Intro

This document is a quick guide to the search engine optimisation (SEO) Yoast WordPress tool – what sections there are in the UI and guidance on how to use it. I would recommend using it to maximise internal and external discoverability. Some guidance on WordPress tags has been added to help boost SEO.

For additional guidance use the hyperlinks provided in the tools or take the SEO Yoast min course SEO for Beginners training (Opens in a new browser tab) .

Tags and key phrases

Tags

Craft a dictionary of tags that you can apply to Posts and Pages and do not deviate; have a concise collection of words so pages link and the theme of the site is defined.

You can use online tools like Google Trends, Keyword Tool, etc. to check how popular your key words are (remember to filter by ‘United Kingdom’, ‘Past 12 months’ and ‘Jobs & Education’ ); see related searches to see if it is term used in similar areas.

Tag management page will be found at:

https://website.com/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=post_tag&post_type=page

Have a concise tag name, and relevant but short tag slug, description can be useful for internal guidance

Make sure to delete or edit tags that don’t fit with your key theme, or are outdated terms – updating the tag will update it on all tagged pages.

Keyphrases

Key phrases can be a sentence or a collection of key terms that should be the focus of the page in question. It is set in the SEO Yoast section of the page editor.

Page Editor

Title

Have a title that is descriptive with a good length

Permalink

Have the permalink reflect the title

Show tags

Tick to show tags – it will generate links between related content

Body content

Make sure that content doesn’t use H1 as this is used for the page title

Use H2, H3, in the correct order

Try to add lots of content (minimum of 300 words)

Add transition words like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘so’ and ‘because’.

Have internal links to other pages, and external links to related content

SEO Yoast guidance

Expand the sections and use the tabs to access more information

Snippet Preview

This shows what the webpage summary looks like on Google.

Select ‘Edit Snippet’ to edit what the Page name, Slug and Description looks like (with text or using ‘Insert snippet variable’)

The bar below SEO Title will change from Red to Orange to Green to Red to inform you of how good the display title is.

Readability analysis

Detailed guidance with supplemental links will tell you how to improve the text, this will dynamically update as you change the content.

Focus keyphrase

Set the Focus keyphrase to the key purpose of the page, optimum length for a keyphrase is up to 4 function words (keywords).

Detailed guidance with supplemental links will tell you how to improve the text, this will dynamically update as you change the content.

Page sharing

Allows you to set what social media sites will pull from the page when it is shared.

Recommend to always use hashtags in the description and the website’s logo as the image – to help with brand recognition.

Even though it says ‘Facebook’ these settings will pull through for most social media platforms.

Advanced SEO settings

Please leave the advanced settings.

Excerpt (at the bottom of the page)

Excerpt usually are a copy and paste of the Strapline. What is set here is reflected in the search results, if it is not set then it will take the first sentence of the page content

Site-wide SEO Yoast settings

On the left of the WordPress admin area there is a button for SEO with a Yoast icon

The subsections are

• General – this does not need to be edited, unless we get Google verification
• Search Appearance –Subsections: General, Content Types, Media, Taxonomies, Archives, Breadcrumbs and RSS
  • General – use this to set how the snippet variables in the page settings appear in the search engine display.
  • Content types – set the default SEO title and Meta description for Posts and Pages – as a back up or starting point for newly created content
  • Media – Do not edit
  • Taxonomies – Do not edit
  • Archives – Do not edit
  • Breadcrumbs – Do not edit
  • RSS– Do not edit
• Search Console – Ignore it is just for Google Authorisation Codes to link to Google Search Console
• Social – Add social media accounts to let search engines know which social profiles are associated to this site
• Tools – Ignore this section
• Premium – Ignore this section
• Courses – Links to further training courses available