What is Yoast SEO? How to set up and use it

Today there are many tools to help you raise keyword rankings on Google's results pages. Yoast SEO is one of the most popular, helping streamline SEO service to improve your Google rankings work and widely used. In this article, Mona Media explains what Yoast SEO is and how to set it up and use it Yoast SEO worth knowing.

What is Yoast SEO?

Yoast SEO is one of the most useful tools for optimizing An SEO-ready website on WordPress. Yoast SEO lets users enter and manage SEO elements such as the title, description and focus keyword.

Developed and provided by the Yoast team since 2010, Yoast SEO is one of the most essential plugins, found on almost all website wordpress today.

Yoast SEO comes in 2 versions: free and paid. The free version is very capable and has all the basic features you need to optimize your website or blog for SEO.

What Yoast SEO does:

• Use Yoast SEO to check and analyze the keywords in each post.
• Optimize posts and pages to SEO standards.
• Control how your pages and posts appear in search engines and social media social networks such as Google and Facebook.
• Check the information in the Sitemap, .htaccessfile, robots.txt and permalinks.
• Reduce duplicate content as much as possible by configuring URL canonicals.

Features of Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is an open-source WordPress plugin with many features for optimizing a website for SEO. It evaluates page elements such as the title, description, focus keyword and length, and recommends improvements. It also measures how hard your content is to read, checks keyword frequency and checks paragraph length.

Yoast SEO shows the errors on your site and suggests fixes. It can generate a good-quality sitemap so search engines can find and display your site. You can also manage internal links to pass strength to other pages on your site quickly.

Yoast SEO also helps reduce duplicate content errors on your website, optimizes page descriptions and improves the click-through rate for your keywords. It has more features besides, such as a readability analysis to improve user experience and a keyword matrix to define the main keyword list for your site.

How to install the Yoast SEO plugin

Installing the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress is simple. You only need to know how to use a computer and have a basic grasp of website management to do it easily. Installation is quick, about 10 to 15 minutes. Here are the steps:

• Step 1: Log in to your WordPress dashboard, then click Plugins. Click Add New in the left sidebar.

• Step 2: When the Add Pluginpage appears, use the search box to look for Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO appears on the right side of the window.
• Step 3: When you find Yoast SEO, click Install Now.

Now check the left-hand menu and you will see a new item: SEO.

How to set up Yoast SEO

First you need to set up Yoast SEO. To make it quick, you can click the link below:

Steps to configure Yoast SEO

You will see 8 setup steps for Yoast SEO. Just follow the instructions below.

• Step 1: This is where you choose your website's status.
  • Option A: My website is live and ready to be indexed
  • Option B: My website is under construction and should not be indexed

• Step 2: Choose your website type

• Step 3: Here you say whether your website represents an organization (Organization) or a person (Person). Note that if you pick organization, more fields appear for details such as the organization logo, Facebook URL, Instagram and so on.

• Step 4: In this step you choose the content types that appear in search results. You should select both “Posts” and “Pages“

• Step 5: You will be asked whether your website has multiple authors.

• Step 6: In the title settings you can name your website (if it doesn't have a name yet) in the Website name field, and choose the separator between the post title and the website name in the Title Separator field, as shown below

• Step 7: Next, just click Next until the completion message appears, as shown below.

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the Yoast SEO control panel, with 3 tabs: Dashboard, Features and Webmaster Tools.

This panel shows all serious SEO notices for your website. You will see Problems, which are serious issues to fix right away, and Notifications, which are minor issues you can skip.

Features

This lists all Yoast SEO features. You can turn on or off any you don't want. Remember to save this section.

Webmaster Tools

This section holds the verification codes for the Webmaster Tools accounts of some search engines, such as: Google Search Console.

Click the blue link below to get the code.

Search Apperance

This section sets how your website appears in search engines.

Start with General. This is a fairly important section.

General

First is Title Separator, the symbol that separates the site name from the post title.

An example you can look at: “Yoast SEO là gì – Mona Media” (What is Yoast SEO – Mona Media). The dash “–” is the title separator.

Pick whichever symbol you like.

Content Type

This section controls how your search results are shown.

For the line that shows “Show Posts in search results?” If you choose No it means “noindex”

Date in Snippet Preview: this shows the date in preview mode (you should set it to hide, since it isn't important).

Yoast SEO Meta Box: Show

Media

When you upload an image or video to WordPress, it creates a URL for that file. This is usually a blank page. If you don't plan to use it, it's best to disable it.

Our advice is to choose Yes.

Taxonomies

In this section we choose how categories appear in Google search.

Choose Yes and scroll down. For Yoast SEO Meta Box, choose Yes again.

Archives

In this section, you should disable the feature “Author archives” if your blog has only one author.

