In the contemporary digital era, having a website is not enough. It’s essential that it’s visible and accessible to your target audience.
This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play, the practice of optimizing a website, through on-page and off-page SEO, to improve its visibility in search engines.
Among the numerous tools available to facilitate this positioning process, Yoast SEO is one of the most popular and appreciated, particularly for those using the WordPress platform.
Let’s explore together the features, advantages, and reasons for Yoast SEO’s success. We have prepared this comprehensive guide for you to thoroughly understand this extraordinary plugin.
Let’s see what Yoast SEO is used for
Yoast SEO is a plugin for WordPress, the well-known content management system (CMS) used by millions of websites worldwide.
Essentially, Yoast SEO is a digital assistant with the mission of guiding users in creating and managing content optimized for search engines. In particular, it is one of the most used tools in SEO copywriting.
With the advent of digital, emerging in search engine results pages and achieving good positioning has become crucial.
That’s why Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is now a discipline in its own right, focused on making web content easily traceable and relevant to search engines.
Why is Yoast SEO so popular among Copywriters and those involved in positioning?
The popularity of this plugin stems from its simplicity and intuitiveness. Even for those who are not SEO experts, Yoast offers clear and direct guidance on how to improve their site’s visibility.
From content analysis to metadata management, this tool provides real-time feedback, suggesting improvements and highlighting potential issues.
Moreover, Yoast SEO doesn’t just focus on search engine optimization. The plugin views SEO as a balance between search engine visibility and quality user experience for visitors.
Thus, while helping to improve the site’s ranking, it also ensures that the content is readable, coherent, and valuable for readers.
For anyone who owns a WordPress site and aspires to a significant online presence, having an assistant like Yoast SEO is truly useful.
The 10 Main Features of the Plugin You Should Know
Here’s a list of the main features of Yoast SEO:
1. Content Analysis
Yoast SEO evaluates the quality and “optimization of content” against selected keywords, providing suggestions on how to improve keyword density, the use of subheadings, text length, and much more.
2. Readability Analysis
This feature checks the comprehensibility of your content, suggesting improvements to make the text more readable and accessible.
3. Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions
Yoast SEO allows you to customize meta titles and meta descriptions for each page or post, essential elements for communicating to search engines what the page is about.
4. Permalink Management
With Yoast SEO, you can optimize and customize the URLs of your pages, ensuring they are SEO-friendly.
5. XML Sitemap
The plugin automatically generates and manages an XML sitemap, facilitating the indexing of your site by search engines.
6. Indexing Settings
This feature allows you to decide which pages or posts on your site should be indexed by search engines and which should not.
7. SEO Problem Reporting
Yoast SEO provides notifications and warnings in case of SEO issues on your site, such as broken links or indexing problems.
8. Social Media Integration
The plugin offers the ability to customize how your content appears when shared on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.
9. Breadcrumbs
Yoast SEO offers functionality for integrating breadcrumbs, improving site navigation and providing useful information about the site structure to search engines.
10. Internal Link Analysis
Yoast SEO promotes a better internal link structure by suggesting related content to link to, improving usability and distribution of link juice.
These are just some of the main features offered by Yoast SEO. The strength of this plugin lies in its ability to guide even less experienced users through the complexities of SEO, offering practical suggestions and advice to optimize every aspect of their website.
Let’s do a quick setup of the Yoast SEO plugin together
The “installation and configuration of this famous WordPress plugin is designed to be quick and intuitive, even for those approaching search engine optimization for the first time”.
Once you’ve installed the plugin from “Plugins” > “Add New” in the WordPress dashboard, you’ll be greeted by a configuration wizard.
You’ll be asked to define whether your site is active or under construction. This is crucial because if the site is still in development, Yoast SEO will advise preventing search engines from indexing it, thus avoiding showing potential visitors an incomplete site.
Another key step is choosing the main keywords for your site, which will represent the core around which to build your SEO strategy. Let’s consider a vegan cooking blog: words like vegan recipes
, cruelty-free food
or ethical cooking tips
could be the focus.
And it doesn’t end there. The wizard will assist you in configuring metadata, managing duplicate content, and much more.
Once finished, you’ll have the assurance of having set solid foundations for successful SEO optimization.
With Yoast SEO, you don’t need to be an expert to start off on the right foot. Like a friend taking you by the hand, it guides you through the first fundamental steps, ensuring that your site is ready to emerge in the vast universe of the web.
Learn How to Use Yoast SEO to Create Valuable Content
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use Yoast SEO.
Dashboard and Configuration Wizard:
- After installing and activating Yoast SEO, access your WordPress dashboard.
- You’ll find a new section called “SEO”. Click on it.
- The first thing to do is launch the Configuration Wizard. This will guide you through the initial setup, asking for details about your site, its nature (blog, eCommerce, portfolio, etc.) and other specifics.
- If, for example, you own an e-commerce for organic products, during the configuration you’ll indicate “eCommerce” as the site type and provide related keywords, such as “organic products” or “natural food”.
Content Analysis:
- While writing or editing a post or page, you’ll notice a Yoast SEO box below the editor.
- Here, you can enter your focus keyword, which is the term for which you want that page or post to be optimized.
- If you’re writing an article about the
benefits of green tea
, you’ll insert this phrase as the focus keyword. Yoast will analyze your content against this phrase and provide suggestions to improve its optimization.
Readability:
- In the same box where you enter the keyword, Yoast offers a readability analysis of your text.
- It will provide feedback on form, sentence length, use of subheadings, passive forms, etc.
- If you have a paragraph with sentences that are too long, Yoast will suggest some tricks, such as breaking them up to improve clarity and readability.
SEO Social:
In the Social section under SEO in the control panel, you can customize how your content will appear when shared on social network platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
For a post about green tea
, for example, you might want a specific image of green tea and an engaging short description to be shown when it’s shared on Facebook.
Advanced tools:
Yoast SEO also offers a series of advanced tools, such as the .htaccess file editor, breadcrumb management and the ability to modify the robots.txt file.
Yoast SEO integrates perfectly with other tools. Discover how
One of the key advantages of Yoast SEO is its ability to integrate seamlessly with a wide range of tools. This integration makes SEO management more efficient. Let’s discover together how Yoast SEO establishes these digital alliances.
Google Search Console
Yoast SEO offers easy integration with Google Search Console. This way you can monitor how Google sees your site, identify any crawling or indexing issues, and receive suggestions on how to resolve them, all directly from your WordPress dashboard.
WooCommerce
For those using WooCommerce to manage an eCommerce on WordPress, integration with Yoast SEO is essential.
This combination allows you to optimize each product for search engines, ensuring that descriptions, images, and reviews are presented in the most appealing way possible.
Elementor and other page builders
Many WordPress sites rely on page builders like Elementor to design appealing pages. Yoast SEO integrates seamlessly with these tools, allowing you to optimize every element of the page without leaving the editor.
Schema markup and structured data plugins
Structured data helps search engines better understand your site’s content. Yoast SEO, with its ability to generate schema markup or schema.org, can work in synergy with other plugins dedicated to structured data, ensuring that your site communicates effectively with Google and other search engines.
Multilingual plugins
If your site is available in multiple languages, the integration between Yoast SEO and multilingual plugins like WPML or Polylang is really important.
This ensures that each language version of your site is adequately optimized for SEO.
Social media management
While Yoast SEO has its own features for social media SEO, it can also work with specific social media plugins.
This means that when you share content, every element, from the “image to the” URL to the description, is optimized for both search engines and social platforms.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
With the “increasing importance of mobile performance, the” integration between Yoast SEO and plugins that support AMP technology is crucial.
This synergy ensures that your mobile-optimized pages maintain solid and consistent SEO.
Redirection
Managing redirects is important to maintain an excellent user experience and to ensure that obsolete or deleted pages don’t harm your ranking.
Yoast SEO can integrate with plugins like Redirection, simplifying the process of creating and managing redirects directly from your dashboard.
Ahrefs SEMrush
These are two powerful tools for keyword analysis and research, and integration with Yoast SEO allows users to draw from these resources directly during content creation, making keyword selection a data-driven process.
Zapier
Zapier is a tool that allows you to create automations between different apps and services. By integrating Yoast SEO with Zapier, you can automate many actions, such as sending notifications when SEO issues are detected or synchronizing SEO data with other platforms.
Yoast SEO Premium: Let’s See the Differences from the Free Version
The free version of Yoast SEO is already a powerful tool for search engine optimization. However, the Yoast SEO Premium version takes your SEO strategy to the next level.
But what exactly is it and how can it make a difference for your website?
