When we talk about SEO in WordPress there are two plugins that come to mind, Rankmath Plugin and Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.

But the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin is the popular one and the oldest one in the market, And the most used plugin these days.

But Only a few bloggers know how to set up the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, not everyone is aware of it.

That’s why in this article, I will tell you the complete guide on how to setup Yoast WordPress SEO plugin configuration step by step with the help of screenshots.

So that you can easily do these settings in your blog or website. For the SEO in a WordPress site, the SEO plugin by Yoast is the best of all.

If you haven’t used this plugin before for WordPress SEO then, I will suggest you install it and try once. You will definitely love it in terms of SEO.

Yoast SEO plugin provides many interesting and useful features to fulfill the SEO needs of our blog. And the best thing about SEO by Yoast is that it is very easy to install and activate.

Table Of Contents

Features Provided By Yoast SEO

Before getting started, it is necessary to know what are the essential features which Yoast SEO WordPress plugins provide us for the improvement of SEO of our blog.

Below given are the features of the Yoast SEO plugin:

  • Website name and company personal details.
  • Submit & Verify Site to Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
  • Advance Security.
  • Pages Advanced Settings.
  • On-Page Integration Daily (New Feature)
  • The title, Meta Settings and Title Separator
  • Readability Analysis of keyword analysis.
  • Site Home Page Title and Meta Description.
  • meta Control like Post Types, Taxonomies, Archives, and others.
  • Support Facebook Graph and Twitter Card.
  • Add Google Authorship for Single Author.
  • Submit Your All Social Media Profile with Site.
  • Generate XML Sitemap Automatically.
  • Manage User Sitemap and Excluded Posts.
  • Hide Date from Search Engine Snippets.
  • Breadcrumbs Settings.
  • Confirm Your Site with Pinterest.
  • Advanced Permalink Control.
  • RSS Feed Footer Plugin Setting.
  • Import Setting from Other SEO Plugin.
  • Edit Robots.txt file and .htaccess Folder.

Now, you can see that how many features does the SEO Yoast WordPress plugin provides you free of cost. That’s why the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin is so much popular among bloggers.

So, let’s get started in detail without further ado.

Complete Setup & Configuration for Yoast

Here everything is shown with the help of screenshots so follow the screenshots and steps to do the same Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin full configuration.

First of all, what you have to do is install the Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress. After that on your left sidebar there is an SEO option click on that and follow the instructions given below:

1. Dashboard

yoast dashboard

2. FEATURES

now go to the feature section and configure the setting that are mentioned below and in the screenshot.

yoast features
  • SEO analysis: Enable
  • Readability analysis: Disable
  • Cornerstone content: Disable
  • Text link counter: Disable
  • XML Sitemap: Enable
  • Ryte integration: Disable
  • Admin bar menu: Disable
  • Security: no advanced settings for authors: Enable 

3. Webmaster tools

Here you have to add Google, Yahoo, and Bing webmaster tools verification code. The screenshot is given below:

Webmaster tools

Now we have to configure the search appearance setting in yoast seo plugin.

4. Search Appearance General Setting

search appearance general setting
  • Force rewrite titles: Enable it if you have a duplicate site name on your blog otherwise leave it.
  • Title Separator:
  • Title: Title of your website or blog.
  • Meta Description: A short description of 2 or 3 lines on your blog.
  • Company or Person:
  • Company name: Company or person name
  • Company logo: Logo of your company or website.

5. Content Type

This is the very important Yoast SEO plugin setting. Here you will set how your posts, pages, and media files show in the search engine.

yoast search engine settings
  • Show posts in search results: YES
  • Post Title template: %%title%% set like this.
  • Post Meta description template: Leave blank Meta description template box
  • Date in Snippet preview: If you want to show the date in the search result then click on show.
  • Yoast SEO Meta Box: Enable for Yoast analysis
  • Show page in search results: YES
  • Page Title template: Add %%title%% in the page title.
  • Page Meta description template: Add %%excerpt%% this or leave blank. Your choice

Below is the Yoast basic Variable you can choose or set up according to your content type.

yoast seo variables

6. Media

When you upload an image in your WordPress blog at that time, WordPress automatically creates its attached URL which is not useful for you. So for that enable this feature it will redirect your image with the post URL.

yoast image settings

7. Taxonomies

Taxonomies
  • Categories: YES
  • Tags and Formats: NO
  • Categories URLs: If you use a category like “example.com/category/categoryname/” then select keep and if you use “example.com/categoryname/ URL” then, select remove.

8. Archives

Permanently disable date archive and author archive because it creates the problem of duplicate content.

Archives

8. Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs

9. Rss

No need to touch anything in rss section. Leave it as default.

Search Console Configuration in Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO plugin also gives you a feature to connect google webmaster directly through the Plugin and, it also helps in fixing your crawl errors right from the plugin without visiting google webmaster.

For this, you have to click on Reauthenticate with Google in the setting option. After that Google asks your permission to connect webmaster with the Yoast SEO plugin and, you have to click on allow button.

After getting authentication you can fix desktop, smartphones, and other crawlers directly from here.

Search Console Configuration in Yoast SEO
  1. Get google authorization code: By clicking here you will get permission from google
  2. Now add the code here which you get from the Yoast SEO plugin
  3. Finally, click on Authenticate.

10. Accounts:

This feature of Yoast SEO allows you to show your social media profiles to you, visitors. To show them you can follow the screenshot given below:

accounts in yoast seo

(a) Setup Facebook Account

Setup Facebook Account

(b) Setup Twitter Account

Setup Twitter Account

(c) Setup Pinterest Account

Setup Pinterest Account

Tools:

Here you will find 3 tools. These 3 features of Yoast SEO plugin are very good for you if you about them. With these features, you can change your title or descriptions of your multiple pages and posts in one click without reaching each post and page individually.

  1. Bulk Editor: Here you can edit your multiple posts and pages in one click.
  2. File Editor: With this, you can edit the robots.txt and .htaccess file of your blog.
  3. Import and Export: With this, you can download your plugin settings or also you can import or export your setting of the Yoast SEO plugin.

Now you are ready to go with all SEO setting of Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. This is the full beginner guide step by step to install the Yoast SEO plugin.

Conclusion

Above i have shared each and every setting that you need to configure in yoast seo plugin. Make sure to follow it to utilize yoast seo to the best.

If you have any doubt or query in any section. Do comment, we will respond you asap.

I hope you liked the article.

If this post is useful for you then, please share it and do comment in the comment box if you have any doubts.

Thanks for reading the article. 🙂 🙂

Yoast Wordpress Seo Plugin
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