If you leave the archive showing on the home page, you will get duplicate content, so think it over carefully.

You can disable it in “search results” or block it in robot.txt.

The section below is “date achrive settings” similar to the one above.

Breadscrumbs

Breadcrumbs is the path usually shown at the top of a post, showing where you are on the website.

Read this if you don't know about it yet.

• Separator between breadcrumbs: This is the icon between breadcrumbs
• Anchor text for Homepage: In the example above it is set to “Mona” (you can set it to Home)
• Prefix for the breadcrumbs path: The prefix for the breadcrumb path
• Prefix for Archive breadcrumbs: The prefix for the path on archive pages
• Prefix for Search Page breadcrumbs: The prefix for the path on the search page
• Breadcrumb for 404 Page: The path for the 404 not-found page

See more: 404 Not Found errors what is it? A guide to fixing error 404 quickly

Below are 2 more options. You need to bold the last page in the breadcrumb and show the breadcrumb for Taxonomy (tag, post, category).

RSS

You need this feature if you use an RSS feed. If you don't, you can ignore it.

An RSS feed provides a summary of a post, in XML format

Search Console

Google no longer allows this feature to connect to the Crawl Errors API. You can go to Google Search Console to use it directly.

Social

This is where you set up your social media accounts. Enter the URLs of your pages, or Twitter and Instagram. The Facebook tab has Open Graph meta options and shows a preview of how your page looks when shared on Facebook.

Tools

This feature has 4 tools:

• Import and Export: These are settings from website other sites that you can reuse.
• File editor: You can quickly edit the robots.txt and htaccess files.
• Bulk edior: You can quickly edit the title and meta description of posts and pages without editing them directly.
• Text link counter: This is the number of links counted across all the text.

Premium

This section is a menu introducing the features in Yoast SEO Premium.

Courses

This is the section about the people who make the Yoast SEO tool. Naturally, Yoast are experts who know SEO well.

Here they introduce online SEO courses from basic to advanced.

A basic guide to using Yoast SEO for beginners

How to use Yoast SEO for on-page optimization

This is the best part. It answers a series of questions such as: how do I optimize on-page with Yoast SEO, how do I use this tool most effectively, and how do I write a post to SEOstandards? These are SEO techniques you need to get used to and use every day. It may sound confusing, but WordPress Yoast SEO will help make this work much simpler.

When you start creating a new post, scroll down to see the Yoast SEO interface. You should use the Yoast SEO Premium interface, because it has more useful features than the Free version.

Pay attention to the following points:

• Focus keyphrase (formerly called focus keyword): This is the main keywords phrase you optimize the post for.
• Snippet Preview: This is a simulated Google Search result showing how your page appears, from title to description (choose desktop or mobile below, depending on your goal).
• Readability analysis: How easy the post is to read. This is a factor people often overlook.
• SEO analysis: Yoast SEO will remind you if it sees anything “wrong” in an SEO-standard post.
• Add related keyphrase (formerly multi keyword): Also known as related keyphrases.
• Focus keyphrase: This is the main keyphrase you want to optimize the post for. With focus keyphrases you can increase your site's visibility in search engines and bring in more quality traffic.
• Snippet Preview: This is a feature of the Yoast SEO plugin that lets you preview how your page's title and description will appear in Google search results. With Snippet Preview you can customize the title and description so they are appealing and attract users, and make your page look its best in Google results.
• Readability analysis: This term is commonly used in SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO. It analyzes how easy the content on a web page is to read and understand. Readability analysis helps you judge how readable your page content is, improve user experience and increase engagement and sharing.
• SEO analysis: This is the process of analyzing and evaluating your website to find weaknesses and improve its SEO performance. SEO analysis helps you understand how your site performs, improve user engagement and raise its ranking in search results.
• Add related keyphrase: This is a concept for optimizing web content for several related keywords. It used to be called multi keyword. With Add related keyphrase, or multi-keyword, you don't focus on a single main keyword. You also use several related keywords to raise the chance of your page appearing for users searching those keywords.

Optimizing a post with Yoast SEO Premium

In this section we'll walk through an example in detail:

Example: The post What is Jetpack? What to know about the Jetpack WordPress plugin

• Focus keyphrase: Here we chose the word “jetpack” (the target is a keyword with fairly high search volume).
• SEO title (must include the focus keyword): Write this so it draws the reader in and makes them want to click straight into the post.
• Slug: The URL must include the focus keyword.
• Meta description: This section must also include the focus keyword, along with related keywords.

