Today we explore some aspects of WordPress Seo, the most popular CMS right now with the creation of a small YOAST plugin guide. Anyone with a WordPress website knows Yoast Guide , an on-page SEO optimization plugin for WordPress sites. However, using the WordPress YOAST plugin to do advanced SEO may not be easy.
HOW TO USE YOAST SEO PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS?
Yoast is a WordPress plugin for optimizing the SEO aspects of the website. Published in the Premium version, it has some interesting features and in my opinion is now the best solution to address some aspects of on-page SEO optimization.
The aspect we would like to highlight in this article is Yoast’s ability to generate highly optimized meta descriptions and titles automatically.
Among the most interesting sections to get to the heart of YOAST features here are the main features.
General
In the general section of the dashboard you will find general settings for SEO optimization of elements such as the title tag and the meta description .
These are important elements because, as you probably already know, they serve to give precise indications to Google about the content that you treat within that given page.
This Yoast SEO setup allows you to also choose the separator for the management of article title divisions and site name.
I recommend you to manually change the title and description of the various pages, thus making reference to the need for positioning them.
Content Types
In the content types section you have access to options regarding articles and visibility in the search results of various content types, including custom content types created with CPT UI plug-in
Metadata
In the metadata section of the dashboard you can decide whether to get certain content indexed by search engines and by Google. Use the options with care, since an incorrect use, for example, of the no index tag can heavily affect the visibility and ranking of your WordPress site.
XML Sitemap and Search Console
With YOAST it is very easy to create an XML sitemap and the creation takes a few moments and the generated sitemap must be connected to the Search Console, to be easily identified as read by the Google search engine. It is a sitemap equivalent to those created with All in One SEO and Google Sitemap XML. These are XML sitemaps that update automatically, so once created if content is added these will be automatically inserted into the sitemap.
Average
In the media section I suggest you enable the option to make the URL of a media file (for example an image) redirect to the file itself.
Taxonomies
In the taxonomy section there are many options that refer to some important points of the site that concern in particular the categories and the tags .
Archives
In the archives section you can customize your choices regarding author archives and special pages that may concern, for example, an error 404.
Breadcrumbs
Then there is another interesting section, which is that of breadcrumbs , or bread crumbs.
These are important elements that help you navigate the site and reach pages of interest. In this section you can choose whether to keep them enabled or not.
RSS feeds
In the RSS feed section you will be able to activate RSS feeds.
Search Console
In this section you can link the verification code of the Google Search Console to have an integration between the data provided by Google and those of YOAST.
Optimization for Social Media Marketing
In the optimization section for social media marketing you can choose which social profiles (Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook etc.) to link to your WordPress site.
Import & Export
Here you have the possibility to import or export the data of other SEO plugins, and this could also be used to make a backup of your options.
SEO Optimization for WordPress: Basic Settings and Advanced Settings
In the SEO Optimization section for individual pages or posts, you can make all updates and changes to SEO elements such as the SEO title and the meta description.
There are both basic and advanced settings to be set. Obviously it is good to know what you are doing, because touching certain elements (as you will read shortly) could cause damage to the indexing and SEO positioning of your site on Google.
Meta Title and SEO Title
The meta title, or SEO title as this plug-in calls it, is an important SEO factor. I suggest you use it to enter the target keywords of your content. You can easily edit the SEO title with Yoast. In this Yoast SEO guide we will discuss these points in detail, namely the generation of TITLE with YOAST.
Meta Description
The meta description is not an SEO factor, however it is important to increase the CTR of your result in the SERP. Use it to attract the potential visitor. This element is also easily set up with the WordPress plug-in. In this Yoast SEO guide we will find out how to use YOAST to generate advanced descriptions.
What are the Description?
Let’s get to the heart of this article and see how to use YAOST to generate Description. The meta description is an attribute within your meta tags of a web page intended to describe the content of the page. In short, it is a piece of code that contains the textual description of what the page itself contains, such as a summary.
This element is very important as this fragment of text can appear in the search engine results under the title as in the example below
Yoast guide as well as a Meta description
Sometimes search engines, if the text is considered to be irrelevant or completely missing, automatically generate the description by extracting a text fragment from the page text.
To view the meta description of any web page, right-click on the page and select “view source” or “view page source”.
