Optimising your WordPress website for search engines doesn’t have to be complicated. Thanks to plugins like Yoast, improving SEO is easier than ever. Yoast is widely considered the best simple SEO plugin WordPress users can install, and here at KIJO, we rely on it for our own content marketing as well as for our clients’ websites.
If you’re wondering “what is Yoast?” and how to use it effectively, this guide will walk you through everything you need to know.
Yoast is a WordPress SEO plugin designed to help website owners optimize their pages for search engines. SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is crucial for improving your site’s visibility on Google. Yoast offers tools that analyse your content, identify technical SEO issues, and provide recommendations to improve your rankings.
Absolutely! Yoast is a must-have for any WordPress site looking to improve SEO. It simplifies complex SEO tasks and provides easy-to-follow guidance. While every SEO tool has limitations, Yoast stands out as the most straightforward and simple SEO plugin WordPress users can implement. If you want your WordPress site to be competitive, using an SEO plugin is essential, and Yoast is our top recommendation.
Both Yoast and SEMRush are excellent SEO tools, but they serve different purposes. Yoast focuses on on-page SEO, helping you optimise content, titles, and metadata for Google rankings.
SEMRush, on the other hand, is a comprehensive digital marketing tool that includes keyword research, competitor analysis, and site audits. Whilst SEMRush is more extensive, Yoast is the best SEO plugin for WordPress when it comes to on-page content optimisation.
Installing Yoast is simple:
Once activated, Yoast’s settings will appear in your WordPress dashboard.
After installation, follow these steps to set up Yoast:
If your website is live, Yoast will analyse technical SEO issues and provide recommendations.
Select whether your site represents an individual or an organisation. If an organisation, add your company name and logo.
Enter your business’s social media links, such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.
Have an Instagram account? Give KIJO a follow on Instagram. Our handle is @kijocreative.
Choose whether you want Yoast to track your WordPress site’s data and sign up for Yoast’s newsletter if desired.
Yoast’s SEO meta box is one of its most powerful features. It helps you optimise content for search engines and can be found below the WordPress editor (or in the sidebar if using the block editor).
In this tab, you can:
Yoast uses a traffic light system to indicate SEO performance:
Yoast also provides actionable recommendations to enhance your content’s ranking potential.
If you are signed up to Yoast Premium, you can access more advanced SEO analysis, keep track of the SEO performance of the page and include additional target keywords.
The Readability tab evaluates how easy your content is to read. It checks for passive voice, long sentences, and paragraph length. Like the SEO tab, it uses a traffic light system to suggest improvements.
Cornerstone content refers to your most important pages. Marking pages as Cornerstone Content tells Yoast these are key pages to prioritise for SEO.
If you need to prevent Google from indexing a page or following links, you can adjust these settings in the Advanced section.
Schema Tab
The Schema tab helps search engines understand the type of content on your page, such as whether it’s a blog post, article, or report.
Social Tab (Yoast Premium Only)
Yoast Premium users can customise how content appears on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), overriding default settings.
Yoast’s dashboard provides an overview of your site’s SEO health. Here, you’ll find alerts and recommendations for improving your site’s optimisation.
Enable or disable specific Yoast features, such as XML sitemaps and content analysis tools.
Connect Yoast with third-party tools like SEMRush or security plugins like Solid Security WP Pro.
Verify your site with search engines by entering your Google Search Console verification code.
This feature optimises how search engines crawl your site, improving efficiency and load times.
Yoast SEO Premium offers additional features, including:
However, the free version of Yoast is powerful enough for most users. If you need more advanced SEO support, consider working with SEO professionals like the KIJO team.
While Yoast is the best simple SEO plugin WordPress users can install, SEO is an ongoing process. To fully optimise your site, you need expert support.
At KIJO, the KIJO Optimise Package provides a complete audit of your website’s SEO, UX, traffic, and conversions. We analyse over 113 data points to enhance your site’s ranking, traffic, and conversion rates.Ready to take your SEO to the next level? Contact KIJO today!
Need expert guidance on your SEO, or considering working with an expert agency for your next digital project? Book a complimentary, 30-minute consultation with our Head of Partnerships & Co-Founder, Kirk Thompson. Let’s bring the vision of your recruitment brand to life — book your free consultation via the link below:
