WordPress SEO

Welcome to WordPress SEO Guide from Courses Buddy!

Building a website is exciting, but even the most beautifully designed site won’t make an impact without consistent traffic. That’s where SEO—Search Engine Optimisation—comes in. This guide is focused on helping you grow your site’s visibility and increase traffic by improving your SEO.

In this detailed guide to WordPress SEO, we’ll explore two powerful plugins designed to enhance your site’s SEO. Along the way, we’ll also adjust some important WordPress settings that further support your optimisation efforts. By the end, your website will be fully primed for search engines and ready to climb the rankings.

What You Should Know Before Starting

Before diving into this course, it’s helpful to have some familiarity with installing and using WordPress plugins. Ideally, you should also have a live WordPress site where you can actively follow along and test the plugins in real time.

A basic understanding of how search engines work and how they rank websites will be useful. However, if you’re new to SEO, don’t worry—everything will be explained in a clear and accessible way as we go.

In this course, we’ll explore two of the most widely used SEO plugins. In Chapter Two, we’ll look at All in One SEO Pack, and in Chapters Three and Four, we’ll focus on Yoast SEO, which is often the recommended choice.

Let’s get started.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) involves enhancing both the technical setup and the content of your website to improve its visibility in search engine results.

To understand SEO in action, let’s consider a search for cake delivery. A typical search engine results page (SERP) displays several types of results:

1. Sponsored ads usually appear at the top.
2. Local results highlight nearby businesses, often including location, ratings, images, and descriptions. This data is known as microdata, and when properly configured, your website can provide this information to search engines.
3. Organic listings, found further down the page, are non-paid results. These are the primary focus of SEO.

Every SERP varies—some may omit ads or local results—but organic listings are always present. Optimising for these can significantly boost your site traffic. Higher rankings directly correlate with more clicks. For instance, moving from the second to the first position can more than triple your click-through rate. Even shifting from the second page to the first can dramatically increase visibility.

Several factors influence SEO performance:

• Content Quality: Ensure your message is original, engaging, and valuable. Search engines track bounce rates, and low engagement may signal weak content.
• Content Structure: Clear use of headings, tags, and categories helps search engines understand and index your site properly.
• Backlinks: Other websites linking to yours act as votes of credibility. Valuable tools or insightful posts often earn these naturally.

In this guide, the emphasis will be on technical SEO—ensuring that each page is equipped with:

1. A relevant page title
2. A concise and compelling meta description
3. Properly structured microdata

Once your setup is complete, it only takes a few minutes to optimise each post or page. This small effort ensures your content is properly understood by search engines, helping it rank higher and attract more traffic.

Before we begin optimising, it’s essential to identify the keywords we want to rank for. Keyword research can be extensive, especially for larger projects—it may even take weeks to complete thoroughly. For a deeper dive, the guide SEO Keyword Strategy offers more in-depth guidance.

At a basic level, there are two core strategies to consider:

The Fat Head Approach

This strategy focuses on ranking for one or a few highly searched terms. For instance, if you’re launching a digital marketing consultancy, you might try to rank for the keyword digital marketing services. These terms can drive a significant amount of traffic if ranked well.

Pros:

1. Simpler content planning—fewer keywords to focus on.
2. Potential for high traffic volume.

Cons:

1. Highly competitive—many sites are targeting the same terms.
2. Difficult to rank without a well-established site or strong backlink profile.

The Long Tail Approach

This strategy targets many low-competition keywords that are more specific but searched less frequently. Instead of aiming for digital marketing services, you might focus on terms like:

• digital marketing for dentists in Manchester
• SEO consultant for small law firms
• content strategy for wellness blogs

These longer, more precise queries have less competition and are easier to rank for. While each may not drive massive traffic on its own, collectively they can add up significantly.

Recommendation:
If your site is relatively new or hasn’t yet built strong authority, it’s advisable to start with the Long Tail Approach. It allows you to address specific queries your audience is searching for, and it’s a more achievable way to build traffic early on.

