is installed, you will need to configure the settings. To do this, go to the Yoast SEO settings page by clicking on the “SEO” link in the WordPress admin menu.

The first tab, General, is where you can configure the basic settings of the plugin. You can set the company or person name and the company or person logo. You can also set the separator and the company or person name in the title and the meta descriptions.

The second tab, webmaster tools, is where you can enter the verification code of webmaster tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Yandex Webmaster Tools and Baidu Webmaster Tools.

The third tab, Features, is where you can enable or disable certain features of the plugin. For example, you can enable or disable the ability to edit the meta tags for posts and pages.

The fourth tab, Security, is where you can set the plugin’s security settings. You can enable or disable the ability for users to edit the plugin’s settings and also set the access level for users.

Step 3: Optimize your website’s content

Once you have configured the plugin settings, the next step is to optimize your website’s content. Yoast SEO provides a number of tools to help you do this.

The first tool is the content analysis tool. This tool will analyze your content and provide feedback on things like keyword density, readability, and meta tags.

Also Read: How to Write a WordPress Post: From Research to Publication

The second tool is the snippet preview. This tool will show you how your post or page will appear in the search results.

The third tool is the focus keyword. This tool will help you to choose the main keyword for your post or page, and it will also show you how well optimized your content is for that keyword.

Step 4: Optimize your website’s meta tags

The next step is to optimize your website’s meta tags. Meta tags are the tags that are used to describe your website’s content to search engines. Yoast SEO provides a number of tools to help you do this.

The first tool is the meta tags editor. This tool allows you to edit the meta tags for your website’s posts and pages.

The second tool is the XML sitemaps. This tool will generate an XML sitemap of your website, which you can submit to search engines.

The third tool is the robots.txt editor. This tool allows you to edit the robots.txt file, which is used to control how search engines index your website.

Step 5: Submit your website to search engines

The final step is to submit your website to search engines. Yoast SEO provides a number of tools to help you do this.

The first tool is the webmaster tools verification. This tool allows you to verify your website with webmaster tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Yandex Webmaster Tools, and Baidu Webmaster Tools.

Step 6: Use the SEO Analysis

Yoast SEO also provides an SEO analysis feature that checks your content for any SEO-related issues and provides suggestions for improvement. This includes checking for keyword usage, meta descriptions, headings, and more. To use this feature, simply go to the post or page you want to analyze and scroll down to the Yoast SEO section. It will provide you with a traffic light system, where a green light means the content is optimized, a yellow light means there are some improvements to be made, and a red light means there are significant issues that need to be addressed.

Step 7: Utilize the Social Media Integration

Yoast SEO also includes features to help you optimize your website’s social media presence. You can set your social media profiles and customize how your content appears when shared on social media platforms. This includes setting a default image, title, and description that will be used when your content is shared on social media. You can also set the Twitter card type, which controls how your tweets appear when shared.

Step 8: Monitor your SEO Progress

Yoast SEO provides a feature that allows you to monitor your website’s SEO progress. This includes tracking your website’s organic traffic, keyword rankings, and more. You can view this data in the SEO > Dashboard section of the Yoast SEO plugin. This will help you understand which areas of your website need improvement and which strategies are working well.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Yoast SEO is a powerful plugin that can help you optimize your website for search engines. By following above steps on setup Yoast SEO in WordPress, you can set up the plugin, optimize your website’s content, meta tags, and social media presence, and monitor your SEO progress. Remember to keep the plugin updated and regularly check your website’s SEO to ensure that it is performing well.