How To Install And Set Up Yoast SEO Plugin For WordPress

Every WordPress-powered web development company knows the importance of SEO. To make their sites SEO friendly, they install and set-up plugins for their sites. One of such plugins is the WordPress SEO Plugin made by Yoast. Not only is it the most comprehensive SEO solution for your WordPress websites, but it is also the most widely used because if its amazing features and ease of use.

In this article, we would show you how to correctly setup the plugin for the maximum benefit of WordPress development and PHP web development.

Why you need to install the Yoast Plugin

1. Yoast plugin is a complete SEO solution that is available for WordPress sites. It has been downloaded over a million times. You can use WordPress SEO plugin to improve your on-page SEO.
2. This plugin, unlike others, is more than just a Meta tag additions. You can use Yoast SEO plugin to add custom title, Meta keyword and Meta description for your Web posts, pages, and taxonomies. As you write the Meta information, you will see a Google search result preview of how your content will look like when searched on Google. You can also get verified Google authorship for your site with the plugin.
3. Yoast SEO plugin helps you create XML sitemaps, which support images, and also allows to have advanced configuration from the sitemap. For example, you can remove a specific post, page or taxonomy from the sitemap. Most importantly, Yoast automatically notifies search engines of your published content.
4. Yoast allows you to add custom RSS footer for your WordPress posts. With its social integration feature, your posts can be shared on Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, etc. using Open-Graph metadata.

How to install the Yoast SEO plugin

To successfully switch to the Yoast SEO plugin,

• Go to Dashboard select ‘Plugins’ and then ‘Add New.'
• In the search box, type in ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast.'
• Click on the ‘Install Now’ link.
• You will see a pop-up alert box asking whether you want to install the plugin, click OK.
• The plugin will automatically download and install. The next to do is to activate it by clicking on Activate Plugin.

How to Setup the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Upon successfully installing and activating the plugin, you will see a new menu item at the left-hand corner of the WordPress admin bar named ‘SEO’ with Yoast SEO logo on it. Another way to access the settings for the Yoast SEO Plugin is on your plugins page. Scroll towards the bottom of the page under "WordPress SEO" and click on "Settings."

Now head over to the dashboard where you will decide whether to let Yoast anonymously track your data to make the plugin better. You may choose not to.

Afterward, look under "Webmaster Tools" there you can verify either Google Webmaster, Bing Webmaster or Alexa Webmaster tools.

Every web development company familiar with SEO should know about popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, and Alexa. They allow website owners to add sites using webmaster tools area. Knowledge of these tools is necessary for WordPress development and PHP web development.

The Webmaster tools give insight about your site from specific search engines. To receive such insights and exclusive data and also to verify your site, you have to add a Meta tag and title tag to your site. Many beginners are afraid of adding Meta tags. This is where Yoast comes in handy and does it for them.

All they need to do is to add the Meta code they received from the search engines in the respective fields. It is advisable that you leave all of this empty, especially if you are a novice because whenever you publish a post, you will still be able to add a unique title.

Next, click on the "Home" tab, where you can edit the home page settings of your website. You can edit it either here or from the homepage, depending on the setup of your WordPress installation.

Next step is to go to the social settings.

Yoast SEO is the most popular plugin packed with many features to provide full optimization. The plugin integrates your website with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ on social media.

Here, you can include open –graph metadata for Twitter, Facebook. This may or may not alter the indexing of your site.

On Clicking on the Social link under the SEO menu, you will get to where you can secure these platforms.

Google+ does more than help you share posts. It helps you choose an author for your homepage. Google+ authorship will automatically be added to posts. As for the homepage, that is not always the case. Moreover, Google sometimes does not recognize the homepage author. Therefore, you would have to choose your username from this menu.

Next, in WordPress development, click on "XML sitemaps" We sincerely hope you have an XML sitemap for your website. The sitemap makes it possible for search engines to index your site easily.

Permalinks is another name for your site's URL.

As a first-time visitor to the SEO tab, Yoast may suggest that you change the structure of your Permalinks. To do that, go to Dashboard> Settings> Permalinks. It is believed that the best Permalinks structure is to use the Post Name.

The Next step in PHP web development is to 'edit files.' Please note that the robot.txt and the.htaccess should not be edited because they tell Google and other search engines how to access your website. It is; therefore, better to leave the files unedited.

Finally, let’s go over some post-editing functions of the Yoast SEO plugin. When adding a new post, you typically just add a title to the content and click "Publish," and you are done. However, Yoast is not done with you yet. It adds two new features to make that post SEO-friendly.

When you write a post, don’t be in a hurry to click on the "publish" button. Scroll down to the bottom, and you will see a lot of information about the post.

Firstly, you can add your focus keyword or the keyword that you’re trying to target in Google for your post. You may choose to make a unique title if you want. The title type should not be the same as the title of the post and your Meta description.

Secondly, you can get a more detailed information about how well optimized the page is by clicking on the "Page Analysis" tab.

We strongly recommend that you install and set-up Yoast SEO plugin for your WordPress website because the plugin has many free and premium features that will be of immediately of benefit to your business.

Kenneth Evans is Analyst and Content Marketer of top app development companies. As a Content marketer, He has been contributing to various blogging platforms and Forums.