One of the most popular Wordpress plugins, Yoast SEO can optimize websites of all types to rank more highly in search engines. Considering it’s free, it’s no question why this plugin is popular amongst different businesses. If you are looking to try Yoast for the first time, here are some simple ways to start.
Write your page titles and meta descriptions
Yoast enables users to optimize every single meta description for any page or post, including blogs. Considering other platforms like Squarespace only enable you to modify these descriptions for certain pages, Yoast users have the advantage to optimize every single page for SEO.
Analyze pages
Not only does the Yoast SEO tab allow you to look at your meta descriptions - it also will analyze your content, alt or alternative descriptions for images, your introductory paragraph for posts, and even the URL itself. This plugin can also monitor your keyword distribution, ensuring you aren’t keyword stuffing or even competing with yourself by including the same keywords on multiple pages so that your lower priority pages aren’t outranking your higher ones.
Search Appearance & Search Console
Yoast allows you to modify your search engine appearance within the post type visibility feature. Essentially, you can control what content appears on the search engine - and how it appears. So if you have an exclusive offer just for your current audience, you could modify accordingly. Additionally, you can use Google Search Console to view more about your organic ranking all in the same platform.
Social
This plugin allows you to control how your content is presented on social media platforms. Instead of toggling back and forth from a marketing automation platform or even scheduling within individual platforms, this plugin will enable you to optimize the appearance of your content on social, and allow you to see insights from platforms like Facebook.
Sitemaps
Typically setting up sitemaps has to be performed on that search engine, but Yoast will automatically generate a sitemap of all of your pages for you. It’s not a one and done process as well - Yoast will even update your changes to the search engines on your behalf.