This
is a getting started guide for people who want to optimize their
WordPress sites for search engines. WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the
most popular of all WordPress SEO plugins, having been downloaded over
670,000 times since it's launch early in 2011.
In
this tutorial we're going to introduce you to the WordPress SEO plugin
and also show you how to choose settings that will work successfully.
Step 1. Install the WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin
- Go to Dashboard
- Plugins
- Add New
- Search for WordPress SEO by Yoast
- Click Install Now
After you activate the plug-in, you will see a new menu section on the Dashboard for managing your SEO.
Step 2. Go to the SEO Dashboard
Yoast
WordPress is pretty cool in that it really won't let you make a
mistake. It will warn you and give you a quick Fix it button, so you can
start off on the right foot. If you see this message, click Fix It.
Step 3. Set your Permalinks
The
Fix It button takes you to your Permalinks Settings page. Choose one of
the options that includes %postname% in your permalinks. Alternately
you can create a custom structure, and for SEO purposes you want to make
sure your hostname is included in the link.
Be sure to save your changes and then go back to the SEO Dashboard.
Step 4. General Settings
This
plugin adds a new panel to your post and page editing screens, that
allows you to edit the SEO features. The general settings will show or
hide parts of the panel.
I checked the meta keywords tag, but you
don' t really need to. No search engines actually use keywords any more.
They make a nice note for developers when they are working on the
coding of the pages.
If you're really new at SEO you might want to disable the Advanced part of the SEO meta box, so you can do no harm.
Generally if you don't check anything in this section you'll be OK.
Step 5. Verify Your Site with Webmaster Tools
Google,
Yahoo! and Bing have tools for monitoring traffic. They also allow you
to submit your site to the search engine, and submit a sitemap. So it's
good if you have visited these sites and created an account, and gone
through the verification process.
The field titles are links to
the services, so just click on the field titles and you can complete
this process. When you sign up you are given a choice of verification
method. Use a meta tag or download a file that you then place in your
home directory. If you choose the meta tag method, you simply copy the
meta tag into the appropriate field.
If you're already verified
and have used the download method, you don't have to do anything here.
Or if you find the meta tag method confusing, use the download method
instead.
Step 6. Set the Page Titles
Your choice on this section depends on your template. When in doubt, click Force rewrite titles.
To check the title tag in your template to see if it matches:
Go to Appearance > Editor > choose header.php from the right column.ook at the code and search for the
If you don't feel comfortable doing that, click Force rewrite titles,
which will be the easiest thing to do. Changing that simple tag sounds
easy, but below is the code for the title tag in the 2011 theme. The
tag, and how to change it isn't always obvious. Only change this if you
really know what you're doing.
Some themes will work perfectly with this plugin. Others would need modification or the "Force" method.
Step 7. Set the Title Templates for Singular Pages
You
can create two types of templates here, static and dynamic. To create a
static template, type in exactly what you want. You might want to use a
static template on the home page or a landing page. It depends on your
SEO objectives.
Step 8. Create Dynamic Title Templates
Dynamic
templates are created from the page and post entries themselves, and
will change as you change content. A long list of variables is included
at the bottom of the page, in a panel titled "Help on Title Settings" to
help you build your variable templates. You will want to consult this
before creating the templates.
Post, page and attachment templates
Here are some examples of common setups. Go through the entire section and set up templates for each type.
Note
that you can also combine text and variables in the same field. The "-"
in the title template field is text so it's easier to read on the site.
You could also do something like this:
%%title%% - Brought to you by %%name%%, SEO Expert
Category template
Instead
of including the excerpt or caption, we are getting the meta
description from the category description. If you haven't written
descriptions for all the categories, this is a good reason to get into
the habit. Take your time and write good descriptions and use good SEO
practices.
Date Archives template
If
you leave any section blank, there is a default template that will be
used. The Date Archives default template is perfectly adequate, so we
can skip this one.
404 error page template
You can combine static text with variables.
Also
note that all these templates can be overwritten when you create the
post or page. These are now the defaults, and if you don't specify
anything when you create the entry, these templates supply the tags.
Step 9. Indexation
The
first thing you see at the top of the Indexation section is a checkbox
to toggle the verbose explanations of each of the settings below. Check
it and the advice disappears, un check it and it all the descriptions
come back. That's all it does.
