You may have seen something called Yoast when you’re logged in to WordPress. You may have just figured it was a plugin that automates all of the SEO magic for you. Rather, Yoast is a tool and we are going to give you some in-depth knowledge on how to use Yoast to ensure that SEO magic.

To customize Yoast for your site, you can adjust the settings.

Login to WordPress, click on the Yoast SEO Dashboard menu, and you will see the menu expand. Select Settings.

On many blogs tags and categories are becoming indexed. These pages are creating duplicate content, which Google does not favor. Some people may choose to noindex the tag and category pages, but sometimes your category page may serve a purpose and be a well-performing page. In that case, just noindex your tag pages and keep your category pages indexed.

Follow these steps to noindex only the tag pages:

In each blog post you write, you should see a Yoast SEO box at the bottom of the post. We’ll talk about each element and how to update the Yoast SEO Meta Box.

On your All Posts page, you will see an SEO Score and Readability Score column. The dot colors change based on the post's score. Green tells you which aspects of your SEO are good, while orange and red indicate where you can improve your SEO strategy. You can see the traffic lights in your meta box on the SEO, Readability, and Inclusive Language tabs. You can also see the SEO and Readability traffic lights on your All Posts list.

You can use the traffic lights to help you adjust your SEO and Readability scores. You can click on the blue links in the meta box next to the traffic light analysis to be taken to Yoast articles with advice to improve.

More information from Yoast:

Under the SEO tab, you will see a box that says ‘Focus Keyphrase’. A keyphrase doesn’t have to be one word, it can be a few words, and it could even be a sentence, but you want your keyphrase to have search volume, and it shouldn’t be too competitive.

Using Google Ads Keyword Planner, you can find that the word ‘safari’ has had 100K-1M average monthly searches in the US in the last 24 months and 1.7 billion results, so your post is probably not going to rank for ‘safari’.

Using the keyphrase ‘self-drive safari’ which is more qualified and it could possibly rank for this term.

Entering a focus keyword in the Focus Keyphrase field helps show you the best practices around entering this keyword.

Now this gives some good tips that can be used if they make sense. For example, adding the keyphrase to the first paragraph and adding the keyphrase more often in the post. Keep in mind that Google does not like keyphrase stuffing.

A blog can rank for many different keyphrases, so you want to include synonyms and related terms in the article if it makes sense. Related terms or other keyphrases that are relevant may make excellent H2s, H3s, and so on.

More Information: How to choose the right focus keyword

The Google Preview section is where you will see how this article will display on Google.

You can toggle between desktop and mobile by selecting the appropriate radio button.

Remember that most readers will be searching using their mobile, so it is important that this view is optimized.

The snippet preview shows the Title Tag and Meta Description. If you want to edit your URL, title tag, and meta description, click on Edit Snippet.

The SEO title can be adjusted to your liking by adding, reordering, or removing the Title, Page, Separator, Primary Category, and Site title variables. The bar below the SEO title will change colors based on the word count. Red indicates the title is too short, green indicates the title is the ideal length, and orange indicates the title is too long.

The Slug is typically your title separated by dashes. You can see it at the end of a URL.

The Meta description should be 106-142 characters and should include the keyphrase to boost SEO. The bar below the Meta description will change colors based on the word count. Red indicates the description is too short, green indicates the description is the ideal length, and orange indicates the description is too long.

Note: If you decide to edit the snippet after your post is published, then you will need to 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL.

Read more from Yoast:

There are many different schools of thought on the optimal character lengths, but I would keep your title tags under 65 characters and your meta descriptions around 300 characters. The meta description length changed in the last few months as Google is showing up to 325 characters in the search engine results page (SERP), where it used to show only 160 characters in the SERP. If you want to play around with your title tags and meta descriptions in Excel or Google Sheets, you can use the formula =len(cell you want to view) to view the character count, or simply use the green bars as your guide in the Yoast SEO Box.

First off, stay within character limits (see above paragraph). Your title tags should be ‘Exciting headline + Focus Keyword | Brand Name’. Some of your blogs may have a lot of characters in them like ‘Experiences You Should Have Podcast’, giving you not much room to work with for your keyword, but work with what you have and stay within character limits so your titles aren’t being cut off in the SERP.

Your meta descriptions can be lengthy (300-325 characters), and this is your advertisement for Googlers to click on your article. Start off your meta description with action words like ‘learn, discover, find out, etc’. Include your keyword in the meta description because Google may bold the keyword in your meta description if a searcher is looking for that term. Draw the searcher in to click on your article and write using an active voice. You are talented writers, so use your talent and write compelling meta descriptions!