Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that is one of the most valuable tools around for a self-hosted WordPress site. Whether you have a small business blog or are managing a blog for a client, Yoast is a powerful tool that can make your website easy to search for and find in order to bring in more traffic.
Downloading YOAST SEO
On your WordPress site admin dashboard, look for the “Plugins” option on the left side of the screen. Hover over it and you will see the option to “Add New.” Click on that and then scroll through the selection of featured, popular and favorite plugins. You can search through these or else use the search box to look for Yoast. Once you find it, click “Install Now” and you can download, install and activate it. After that, you’ll see the option called SEO on the left hand side of your admin dashboard.
Setting Up Yoast SEO
Go to the SEO option on the admin dashboard and click on “Your Info.” Here you can enter the name of your site, whether you are a company or a person, and add a company logo and other details. Click on “Webmaster Tools” — this is where you can verify your site through major search engines. Open the Search Console dashboard and select “Manage Property” and then “Verify this site.” Choose the “HTML Tag” verification option and then copy/paste the code into the Google Search Console box here and delete everything except what is inside the quotation marks (including the quotation marks themselves). Hit “Save Changes” and then do the same for other tools you want to use.
Setting up Titles & Metas
This part is really important for boosting your search ratings. Go to the General tab and choose how you would like your page titles to display (i.e., Site Name | About Us, Site Name – About Us, etc.). Under Homepage, you can determine the title and description for the front page and blog page. Make sure to use your main keywords in your site descriptions. In the “Post Types” section, you can set up automated SEO-optimized meta-descriptions and titles so each post follows the basic template to help them get found faster.
Archives
Having your blog posts archived is a great way for all your keywords to exist on your site in order for readers to find your content. However, search rankings sometimes consider them spam and will lower your SEO. You can decide here whether or not you want your pages indexed or whether you want them to appear on your site at all.
Social
Sharing your posts to social media is a great way to drive traffic. You can link all of your relevant accounts and decide whether or not to share your posts automatically, as well as adjust other settings.
This is just a basic guide to setting up your Yoast. For more info, check out Moz’s complete guide. Getting your Yoast SEO ready to use is one of the best steps toward boosting traffic to your site!
