Yoast SEO: Ideal WordPress Plugin to Boost Your SEO

Yoast SEO – this is the name that is widely popular today among those who are working with a self-hosted WordPress Site.  It is unquestionably one of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO process.  The two major aspects, which allure a large number of webmasters, are it is easy to understand, and it is a powerful tool to make your website search-engine friendly.

The first thing you should have for installing Yoast SEO is self-hosted WordPress site. Alas! It is not available for the free WordPress users. Interestingly, many experts like Angela Petteys have approved it as a most comprehensive SEO-related WordPress plugin. Fortunately, it is free-of-cost, so you do not need to spend extra bucks to do SEO for your website. But, it also has the premium version that you can purchase if you want to get some additional functionality. You don’t need to worry if you can’t spend the extra bucks because the most significant functions of Yoast are the parts of free plans. Yoast makes plenty of things easier for you such as:

• Controlling titles
• Controlling Meta descriptions
• Setting the Targeted Keywords
• Tracking How Often You Are Using the Targeted Keywords
• Managing Site Maps

Apart from the ones as mentioned above, many other aspects of SEO are made more comfortable with the help of Yoast.

The facts mentioned above include the necessary information about what Yoast is and how it helps the users in accomplishing the SEO process in much more relaxed and a better way. After that, it is needed to understand how to start with Yoast. First of all, you need to know how to download it and install it.

Start with Yoast SEO: Download and Install

At site’s admin dashboard, you will see “Plugins” option on the left-hand side of the screen. Just hover over it, and you will get more options among which you have to select “Add New.” Click on it to reach a page where you will find the selection of featured, popular, recommended and favorite plugins. In any of these lists, you may find the plugin of Yoast SEO. If you don’t see it on the list, you can get it with the help of search box.

After you find it, you will get the option “Install Now.”  It will be downloaded and installed by WordPress, and then you will be asked to activate. You need to activate it as a next step. If it is activated, you will see the option “SEO” of the left-hand sidebar menu of your admin dashboard as well as along the horizontal menu bar on the top of the screen.

Setting Up the plugins is not as easy as downloading and installing were. But, it is for sure that the time you will spend on it is not worthless. There are different steps you are required to follow to set up Yoast SEO plugin. The first aspect that is needed is to import settings from other SEO plugins. You can skip this step, but it will make it easy and less time consuming to set up Yoast.

Import Settings from Other SEO Plugins

From SEO option, you are first required to click on “Import and Export” and then “Import from Other SEO Plugin.” You can import settings from other SEO plugins such as HeadSpace2, All-in-One SEO, and WooThemes SEO Framework.

Yoast SEO Setting Up

If there is nothing to import or you don’t want to import anything, then you can start from square one option. If you have imported then also it can be an excellent idea to check if everything is correct. To get started, you need to see the options under “SEO” in the left-hand side menu. Here you will find eight more options for setting up, which are:

• General
• Titles & Metas
• Social
• XML Sitemaps
• Advanced
• Tools
• Search Consoles
• Extensions

You will find step-by-step options, which are not arduous to understand. You discover different tabs in every choice and can do the needful settings as per your requirements.  Now, let’s come to the next step, and that is how to use Yoast SEO. It is a significant aspect because it is the thing that eases your Search Engine Optimization process, although setting up phase can also not be overlooked. Setting up stage creates the cornerstone for usage.

Using Yoast SEO

After installation and set up, select “All Posts” or “All Pages” on left-hand site menu on your site admin’s dashboard to see a list of all your pages or posts. Here, you will see a column marked as SEO on the screen’s right-hand side. In this column, you will see a dot, which indicates the rating of your pages or posts by Yoast SEO. The system used by Yoast is straightforward. Here is the system that is used by Yoast.

• Grey Dot: There is no information available to Yoast for that page.
• Green Dot: Page is good.
• Red Dot: There are some significant problems with that page.
• Yellow/Orange Dot: There is a scope for improvement.

It helps you a lot to understand which page needs attention. You need to click on the page or post for opening page/post editor. You will see Yoast SEO toolbox beneath the area where the content of the page is entered. In Yoast toolbox, you find different tabs, which are:

• General and Page Analysis

• Advanced

• Social

In all these tabs, you find several options to optimize the page. After optimizing all this, the next thing you are required to do is to publish the page.

Publish

After accomplishing all the optimization process, go to the box where you can schedule your post, change privacy setting and hit the “post” button.

These are a few necessary steps to use Yoast SEO. Apart from this, there are a lot of options you can use in Yoast that you will know when you start with the tool. On the other hand, you also have the choice to go premium if you feel Yoast helpful. Some of the premium Yoast SEO extensions are Yoast SEO Premium, Video SEO, SEO News, and Local SEO.