Yoast SEO Setup Guide for Beginners [2023 Complete Tutorial]

Yoast SEO Setup Guide for Beginners

Need a guide to set up the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin? If yes, then you’re at the right place, here we’re going to share a detailed guide on the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin setup process.

Yoast SEO is the most popular and most downloaded SEO plugin for WordPress. It comes with excellent features that help you to create search engines friendly content. Yoast gives full control over on-page SEO optimization.

There are two versions available of Yoast SEO – one is free and another one needs a subscription. The free version of Yoast SEO is available on the WordPress.org repository. You can directly download and install it from your WordPress Dashboard. For Yoast SEO paid version (Yoast SEO Premium), you need to pay a yearly subscription cost of 99$ USD.

The free version is more than enough for small sites. It has everything you need to boost the search engine appearance of your website. The paid version is for advanced users with larger sites, who need more SEO settings.

The user interface of the Yoast SEO plugin is very simple and user-friendly. You don’t need any technical knowledge to set up this plugin. You just need to follow our guide available below to properly set up Yoast SEO for your website.

In this article, we are going to share a step-by-step guide to setting up the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin correctly for optimal SEO performance.

A Guide to Setup Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin Correctly

#1 Configuration Wizard

If you’re installing the Yoast SEO plugin for the first time then after activation, you’ll be redirected to the page look-like below image.

Yoast SEO After Installation Page

On this page, you’ll be asked to deactivate any other SEO plugin (if you are already using one). Using one SEO plugin at a time is recommended because multiple SEO plugins can generate duplicate metadata for your site. And It could affect your site ranking in search engines. So, before proceeding further, deactivate your old active SEO plugin. After deactivation, click on Start first-time configuration button to start the configuration wizard.

SEO DATA OPTIMIZATION

At this tab, Yoast SEO will automatically analyze your website content. If your website has lots of content then It could take some time to complete. After this process is completed, click on the Continue button to move on to the next step.

Yoast SEO Data Optimization Tab

SITE REPRESENTATION

Now, a new tab named Site Representation will open up. As the name suggests, here you need to provide information related to your website.

First, select whether your website represents a person or an organization. If you select Person, then It will ask you to enter the Name of the person and upload the personal logo or avatar of the person. In the same way, if you choose Organization, then you’ll be asked to enter your Organization name and upload a square image of your Organization logo.

This information will be used by Google to display Knowledge Graph Card. So, fill up the details according to your website type and click on Save and continue button to move forward.

Yoast SEO Site Representation Tab

SOCIAL PROFILES

On this tab, you can add your social profile pages. It helps to optimize structured data for social platforms also. So, paste your Facebook and Twitter profile links on empty boxes and click on Save and Continue button for the next step.

Yoast SEO Social Profiles Tab

PERSONAL PREFERENCES

On this tab, you’ll be asked to choose whether you want to allow Yoast SEO to collect information about your website or not. If you don’t have any issue in sharing your website data with Yoast then select the “Yes, you can track my site data” option to allow.

We personally don’t like to share any data of our website so we disabled this option. After choosing your preference, click on Save and continue to move forward.

Yoast SEO Personal Preferences Tab

FINISH OPTIMIZATION

That’s it, you have successfully completed the Yoast SEO first-time configuration wizard.  Now click on the visit your SEO dashboard button to finish the process.

Yoast SEO Finish Configuration Tab

Leave a Comment