For this guide, we’ll be adopting the Long Tail Approach and selecting a few focused keywords to begin optimising existing content.

While our main focus is on optimising technical SEO within WordPress, there are several key factors outside of WordPress that significantly influence your site’s performance in search engines. To truly enhance your SEO, it’s essential to consider these external elements as well.

Website Security (SSL Certificate)

Security is now a recognised ranking factor. Search engines such as Google prefer sites that use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), indicated by “https://” in the URL.

1. SSL ensures data is encrypted between the user and the server.
2. Browsers like Chrome may display warnings or block access to insecure (non-SSL) sites.
3. Fortunately, most modern hosts now offer free SSL certificates via services like Let’s Encrypt, often enabled with just a few clicks.

Note: Always activate SSL before launching a live site. If you’re unsure how to do this, contact your hosting provider—they likely have an easy setup process.

Backlinks (Inbound Links)

Links from other websites remain one of the most influential SEO factors. Think of each link as a vote of confidence in your content.

Here are the key backlink ranking considerations:

• Popularity of the linking site: A link from Wikipedia carries far more weight than one from a small, unknown blog.
• Topical relevance: Links from websites in a related field are more beneficial. For example, if you run a cake decorating blog, links from baking or event planning websites are more valuable than those from unrelated industries.
• Local relevance: For local businesses, backlinks from regional directories or community sites help establish both industry and geographic authority.
• Freshness: Recently created links tend to be more impactful than older ones.
• Anchor text: Descriptive anchor text (e.g. best cake decorating tips) performs better than generic terms like click here.
• Trustworthiness: The credibility of the linking site plays a major role.
• Link context: Fewer outbound links on a page often increase the value of the link pointing to your site.
• Domain and page authority: Established, authoritative domains pass more SEO value.
• Social signals: While not direct ranking factors, social mentions can amplify your content’s visibility and link potential.

Other Minor SEO Signals

There are many smaller ranking signals that can still influence your performance, including:

• Domain age and length of registration.
• Historical trust and consistency of site activity.

While these elements provide only marginal benefits, it’s wise to be aware of them. However, the real impact comes from high-quality content and trustworthy backlinks.

We recommend focusing your energy on creating compelling, useful content and acquiring links from reputable, relevant sites. Address the major external SEO factors like SSL and backlinks first—then explore the minor ones as time allows.

Before installing any WordPress plugins, there are a few essential settings you can adjust that will significantly improve your site’s SEO.

Optimising URLs for Better SEO

Let’s start with your URLs. Suppose your website is running locally with a URL like mywebsite.local. You might find your About page currently displays something like ?page_id=9 — not ideal for users or search engines. A cleaner version would be /about.

To update this, go to your WordPress admin, then navigate to Settings > Permalinks. Change the setting to Post name and click Save Changes. When you refresh your About page, you’ll now see a much cleaner URL. Search engines prefer readable, structured URLs like this, so this should be the very first setting you optimise.

Organising Content with Categories and Tags

Another important area is how you organise your content — particularly through categories and tags. These taxonomies are crawled by search engines, and each has its own archive page. For example, you might have a category named Travel Tips and a tag named Travel.

Avoiding Overlap Between Categories and Tags

One common mistake is using both categories and tags with similar or overlapping names. In this case, search engines may not clearly understand which page to prioritise. You might end up splitting your traffic — some visitors land on the category page, others on the tag page. This division can dilute your SEO efforts and make optimisation more difficult.

To resolve this, choose one. If “Travel Tips” is your category, you might want to remove the tag “Travel.” You can do this by editing the post, removing the tag under the tags section, and clicking Update. To fully clean up, go to Posts > Tags in your admin area and delete the “Travel” tag altogether.

Simplifying Your Taxonomy

There’s no strict rule about whether to use only categories or only tags — many sites use a combination. The key is to avoid overlap between categories and tags that serve the same purpose. Keep your taxonomy simple, and it’ll be easier for both users and search engines to navigate your content.

