{"id":3594,"date":"2026-10-07T14:27:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T14:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucartz.com\/blog\/yoast-seo-wordpress-setup\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T14:27:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T14:27:44","slug":"yoast-seo-wordpress-setup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucartz.com\/blog\/yoast-seo-wordpress-setup\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoast SEO for WordPress: How to Set It Up Properly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Short answer:<\/strong> Yoast SEO is a free WordPress plugin that writes the technical SEO parts of every page for you: the title tag, meta description, canonical URL, robots rules, social sharing tags, schema markup and an XML sitemap. In the editor it also checks each post for a chosen keyphrase and for readability. To set it up, install it from Plugins, run the first-time configuration, check a handful of settings, then write a proper SEO title and meta description for each important page and submit the sitemap to Google Search Console. We tested everything below with Yoast SEO 28.6 on WordPress 7.1.2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What Yoast SEO 28.6 adds to every post on our own blog: the robots meta tag, the canonical link and Open Graph tags.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What Yoast SEO adds to your pages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After activating the plugin on a fresh site, this is what appeared in the <head><\/code> of a blog post, trimmed a little:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<meta name='robots' content='index, follow, max-image-preview:large, max-snippet:-1, max-video-preview:-1' \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/example.com\/fresh-bread-every-morning-in-kollam\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fresh Bread Every Morning in Kollam - Asha Bakery\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We bake bread every morning.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">...<\/script>\n<title>Fresh Bread Every Morning in Kollam - Asha Bakery<\/title><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Two things are worth noticing. The title is built from a template, post title, separator, site name, until you write your own. And there is no meta description<\/strong> tag until you write one: Yoast used the post text for the social og:description<\/code>, but only printed <meta name=\"description\"><\/code> after we filled in the meta description field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plugin also replaced WordPress’s built-in sitemap. \/wp-sitemap.xml<\/code> now answered with a 301 redirect to \/sitemap_index.xml<\/code>, which listed separate sitemaps for posts, pages, categories and authors. And robots.txt<\/code> gained a Yoast block with a Sitemap:<\/code> line pointing to the index.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step 1: Install and activate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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  1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins<\/strong> and choose Add Plugin<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Search for Yoast SEO, then select Install Now<\/strong> and Activate<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. A new Yoast SEO<\/strong> menu appears with General, Settings, Integrations, Tools and more.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    If you manage the site from the command line, WP-CLI does the same in one line:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    wp plugin install wordpress-seo --activate<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    The plugin’s listing on WordPress.org<\/a> shows the current version and, at the time of writing (version 28.6), a minimum of PHP 7.4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Step 2: Run the first-time configuration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    Open Yoast SEO<\/strong>, then General<\/strong>, and choose the First-time configuration<\/strong> tab. It walks you through five steps: SEO data optimization, Site representation (whether the site is an organisation or a person, with its name and logo), Social profiles, Personal preferences and Finish configuration. Yoast uses these answers for the schema markup that tells search engines who is behind the site. You can change them later under Settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Step 3: Check these settings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    Go to Yoast SEO<\/strong>, then Settings<\/strong>. The defaults are sensible, but these sections are worth a look:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Section<\/th>What to check<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
    General, Site features<\/td>SEO analysis, readability analysis and XML sitemaps are switched on<\/td><\/tr>
    General, Site basics<\/td>Site name, tagline and the title separator<\/td><\/tr>
    General, Site representation<\/td>Organisation or person, name and logo<\/td><\/tr>
    General, Site connections<\/td>Verification codes for Google, Bing and other webmaster tools, if you verify that way<\/td><\/tr>
    Content types<\/td>“Show posts in search results” and the title and meta description templates for posts and pages<\/td><\/tr>
    Categories & tags<\/td>Whether category and tag archives should appear in search<\/td><\/tr>
    Advanced<\/td>Author archives, date archives and media pages; a single-author blog often hides author and date archives, which only repeat the same posts<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    Hiding something in search has a visible effect. We set one page to noindex: it immediately disappeared from page-sitemap.xml<\/code>, and its robots tag changed to noindex, follow<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Step 4: Optimise each post in the editor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    Below the editor (or in the Yoast sidebar) you will find these fields for every post and page:<\/p>\n\n\n\n