Where do I find it?
SIDE PANEL> PLUGINS
What does it mean?
This guide provides an overview of the Yoast SEO plugin and explains how to utilise its key features to enhance your WordPress website's search engine visibility and performance.
Yoast SEO is a widely used and highly regarded plugin for WordPress that significantly enhances your website's Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to help you optimise your content effectively for search engines like Google, improving your site's visibility and organic search rankings.
Key functionalities of Yoast SEO include:
- Keyword Analysis: Assisting you in identifying and optimising content around relevant keywords.
- Readability Checks: Providing feedback to ensure your content is easy for users to read and understand.
- Metadata Management: Giving you control over how your pages and posts appear in search results.
- Snippet Previews: Showing you a real-time preview of how your content will look in Google search results.
- Social Media Integration: Helping you control how your content appears when shared on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
- Internal Linking Suggestions: Guiding you to create a robust internal link structure, which is beneficial for SEO.
By leveraging these features, Yoast SEO helps you create high-quality, search engine-friendly content, ultimately driving more organic traffic to your website.
What should I do?
To begin using Yoast SEO, you first need to ensure the plugin is installed and activated on your WordPress website.
Installing Yoast SEO (If not already installed)
- Log in to your WordPress backend.
- In the left-hand side panel, navigate to 'Plugins'.
- Click on 'Add New'.
- In the search bar, type 'Yoast SEO'.
- Locate the Yoast SEO plugin in the search results and click 'Install Now'.
- Once installed, click 'Activate'.
Optimising content with Yoast SEO
For every new or existing page or post you create in WordPress, you will find the 'Yoast SEO' section located typically below the main content editor. This dedicated section is where you will input your SEO details.
When you edit a page, the Yoast SEO section is usually the first section under the editor.
Follow these steps to optimise your content:
- Focus Keyphrase:
Enter the primary keyword or phrase that you want your page/post to rank for in search results. Yoast SEO will then analyse your content's relevance to this keyphrase.
- Search appearance (Snippet Preview):
As you fill in the SEO Title, Slug, and Meta Description, Yoast SEO provides a real-time Snippet Preview (for desktop and mobile) showing exactly how your listing will appear in Google search results. Use this to refine your metadata for maximum impact.
- SEO Title:
This is the title that will appear in search engine results and browser tabs. Yoast SEO provides a default based on your page title, but you can customise it to be more compelling and keyword-rich.
- Slug:
This is the editable part of your page's URL. Ensure it is concise, descriptive, and contains your focus keyphrase. Yoast SEO helps you refine this.
- Meta Description:
Write a short summary (typically 150-160 characters) that will appear under your SEO title in search results. This should be enticing and encourage users to click on your link.
- Readability Analysis:
Yoast SEO also provides a readability analysis, offering suggestions to improve your content's ease of understanding for your readers. This includes feedback on sentence length, paragraph structure, use of subheadings, and transition words.
- Schema (Structured Data):
This tab allows you to tell search engines what type of content your page contains (e.g., an Article, FAQ, Recipe, etc.). Selecting the correct schema helps search engines understand your content better, potentially leading to rich snippets in search results (like FAQs directly appearing in Google). Yoast SEO automatically adds some basic schema, but you can refine it here for specific content types.
- Social:
This section allows you to control how your page or post appears when shared on social media platforms like Facebook. You can upload a specific image, set a custom title, and write a unique description that will be used when your content is shared, ensuring a visually appealing and accurate preview. This is independent of your featured image or meta description, offering more control for social sharing.
Saving Your Optimisations
Once you have entered all the necessary SEO details within the Yoast SEO section, ensure you save your changes by clicking the 'Update' or 'Publish' button for your page or post.
By consistently utilising Yoast SEO for each piece of content, you contribute to your website's overall search engine performance and make your information more discoverable to your target audience.
For more detailed guidance on Yoast SEO, please visit the official Yoast Help Centre.