Site speed is a crucial factor that can significantly impact both user experience and SEO performance. Search engines, like Google, penalise slow websites because they know that slower load times lead to higher bounce rates and poor user satisfaction. 

If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, you may lose as much as 25% of your traffic.

Why Speed Matters

A faster site provides a better user experience, which in turn boosts engagement and conversion rates. On the other hand, slow websites are likely to frustrate visitors, causing them to leave before your content even loads. Search engines prioritise faster websites, as they aim to deliver the best user experience.

Key Steps to Improve Site Speed

One of the most significant contributors to a fast website is the quality of your hosting. If you’re using budget hosting—typically priced at $5 to $10 per month—you might be running your site on slow servers. No matter how much you optimise other aspects of your site, hosting on a slow server will limit your site’s performance.

Tip: Research and invest in a reliable hosting provider that offers excellent performance and speed. Use websites that provide in-depth testing of various hosting services, organised by price range, to help you make an informed decision.

Optimise Your Images

According to Google, over 60% of a typical webpage’s size comes from images. Optimising your images can significantly reduce the load time of your pages. To prevent slow loading times, use a plugin that automatically compresses and optimises images as soon as they are uploaded.

Popular plugins like TinyPNG and Imagify optimise a certain number of images for free each month, which can dramatically improve site performance.

With 57% of online traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s clear that mobile-first design has become essential. While some might still prefer browsing on a laptop, mobile users now dominate the internet landscape, making it critical to consider mobile optimisation when building your website and improving your SEO.

Why Mobile-First Matters

Google now uses a mobile-first index, meaning that Google Bot primarily crawls and evaluates the mobile version of your website before the desktop version. This means that if your mobile site is poorly optimised or lacks content, it could negatively affect your rankings on desktop as well.

Key Tips for Mobile-Optimised SEO

Responsive Design

The easiest way to ensure your site is mobile-friendly is by using a responsive theme in WordPress. This way, your site will automatically adjust to different screen sizes, providing an optimal experience on both mobile and desktop devices.

Same Content for Both Mobile and Desktop

Google’s mobile-first index requires that both the mobile and desktop versions of your site have the same content. Having different content or missing information on your mobile site can hurt your rankings. With a responsive theme, this usually isn’t an issue.

Google Search Console

Set up a Google Search Console account for your site to monitor any issues Google Bot encounters when crawling your site on mobile or desktop. After launching your site, adding it to Google Search Console allows you to see any errors and make improvements.
Be sure to check it a few weeks after launch to address any crawling issues that may arise.

Ignoring mobile optimisation will limit your SEO efforts, so make sure to prioritise it as part of your overall strategy.

We begin our SEO journey by exploring the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin—an ideal starting point for those new to optimisation. Its setup is remarkably simple, and even without fine-tuning, installing it offers immediate benefits.

AIOSEO helps you:

1. Generate XML sitemaps, allowing search engines to detect new content updates.
2. Customise social media previews for your posts.
3. Add e-commerce microdata, improving how your content appears in search engine results (SERPs).

If you’re just getting started with SEO, this plugin offers an excellent foundation. The best part? If you decide later that another plugin suits you better—like Yoast SEO—you can import your settings from AIOSEO seamlessly, saving time and preserving your efforts.

To install:

1. Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Search for All in One SEO.
3. Click Install Now, then Activate.

Once activated, you’re ready to begin customising your SEO settings for even greater impact.

After installing and activating All in One SEO, you’ll be guided through a setup wizard. This step-by-step process helps configure the essential SEO settings to get your site indexed and ranked properly.

The wizard begins by asking what category best describes your site. For example, selecting Small Offline Business signals to Google that your physical location matters, while Online Store is ideal if users can order online.

You’ll then customise your homepage title, often made up of placeholders like your site title, a separator, and tagline. These can be changed later, so there’s no need to overthink this part.