The next part is very important and people often skip it

Readability

There are many ways to make a post easier to read. Try the ones below:

• Use fonts such as: Arial, Open Sans, Lato, Roboto, etc. to give the post a cleaner look.
• Leave white space around paragraphs: Yoast SEO recommends keeping sentences to about 20 words
• Break the post up with subheadings: Split the post into subheadings, which act as a small table of contents.
• Keep paragraphs short: In a post, paragraphs should not run over 300 words.

Bonus tip:

• Font-size: This is also an important factor for readability and for a well-presented post. A font size of 14 to 16px is the most reasonable.
• Line spacing: Line spacing is usually 1.5 to 1.6em
• Use bullets: If you need to list something, use bullets.
• Add tables: You should usually use a table to compare plugin features. It is easier to read and easier to compare.
• Choose image sizes that fit the frame: Don't choose images that are too big or too small.
• JPG or PNG: If your image is simple, with few colors and patterns, choose PNG. For images that need high quality, choose JPG.

The advice above is a guide and you don't have to follow it 100%. Adjust the layout so the post is easy to read, easy on the eye and sensible.

SEO analysis

This is what people usually call the strict “SEO standard” factors that need attention.

Below you will see a field called “Keyphrase synonyms“.

You can choose a phrase that is a synonym of the focus keyword to optimize further. Try picking a phrase, then look at the analysis Yoast SEO gives. If the light is green, your post has improved and needs no more editing.

Bonus tip:

• In this section you should include incoming and outgoing links, pointing to reputable sites.
• The focus keyphrase should be spread evenly through the post. Also add synonyms and related words for better results.
• Add links to related content
• As well as setting alt attributes for images, give files meaningful, appealing names. Don't use names like image-1, image-2.
• An important post should be at least about 1,800 words.

See more:

• What is a link? The concepts and uses of the different types of links on a website
• what a backlink is? What role do backlinks play in SEO?
• What are dofollow and nofollow and how to tell the 2 types of link apart, and what each one is for

Related keyphrases

These are the related keyphrases. Note that related keywords are different from synonyms.

Example: related keywords for “company website design” could be “thiết kế website công ty chuyên nghiệp” (professional company website design) or “xây dựng website công ty” (building a company website), and so on.

You should add related keyphrases in the post, and ideally in the meta description, title and alt text too.

Useful features when you upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast SEO Premium has many useful advanced features that give you the most support in optimizing your website for SEO.

Redirects Manager

The Redirects Manager in Yoast SEO is an add-on feature for the Premium version of the plugin. It gives users an advanced URL redirect management system.

With it you can set up redirects directly for old URLs that may have been deleted or changed. With Redirects Manager, users can create URL redirects, manage the redirect list, check for redirect errors and more.

Internal Linking Suggestions

Internal Linking Suggestions in Yoast SEO is a newer feature, introduced in August 2020. It searches for posts related to your content and suggests internal links to them. Internal Linking Suggestions makes it easy to create internal links between posts, which strengthens the connections between pages on your site.

Content Insights

Content Insights in Yoast SEO gives users a tool for analyzing content as a whole. Users can check keyword popularity, analyze content length, judge SEO difficulty, check keyword frequency and more. Content Insights helps you improve and optimize your site content for the best SEO results.

Add Related Keyphrase

The advanced “Add Related Keyphrase” feature was introduced by Yoast SEO Premium in its latest version. It works by suggesting new keywords based on your post's focus keyword, helping you optimize content more effectively.

Add Related Keyphrase has several standout advantages: it is easy to use, increases engagement with your site content and makes keyword research more convenient.

Social Preview

The advanced Social Preview feature lets users customize and preview pages on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. With it you can adjust the image before sharing your site on social media and write a custom title and description.

Social Preview also helps users create shares that look appealing and professional, which raises engagement and brings more visits to your website.

How to upgrade from Yoast SEO Free to Premium

What steps do you need to upgrade from Yoast SEO Free to Premium? The guide below walks through the upgrade. If you have any problems downloading or installing Yoast SEO Premium, contact Yoast support for help.

If you haven't installed Yoast SEO Free

If you want to upgrade from Yoast SEO Free to Premium and haven't installed Yoast SEO Free yet, follow these steps:

Step 1: Go to the Yoast website and choose “Get Yoast SEO Premium”.

Step 2: Fill in your details, pay and complete the purchase of the Yoast SEO Premium plan.

Step 3: Download and install Yoast SEO Premium as described above.

If you have already installed and configured Yoast SEO Free

If you have already installed and configured Yoast SEO Free, back up all your website content during the upgrade to avoid losing data. To upgrade from Yoast SEO Free to Yoast SEO Premium, follow these steps:

Step 1: Log in to the Yoast SEO website, choose the Yoast SEO Premium plan and complete the purchase.

Step 2: Download the Yoast SEO Premium ZIP file from the website.