Facebook OpenGraph
You
get this information from Facebook. If you don't have any idea what
this is it won't hurt to leave it blank. Before you fill it in, learn
all you need from Facebook's documentation.
Indexation Rules
These
are the suggested settings for the No Index Rules. You've may be
familiar with nofollow rules in robots.txt files. This isn't like that.
These rules do not stop a spider from following links on the page, they
just won't index that particular page, but the will follow the links to
other pages that do need to be indexed.
There's no reason for a
search engine to index a registration page, a search page, a shopping
cart page or other pages of a similar kind.
Nofollow Settings
You
will want to restrict some pages with nofollow. A searchbot spends only
so much time on a site with each visit, following links on unnecessary
pages dilutes your page strength for the important pages. So check all
the boxes in this section.
Archive Settings
If you are running a single author blog, you can disable the author archives. If you have a multi-author blog, don't check it.
Don't
disable the data-based archives unless you don't show the archives on
your site at all. If you check this it will completely disable the
archives and they will not be viewable by the public.
Robots Settings
Don't mess with this unless you are a total expert. If you're a novice skip it entirely.
Clean up settings
Most
of the cleanup is handled by default functions of the plug-in. These
are the only optional choices you get to make. You might consider
checking the second and third boxes if you use a remote editor or
Windows Live Writer. Other than that nothing here needs to be checked.
Step 10. The XML Sitemap
Check the box to make all the options visible.
By
default, the plug-in does everything for you. Optionally you can have
it submit your sitemap to Yahoo! and Ask.com as well as Google and Bing.
If you have webmaster accounts there, check the boxes.
The rest
of the form is about things you don't want to include on site maps. If
you're a beginner and the site is small, you don't need to worry about
excluding anything. You need to study up on sitemaps as you get more
experienced./
You don't need any other XML sitemap plugins if you are using this one.
Step 11. Adjust the Yoast Permalinks settings
We already set the basic WordPress Permalinks. These settings only concern the permalinks created by the Yoast plug-in.
Strip the category base.
By default WP adds /category/ inside each permalink it creates.
Checking this stops that from happening. The only time using this could
be a problem is if a category name and a title might be the same. If you
don't have a specific reason for preventing this, don't check the box.
Enforce a trailing slash on all category tag URL's
You probably want this to happen. So check this box.
Redirect attachment URL's to parent post URL
Check this one. Word press essentially creates a new post for the
image, search engines may find the url to the image only post. This will
redirect them back to the parent page so the full page gets indexed and
followed.
Redirect Ugly URL's
Sometimes people link to shortened urls or feedburner links. This redirects those links to your main URL
You
don't need to do anything in these two sections for now. When you've
fully explored SEO and are a pro at Google Webmaster and Analytics
tools, you can revisit these section.
Step 12. Using Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs
are great for navigation and for SEO. Your theme needs to support
breadcrumbs though. If it does, you can add some configuration to the
breadcrumb section.
Use ASCII in the separator field. For example > will put a "greater than" bracket between each breadcrumb link like this
Home > Category > Subcategory. You can use any separator you want.
If you know about modifying themes, the author includes a code snippet you can use here to add breadcrumbs to a theme.
Step 13. Foil Scrapers
I don't mean spatulas for cleaning thin sheets of metal, I mean take the advantage away from data thieves.
People
can take your original material and have it appear on their site as if
it is their own. This feature will make sure you get a link back to your
site, and the the material is properly credited to you.
You can
actually get pretty creative here. You could put advertisements and
affiliate links in here and generate some income as well.
The plugin uses variables to allow you to create a template. You can mix html, text and variables in the same message.
Step 14. Import and Export
As
a beginner, you don't need this section, but once you've got a winning
formula, you might want to duplicate it on other sites. Or if you've
done some SEO with other plugins and are changing plugins, you might
want to pull the settings into this plug-in.
Unless it applies to you, you don't need to do anything here.
You're finished! You can now add SEO features to each page and post
Now
there is a new section in your editing page that lets you set up SEO
for each individual article. If you are putting this into an existing
blog, you could have a big job ahead of you, but it won't be so bad if
you're new and just adding content and optimizing as you go along.
This
is a getting started guide, and is meant to help you get this feature
installed and working right away. There is an entire industry based just
on SEO and a lot more to learn. As you keep learning, you'll be able to
come back here and make decisions to fine tune your performance.
About the Author:
Kate Ford is Tech writer from the UK. Catch her @thetechlegend on Twitter