Next, the plugin will ask if your site represents a person or an organisation, and you’ll fill in basic contact information such as your business name, phone number, and logo. This helps search engines display rich results, potentially showing your logo and contact info right on the results page.

You’ll also be prompted to:

1. Add your social media URLs (can be skipped and edited later),
2. Choose which features and plugins to enable—such as MonsterInsights for analytics,
3. Preview your Google snippet, and
4. Mark whether your site is live or under construction (under-construction sites won’t appear in search results).

At the final step, you can opt in or out of data tracking and email tips.

Once complete, your site will already benefit from improved SEO settings—without needing any advanced configuration.

With your site-wide settings complete, it’s time to optimise each post and page individually—an essential step for achieving solid SEO results. While it may take a few minutes per post, the long-term benefits are significant.

Start by editing any post (e.g., a travel blog post), and scroll down to find the All in One SEO settings. Here, you’ll see the Snippet Preview, which shows how your post will appear on search engine results pages (SERPs).

You can edit two key elements:

SEO Title in AIOSEA

This is the headline that appears on the SERP tab in your browser and on Google listings. By default, it mirrors your post title, but you can customise it to better reflect what users are searching for.

For example:

• Blog Title: Wandering Through the Hidden Streets of Venice
• SEO Title: Top 10 Hidden Gems to Explore in Venice

Even though the blog title might appeal to loyal readers, the SEO title should clearly convey value to new visitors scanning search results.

Meta Description in AIOSEA

This is a short summary shown beneath your title on search engines—a brief, compelling reason why someone should click. Think of it as your pitch to the searcher.

Without a custom description, search engines will extract a random sentence (often the first), which may not be persuasive. Instead, write a short sentence highlighting:

1. What the user will learn or discover
2. Unique tips or benefits
3. A sense of urgency or curiosity (e.g., “Discover Venice’s best-kept secrets away from the tourist crowds.”)

⚠️ Important: Always be truthful. Misleading descriptions may be ignored or rewritten by search engines.

Though you won’t see your meta description on your live site, it exists in the HTML and is picked up by search engines.

Once you’ve entered your SEO title and meta description, simply click Update.

With practice, this process becomes second nature and plays a crucial role in boosting clicks and visibility. Well-crafted titles and descriptions can dramatically improve your search performance.

Now that we’ve set an SEO title and meta description, it’s time to take another important SEO step—adding a focus key phrase. This is especially useful if you’ve already done your keyword research and want your post to rank for a specific search term.

Let’s say this post is about hidden spots in Venice. A suitable focus key phrase might be:
“hidden gems in Venice”

To add it:

• Click Add Focus Keyphrase in your SEO plugin settings.
• Enter your key phrase: hidden gems in Venice.

This phrase tells search engines, “If someone searches for this term, show them this specific post.”

✅ Avoid reusing focus key phrases across different pages or posts—each should have its own unique focus to avoid internal competition.

Once entered, you’ll see a score and a checklist with green ticks and red Xs. These are best practice suggestions to help improve your post’s relevance.

A few common checks include:

1. Is the phrase used in the first paragraph?
2. Is it in the SEO title?
3. Is it present in the meta description?
4. How often does it appear in the body content?

Don’t worry if everything isn’t green—focus on clarity and usefulness for your reader. For instance, including the phrase in your first paragraph is great, but not always natural. So rewrite only when it enhances both user experience and SEO.

It might take 15–60 minutes to properly optimise a post, but the benefits—higher rankings and better visibility—are well worth it.

In the next part, we’ll explore additional SEO tools like Yoast SEO, which offers even more powerful optimisation features.

In addition to configuring SEO for each page and post, there’s another critical step we can take to enhance SEO—adding XML sitemaps.

When we installed the All in One SEO plugin, it also automatically installed MonsterInsights, an analytics plugin. While it’s useful, it does display a banner that can’t be dismissed unless configured. For simplicity, I’ll turn it off for now, but you can either disable it or configure it to remove the banner if you prefer.