Step 3: Go to your WordPress admin and choose “Plugins”. Find the Yoast SEO Free plugin and deactivate it (do not delete it).

Step 4: Choose “Add New” and upload the Yoast SEO Premium ZIP file you downloaded earlier. Once the upload succeeds, activate the Yoast SEO Premium plugin.

Step 5: Switch to the Settings tab and enter your Premium license key (not the Yoast SEO Free license) to activate the new Premium features.

4 extension packs for Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO currently offers 4 extension packs: Yoast SEO Premium, Video SEO, SEO News and Local SEO.

1. Yoast SEO Premium

The Yoast SEO Premium pack is the advanced, paid version of the Yoast SEO plugin. On top of the features in the free version, Premium has more powerful tools for optimizing a website for SEO. It is a good choice for anyone who wants to optimize their site for SEO.

 2. Video SEO

Yoast's Video SEO pack is one of the extension packs for the Yoast SEO plugin. It is designed to improve how easily the videos on your site are found and how much people engage with them. Video SEO includes several useful features to help your videos perform better in search results and on your site.

 3. SEO News

Yoast's SEO News pack is one of Yoast's high-quality add-ons. It comes with Yoast SEO Premium or Yoast SEO Academy and is designed for news websites and sites that publish new content regularly. With its rich, high-quality features, SEO News cuts the time and effort needed to optimize for SEO and extends the site's reach.

4. Local SEO

Plan Local SEO from Yoast is designed to help local businesses optimize their website content to attract customers in their area. This extension offers local SEO features for registering the business on Google My Business, helping the site rank high in local search results. That improves your chances of reaching potential customers.

-> A detailed guide to registering Google Business for your company

A website design and SEO company Mona Media that has been operating for more than 10 years. We give businesses a strong lift in income and up 100-200% revenue. Every project beat its KPIs in just 6 MONTHS, with keywords reaching TOP 1-3 search result pages. Contact us now to get the full-scope SEO price list in full detail.

SEO tools for SEO professionals

What Yoast SEO is, and how to install, set up and use it, are the basics. If you want to be a professional SEO, explore the tools below:

• Free SEO Tools: A tool that detects duplicate content in a post you are about to publish.
• Website Speed Test: Tools checks your website's loading speed.
• Google Search Console: A very effective on-page statistics tool. It helps remove bad backlinks, optimize links, create sitemaps, run query statistics keyword rankings, etc. When your website has an error, this tool sends an alert and guides you to a fix very quickly.
• Google Trends: A free tool for judging the relative popularity of a query.

Is Yoast SEO enough for a Vietnamese business website?

The answer depends on the scale of operation. For a website of a few dozen pages with one person managing content, the free version of Yoast does the job: setting titles and descriptions, sitemaps and readability checks.

When a website grows to thousands of pages with several departments publishing, we see systems that use Yoast start to run into other problems. Meta fields are left blank in bulk, schema is inconsistent across page types, and there is nothing yet for declaring content to AI tools. At that point a business needs a process layer on top of the plugin, not just more features.

If Yoast is running fine for you, keep it and don't remove it in a hurry. What is worth doing now is checking that meta and schema are filled in on every page, especially product pages that few people look at. You can also compare the options in the article plugin SEO WordPress, and review the basics in the article What is WordPress. If your website needs someone to look after everything from technical work to content, see SEO services package from MONA?

More frequently asked questions about Yoast SEO

Answers to the questions people ask most about Yoast SEO:

Should you use a Premium version of Yoast SEO that is shared for free?

Yoast SEO Premium is a product of Yoast, protected by intellectual property rights and privacy policies. Using a shared copy of Yoast SEO Premium without buying a license from the maker violates the product's terms of use.

Yoast SEO Premium has many useful features for optimizing a website for SEO. If you want the Premium version, use the paid plan so you get support and security assurance.

Why does using Yoast SEO keywords help you reach the top more easily?

Yoast SEO's keyword feature lets you pinpoint the keywords related to your site content, so you can focus on them and optimize for success.

The tool can also assess keyword competition, optimize meta tags and give you better control over keyword strings so you produce better content. With Yoast SEO, keywords are optimized and pushed toward the top of search results, which increases your reach to potential customers.

Can you use Yoast SEO and other SEO plugins at the same time?

You can use Yoast SEO and other SEO plugins on your website at the same time. However, many SEO plugins have similar features, and running several can cause conflicts and slow your site down. To optimize your site, choose one or two SEO plugins of real quality to use alongside Yoast SEO.

That covers the essential knowledge about Yoast SEO including what it is and how to use and set it up. We hope this article helps you understand it and gives you everything you need to work with Yoast SEO. Good luck!

See also:

• Top 10 best WordPress SEO plugins of 2023
• Top 5 most popular text editing plugins in WordPress