What is Yoast SEO Premium
Yoast SEO Premium is the paid version of the popular search engine optimization plugin, Yoast SEO, created for the WordPress platform.
While the basic version already offers a range of useful features, the Premium version stands out for some advanced and additional functionalities.
The Features of Yoast SEO Premium
Internal Link Suggestions
One of the keys to excellent SEO is having a solid internal link structure. Yoast SEO Premium offers suggestions on which articles from your site could be linked to the content you’re editing, facilitating the creation of a coherent and useful link network.
Multiple Keyword Analysis
While the free version allows you to focus on a single keyword, with Premium you can set and analyze multiple key terms or phrases for a single piece of content, ensuring broader coverage.
Easy Redirect
Changes in URL or page deletions can generate 404 errors. With Premium’s redirection functionality, you can easily set up redirects to ensure that visitors and search engines are directed to the right page.
Search Intent Analysis
Understanding the intention behind users’ searches can make a big difference. Yoast SEO Premium helps you understand and optimize your content based on users’ search intent and the need they demonstrate when typing a query.
Social Media Preview
Preview how your posts or pages will appear when shared on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and customize the presentation to optimize social media impact.
How Yoast SEO Premium Works
After purchasing and installing Yoast SEO Premium on your WordPress site, you’ll have access to an advanced control panel that will guide you through the new features.
The interface is intuitive and integrated within the WordPress editor, making it easy for you to optimize every page or post.
The Yoast team also offers premium support, and in case of problems or questions, you’ll always have someone ready to help you.
AI for Generating Titles and Descriptions: Available in Yoast Premium Version
The new AI-powered title and description generator in Yoast SEO Premium has been designed to optimize your SEO without the stress of manually creating titles and descriptions for each page.
Advantages of using generative AI:
- Save time and effort in creating titles and descriptions.
- Attract more organic traffic to your website.
- Thanks to generative AI, Yoast SEO Premium offers advanced algorithms that analyze the content of each web page, generating relevant and tailored titles and descriptions.
- AI offers various options, allowing you to select the most effective titles and descriptions for your audience. If you’re not satisfied, you can ask the AI to generate new ones.
- Customize the results to ensure consistency with your brand.
- Real-time preview of how titles and descriptions will appear in search engine results, allowing you to optimize to the fullest.
- Ease of use within Yoast SEO Premium.
Developed by internal experts
- An internal team has worked intensively to ensure that the AI produces high-quality results.
- Continuous updates make the AI smarter and more accurate.
Availability
- The artificial intelligence feature of Yoast SEO is currently in beta version, and any feedback will be valuable to improve it. Beta users have the opportunity to influence the future of this tool and contribute to the success of their SEO strategy.
Yoast SEO for Shopify: How to optimize your online shop
If you know Yoast SEO primarily as a WordPress tool, you’ll be surprised to discover that there’s also a solution for Shopify.
Let’s see together what Yoast SEO for Shopify offers and how it can improve your online store’s optimization and your SEO strategy.
What is Yoast SEO for Shopify and why is it important
Yoast SEO for Shopify is a version of the famous search engine optimization plugin, adapted to work on the Shopify e-commerce platform.
It is designed to help online store owners improve the visibility of their products and pages in search engine results.
What Is It For?
Like the WordPress version, the Shopify version aims to provide users with the necessary tools for effective SEO. Here are some of its key functions:
SEO Analysis
Analyzes your store’s pages and provides feedback on how to improve SEO, both in terms of content and technical structure.
Meta titles and descriptions
Allows you to easily set meta titles and descriptions for products, collections, pages, and blog posts. These elements are crucial for indicating to search engines, and users, the content of your pages.
Schema markup
Automatically adds structured data to your pages, helping search engines better understand your store’s content. This can improve the visibility of your products in search results.
Content analysis
Offers suggestions on how to improve the readability and optimization of your content based on selected keywords.
Breadcrumbs improvement
Offers options to optimize and customize breadcrumbs (or navigation paths), improving the user experience and your store’s structure from an SEO perspective.
Discover how Yoast SEO for Shopify works and you won’t be able to do without it
Once you’ve installed the Yoast SEO app from the Shopify App Store, you’ll have access to a control panel integrated directly into the Shopify interface.
From here, you can manage all SEO settings, analyze your store’s pages, and receive suggestions for improvements.
If SEO isn’t really your cup of tea, we’re at your disposal for personalized SEO consulting tailored to your needs.
