Onpage Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in WordPress Using Yoast SEO plugin

You have beautiful and useful products to offer but nobody knows about it then it is totally useless. If you own a website and you have written so many posts, your website looks so impressive (if you don’t know how to make appearances of your WordPress website fabulous then you can read our article, Install a WordPress Theme and customize it). But still, there is lack of visitors on your website. If you are worried about this issue then don’t worry. Today, we are going to short your problem out. To increase your Website traffic you need to do SEO(Search Engine Optimization) of your posts to give them best ranking in Organic Search. In this article, We are going to use a free WordPress Plug-in named Yoast SEO.

What is Yoast SEO?

Yoast SEO is one of the most important Plug-ins of WordPress which can be helpful for you whether you are a beginner or expert who is making websites for your clients. Yoast SEO helps you to make your site as Search Engine-friendly as possible.

Downloading and Installing Yoast Seo:

Go to dashboard > plugins > add new.

Click on the search box and search for Yoast SEO.

There you will see your Plug-in click on Install.

After getting installation complete click on Activate button.

Your Plug-in has installed in your WordPress Site And Its time for Setting it up.

Isn’t installing it a very easy process? But, Process of Setup this plugin might be overwhelming, But we will make it easy for you to handle it. After its installation, an SEO tool will be automatically added to your dashboard.

Setting up Yoast SEO:

After its installation, an SEO tool will be automatically added to your dashboard.

Go to Dashboard > SEO

It will show you few options such as Dashboard, General, Features, Your info, Webmaster Tools and Security.

Let’s explain them one by one.

Dashboard:

It shows you problems and notifications related to issues which might affect the SEO of your Site.

General:

If you need to give your information to Yoast to help it in making your site more SEO friendly then click on configuration wizard in general. It will head you to go through 12 easy steps which are started from a welcome step to success step. Fill all of them as instructed in it.

Features:

Yoast SEO comes with a lot of features you can Enable or Disable them according to your requirements.

Your Info:

From this, you’ll be able to tell Yoast about your website’s name or if it has an alternate name. You can also inform Google whether you are a person or company. This data will be intended to appear in Google’s knowledge graph. And will help Google to incorporate your site in google knowledge graph. If you are giving information to a company, then it is giving you an opportunity to add a logo of your company for Google Knowledge Graph.

Webmaster Tools:

If you haven’t verified with any of webmaster tools, and you are thinking to use these tools, then you can directly verify your website on Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Consol Search and Yandex Webmaster Tools through here.

Security Settings:

At the last, you have a Security settings tab. If you are the only author on your website then you have no need to have worry and you can leave Advanced part of the Yoast SEO meta box as enabled. But if you work on a website which allows multiple authors to make editing in its pages and you don’t want to make the changes in Yoast SEO settings then you badly need to disable it.

Hit on save changes tab and your settings for your Plugin has been successfully saved. But still, there is an important setting left.

Search Consol:

Here we come to a very big setting but it will work only if you are using google search console. Click on SEO from your website’s dashboard. Under the Dashboard of “SEO”, you will see a tab of Search Console, Click on it.

If you already have a Google authorization code then paste it into the text box at the left of “Authenticate” button. If you don’t have any then don’t worry Just click on “Get Authorization code”.

After clicking on the button a popup window will appear and will redirect to your Gmail confirm its conditions and it will give you an Authorization code. Paste that code in text box And click on authenticate button.

Now, your plugin has been set up fully and is ready to use.

Using Yoast SEO in a post:

Here comes the real use of your plugin. If you have installed and Setup it but you can’t use it, then its totally useless. So here we are going to teach you how to use it while writing your post. If you don’t know how to add a post in your WordPress Website then you can read our article, Add Post on Website using WordPress.

If you have written a post already and you want to do its SEO, then go to Dashboard > Posts > All Posts.

There You’ll see three extra columns which are created by Yoast to the right of your post.The first tab is for counting internal links within your post, Second For giving you SEO score and third is for Readability score.

Now open your post on which you want to do SEO.

Go at the bottom of your post body. Under your post body, you’ll see Yoast SEO panel with Three Tabs(Readability, Keywords and Add keywords). Add Keyword feature is only for its Pro version.

It has clicked on Keywords by default.

Now just read the issues which are highlighted by Red and yellow dots. And try to fix them by making changes in your post as much as possible. And finally, you’ll have an SEO friendly post.

You can also follow the same procedure for a new post.

If you have any questions regarding Setup Yoast SEO plugin then feel free to leave a comment.