All You Need To Know About The WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO

If you have any interest in owning a website and haven’t heard about Yoast SEO, your life is about to get a lot easier. We can’t overstate how much of a game-changer this plugin is. It will save you so much time, pain, and headache without a doubt.

Yoast SEO, the Plugin to End All Plugins 

Ever plan on making, running, or owning a website? If so, you need to know about Yoast SEO. Knowing or not knowing can be the decider that makes or breaks a successful site in the making. Don’t believe me? Allow me to explain exactly why this plugin is so important to website devs today.

What is Yoast SEO?

Yoast SEO is the premier search engine optimization software. In other words, it’s your ticket to the front page of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and any other search engine on the internet. It’s the difference between thousands of people seeing your site versus tens (if that).

The plugin’s tried and true technology has led to it becoming the number one rated WordPress plugin globally, and over 18% of the top million websites in the world utilize Yoast SEO. It’s quickly becoming the industry standard, and it’s time for you to get in on the ground floor.

How Yoast SEO Will Improve Your Websites

After you’ve installed Yoast SEO to your WordPress site, the plugin will appear on each page and post you create. Yoast SEO will then analyze everything on the page and quickly tell you the best ways to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization ) along with your readability.

The plugin keeps all of the creative control in your hands while still working to make sure your website is in optimal form. It’s designed in a way that doesn’t dilute your personal writing style or message while still amplifying your voice.

The best part is Yoast doesn’t stop at just promoting and improving the website you’re currently working on. Using it will instill into you how to make all your websites stand out to search engines now and in the future! Readability, keyword density, meta descriptions become second nature to regular Yoast users.

Make Your Websites Faster With Yoast SEO’s Technical Optimization

In the modern age, a website’s load time is its lifeblood. In 2016 research showed that over 50% of mobile website visitors leave if the webpage doesn’t open in just three seconds, and you can be sure they won’t be in any hurry to come back.

First impressions are crucial for websites as for everything else in life. If that wasn’t bad enough, Google knows how important load times are too, so if you’re not up to snuff, they will be sure to bury your already barely alive website under hundreds of sites that are better-optimized, most likely by Yoast SEO.

Luckily, Yoast SEO has you covered. They’ll assist with your robots.txt, .htaxcess files, and clean permalink URLs or sitemaps. Don’t know what any of those things are? With Yoast, you don’t need to.

They also provide all kinds of incredible resources, both included in the base plugin or separated. If you want to make sure your website is fast enough, Yoast designed this page to help you check your speed. 

Other Yoast SEO Features

Yoast has developed so many innovative and powerful features over the years that listing them all would be a full-length article in its own right, but here are some of the favorites among Yoast users that we haven’t mentioned. Yoast allows you to preview exactly how your pages will show up in Google and easily edit your title and description for optimal results.

It also adds schema.org data the right way to ensure Google, Pinterest, and other platforms have a clear picture as to what your page is about. Quickly determine the taxonomy and set the primary category for every single page on your website.

Yoast is currently available in 17 different languages, including English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and more. It’s constantly expanding, so we can expect even more to come in the future. Not to mention everything we’ve told you about Yoast SEO so far is absolutely free!

You don’t need to spend a dime for any of it. If you are ever interested in more quality-of-life additions, Yoast SEO does offer a premium version with more features, but it’s far from necessary for most users. 

How to Install Yoast SEO

We’re sure you’re itching to add this incredible new tool to your toolbox and ensure your website gets the love it deserves. Here’s all you need to do to get started.

First, log in to your WordPress website. Then, click Plugins from the menu on the left-hand side. After that, click Add New on the top right-hand side of the screen and type “Yoast SEO”. Now all that’s left is to click the Install Now button and activate it. Boom! You’re all set.

Getting Started With Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is simple to use for beginners while also having lots of advanced features for users who want to go deeper with their optimization. After it’s installed, run the configuration wizard.

You’ll be asked a series of questions about your site and your organization/person. Answer them honestly, then close the configuration wizard after the 9th step entitled “Success!”

Next, we recommend heading to the features tab at the top of your dashboard and ensure your settings match your preferences. Generally speaking, you want to have everything on, except possibly usage tracking if you’d prefer not to share your data with Yoast. If you’re confused about what any setting does, hover over the ‘?’ icon beside it.

A Toast to Yoast

It has been perfecting its craft for over a decade and has distilled search engine optimization down to a science.  However, when it comes to your website’s success, Yoast SEO stacks the deck in your favor so you can’t lose!

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