Do you want to set up Yoast SEO WordPress plugin? Yoast SEO is the best SEO plugin in WordPress.org. If you want to improve the SEO of your WordPress site, then the proper Yoast SEO setting is very important. Today in this article, we will share the latest 2018 Yoast SEO settings (version 7.9). So that you can optimize your website properly.
Yoast SEO is the most robust WordPress SEO plugin for WordPress Blog. It comes with some important features that you can see below.
- You can change the SEO title and meta description of the post.
- You can add Focus keyword.
- Allow to create XML Sitemaps.
- It also includes .htaccess and robots.txt editor.
- You can use Title and Meta description for taxonomies (category and tags) and much more.
Yoast SEO Settings (2018, Version 7.9)
If you are a newbie, you can easily set up Yoast SEO plugin in your site by following this Yoast SEO tutorial.
Now let’s get started how to set up WordPress Yoast SEO settings…
First, install the Yoast SEO plugin in your WordPress site. After activating the plugin, you will see a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard that will appear SEO with Yoast SEO logo.
1. General
Dashboard
You do not need to do anything here.
Features
Now let us know in details…
SEO analysis – It shows your content optimization with Green (good), Pink (medium) and Red (needs work) and offers suggestions to improve the SEO of your content.
Readability analysis – It suggestions to improve the sentence and paragraph (Short, Long and Transition word) of your content.
Cornerstone content – Lets mark cornerstone content (valuable content) on your website.
Text link counter – It shows internal linking on your page and post.
XML sitemaps – It allows you to create an XML sitemap for your site that you can submit in Google, Bing and Yandex webmaster tool for the better crawl.
Ryte integration – It will detect weekly whether the website is indexed by search engines.
Admin bar menu – Add drop-down menu in WordPress dashboard.
Security: no advanced settings for authors – Allows a user to remove posts from the search results or change the canonical. and only allow editors and administrators can do this.
Webmaster Tools
Here, sign up for each webmaster tool and verify with HTML Tag method.
Verify Webmaster Tools
- Sign up for Google Search Console.
- Add Your Site
- Select the “HTML tag” verification method.
- Copy the code and paste into the here (Yoast Google Search Console field).
- Click on Save changes button in Yoast.
- Click on “Verify” in Google Search Console tool.
- Now You have successfully verified your site in the Google Search Console tool.
- Repeat the same process for Bing / Yandex.
2. Search Appearance
General
Here you can select the symbol which is used as a separator between words. Furthermore, SEO title and Meta description are for your site’s homepage title and description.
Content Types
You can prevent your post and page from being indexed in search engines. Add dates in your snippets which will increase click-through rates. Apart from this, you can write a custom meta description for your every post and page.
Media
Taxonomies
If you show tags, categories, formats, etc in the search results, then you can face duplicate content. This will reduce your search ranking and Google can even penalize your site.
So we recommend that you do not index tags, categories, formats for search results.
Archives
If you enable the options given here, then it can cause duplicate content on your site. So keep them disabled.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are best for internal linking. It helps users to know where they are on your site and as well as help search engines to understand your site structure data. See our guide how to add breadcrumbs in WordPress using Yoast SEO plugin
RSS
3. Search Console
Search Console section allows you to connect your WordPress site to Google Search Console tools.
Go to Search Console settings tab and click on “Get Google Authorization Code” now you will be redirected to the Search Console website, here you will get a code. Copy this code and enter in the Authenticate box.
Now select your website from the drop-down menu. Now, you will get search console data here.
4. Social
Here add your social media profile like Facebook, Twitter Username, Instagram URL, LinkedIn URL, Google+ URL, etc so that Google can know your profile.
Furthermore, it allows you to upload custom data for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google plus.
5. Tools
Bulk editor – Bulk editor allows you to edit post titles and descriptions in bulk. But it is not good for SEO because it creates duplicate descriptions and titles.
File Editor – With this option, you can edit your robots.txt and .htaccess files from here. You do not need to go to cPanel.
That’s all. You have successfully completed the Yoast SEO settings.
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Very helpful post about Yoast SEO settings