WP SEO Plugin by Yoast – Set up

In this article, we will explore the set up process of this plugin. Setting up the Yoast SEO Plugin isn’t difficult – the plugin configuration is located in the left panel in your WP admin dashboard.   The configuration is broken down into tabs.

 Dashboard Settings

The first in line is the Dashboard. The dashboard, contains two functionalities:

1. wizard for easy walk-through
2. notifications

Configuring the General Settings tab enables you do a one-time text-link counter for use later.

• Features: there’s no reason not to enable all of these ‘buttons’.
• Company Info: this is important. Select individual/person or company and upload a default photo for those times when you’re sharing your site and want control over which image is shown.
• Webmaster tools: one way or another you need to verify your webmaster tools account. We usually add the verification HTML code to the Genesis > Theme Settings > Header box. Or you can add it here.
• Security: leave this on, if you’d like to be able to edit the canonical link (you don’t have to know what this is quite yet!)

Titles & Meta Settings

The “Titles” section gives you the ability to change your titles’ default settings.

• Force Rewrite: Leave it at whatever the plugin recommends

For the maining settings, we recommend the following:

• Homepage: your actual blog title (not necessarily the domain name), do NOT stuff keywords or geographic areas in the title; use the actual description – that someone will likely read so do not put a long list of keywords here either. It will look spammy.
• Post, Page, all post types: This section allows you to input a ‘template’ like this one:
  • %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
  • If the post in question is paged, it will look like this: This Post Title Page 2 – WPBarista
  • You can play around with the templates available here.
• Category, Tags & other taxonomies: 
  • %%term_title%% Archives %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
• Archives: deindex either the author archives or date based archives. Most single-author blogs should deindex the author-based archives.
• Other: subpages: index; meta keywords: disabled

Keep in mind that any of these can be overwritten.

Social tab

Complete all these that apply.

• Facebook: this is where you change the default description, title and image that is shared when someone shares the homepage.
• Facebook Insights & Admins: I recommend using the actual Facebook program to explore your insights making this part unnecessary
• Twitter: enable with large images
• Pinterest confirmation: this is likely already done either via plugin or in the head of your theme. If you need to verify your account, go ahead and add the html tag here.
• Google +: since it’s google, I still have my publisher page attached although I’m not sure that it matters anymore!

XML Sitemap

Always keep this enabled. Delete any other xml sitemap plugins. This is the only one you need. Go to Google webmaster tools/search console and add this url to the sitemap tab:  myblog.com/sitemap_index.xml

If there’s something you do not want in the sitemap (a duplicate post, sponsored material, etc) you can leave it on the blog for your readers but remove it from sitemap using the “excluded posts” tab. (also be sure to add this to ignored links in your Google Search Console.

Advanced Settings

Permalinks: we recommend these settings:

• keep category base in URL
• redirect attachment URLs to parent post
• Remove stop words in slugs
• remove ?replytocom variables
• do NOT redirect ugly permalinks

RSS: 

If you’d like to put a copyright on your feed, this is the place to do it:

• © 2017 WPBarista.