You will find a piece of code like this
<Meta name=”description” content=” XYZ”/>
One of the main aspects to be taken into account in SEO optimization of the description is
- they must be unique and not duplicate
- they must be optimized and contain the target keyword
- they must be attractive to invite users to click on the search result
- they must be explanatory
To learn more about the topic, please read the article Why use Meta descriptions for SEO
What are the titles?
The title tag is a piece of HTML code that specifies the title of a particular web page. It indicates the title that will appear at the top left of the browser when you visit a web page.
In the source code, the title tag is embedded in the header of a web page (ie between the <head> and </head> tags)
Displaying the HTML code of the page it appears like this
<title> Digital marketing service</title>
Some tips for generating effective TITLES from an SEO perspective
Make sure every page on your site has a different title.
- This should be done in order to indicate unique and independent keywords associated with each of the pages.
TRY TO BE SPECIFIC.
- If you are writing a title for the home page, never simply use “Home” or “Welcome Page”. Remember that the title must attract visitors from search results pages, so the title should inform the visitor, as well as the search engine, about the specific content of each page.
EYE TO LENGTH.
- Google shortens the title on the results page after about 60 characters. Try to get a full main sense of the page in about 60 characters. Make sure you don’t leave words or phrases cut in half.
TRY TO INCLUDE AT LEAST ONE KEYWORD IN THE TITLE OF EACH PAGE .
- As mentioned before, search engine crawlers pay special attention to the title, so you need to take advantage of this search engine marketing The title tag is the first thing spiders notice to identify the content of a document, and therefore can be valuable SEO tools for your site.
Because TITLE and DESCRIPTION are important for SEO
As mentioned before, the titles and the descriptions are used by search engines to try to understand the content of the page and present it to users in the search results pages.
Taking Google’s SEO agency as an example, we see the results that appears.
This displayed object is called SNIPPET of the SERP (search engine result page) and as you can see the title is the main link of the result while the description is the text that appears
THEREFORE GOOGLE USES THESE ELEMENTS OF THE PAGE IN ITS SEARCH RESULTS!
This aspect is fundamental because not only do they give directions to Google on the content, but an effective title and description can entice users to click on the result by increasing the traffic generated by Google (isn’t this the goal of SEO? ;-))
Meta tags are an important factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about and are the first impression that many people have of your page .
Title tags are used in three key points: (1) search engine result pages (SERP) , (2) web browsers (as page titles) and (3) social networks (in social sharing)
Since title tags and descriptions are such an important part of SEO optimization of search engines and user research experience, writing them effectively is a fundamental SEO activity, which usually requires a low effort (if the site is a few pages, though !!) and high impact (because it brings enormous benefits).
Now below we will see how to generate these elements, title and description, automatically with Yoast , the WordPress SEO plugin.
How to generate Description and Title with Yoast
One of the most important functions of Yoast SEO (available both in the free or premium version) is the possibility of automatically adding templates of titles and descriptions to the home, to all types of posts and custom post types, to all pages of taxonomies ( also custom) and other pages. In a very effective and simple way, with Yoast you can create predefined title and description templates for each type of content .
This can obviously be done on each page individually, through the snippet editor that the plugin creates, visible in the site editor
therefore with Yoast it is possible to write a Title and a Description for each page. Yoast also provides you with a quick visual indication (via a traffic light) if the meta information is well optimized.
As you can imagine creating half descriptions and page titles for very large websites and with many pages can become a very long and tiring job.
And in this case, Yoast offers the possibility to automatically generate Description and Title for each type of content, greatly simplifying this operation.
Description and Title templates in Yaost
Yoast SEO automatically adds predefined templates to all the content on your site. You can edit the title and met models by going to the WordPress installation administrator and clicking on SEO → Search Appearance
At this point it is possible to create a personalized description template for each type of content, by selecting the pre-configured variables
However the thing that few people know is that the variables that appear in the list are only the smallest part of those available , in fact in the screen we see only 4 of them but in reality they are dozens and dozens and can help us to create the title and the description automatically for very large sites.
To insert the variables just type in the relevant code and send, for example to enter the date of creation of the post in the title (in the case, for example, in a news website) just enter the following code.
+1 8588791912 (USA),