Now, let’s focus on XML sitemaps:

1. Navigate to All in One SEO → Sitemaps in your WordPress admin panel.
2. Here, you’ll see a list of your site’s sitemaps, including categories like posts, pages, and other content types.

Click on Open Sitemap, and you’ll see the URL format:
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

This XML file is like a roadmap for search engines, providing them with a list of all your pages, posts, categories, and other content. When you publish new content, the sitemap is updated automatically, ensuring that search engines can index it quickly. 

This is crucial for improving the visibility and ranking of your content, as search engines will immediately know your new content exists.

Here are some key points:

• Default Settings: For most websites, the default sitemap settings are sufficient. However, you may want to exclude certain post types (e.g., private forums or product pages) that you don’t want indexed. This can be done in the Sitemaps Settings.
• Custom Post Types: If your site has custom post types (like forums or reviews), you can choose to disable specific post types from appearing in the sitemap. This ensures that only the pages and posts you want to be indexed are included.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Google

While Google can often find your sitemap automatically, it’s always a good idea to manually submit it in Google Search Console for faster indexing. Here’s how:

1. Go to Google Search Console.
2. Select your website, or add a new site if you haven’t already.
3. Under the Sitemaps section, enter the sitemap URL:
   yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
4. Click Submit.

It may take a day or so for Google to crawl and process your sitemap. Remember, your website must be publicly accessible for this to work, so this won’t be effective for sites in development or on a local server.

Tip: Add submitting your XML sitemap to your website launch checklist to ensure it’s done as part of your SEO strategy.

While social media isn’t directly tied to SEO, the technology is very similar, which is why many SEO plugins, like All in One SEO, also allow you to configure social media meta tags. Let’s go through the steps to ensure your content looks great when shared on social networks like Facebook, X, and Pinterest.

1. Navigate to All in One SEO → Social Networks in the WordPress admin panel.
2. On the Social Networks page, start by adding your social media profiles if you haven’t done so already. We skipped this in the initial setup, so I’ll go ahead and add mine now. Simply paste the URLs of your social profiles and click Save Changes.

Now, let’s configure the social meta settings for some of the major networks, starting with Facebook:

Configuring Open Graph Tags for Facebook

Social media platforms like Facebook use a format called Open Graph, which is what defines how your page appears when shared on social media. By adding the proper Open Graph tags, we ensure that Facebook pulls the correct information from your page.

1. Default Image Source: One of the most important settings here is selecting a default image. Since images are often more engaging than text, you want to make sure that when someone shares your page, it includes an appealing image. 
   • For most sites, I recommend setting the Featured Image as the default image. This is something you should already be setting for each post.
   • If you don’t have a custom image for each post, you can select a default image, like your website logo or another representative image. This will ensure that something appears when your page is shared. 
2. Fine-Tuning Other Settings: There are additional settings for Facebook, X (Former X), and Pinterest. While these can be customized based on specific needs, the default settings should suffice for most sites, especially for new websites or posts that are just getting started. If your site starts gaining traction and receives more shares, you can revisit these settings to fine-tune them.

Testing Social Meta Tags

After configuring the settings, it’s a good idea to test them to ensure everything appears correctly. Since we are working with a test website, we can’t test these settings here, but once your site is live:

• Post any URL from your site to Facebook to see how the title, meta description, and featured image appear.
• If something looks off, you can go back and adjust the settings in All in One SEO.

Once you’re satisfied with the settings, click Save Changes to complete the process.

While we’ve primarily focused on the free features of the All in One SEO plugin, you may have noticed there are additional pro features available with a paid version. For an annual fee, you can unlock a range of advanced tools and extra support that could significantly boost your SEO efforts.

Here are some key pro features you may find useful:

1. WooCommerce SEO: If you run an eCommerce store using WooCommerce, the pro version offers dedicated tools for WooCommerce SEO. This can help you optimize product pages, improve product visibility, and ultimately drive more traffic to your store, leading to increased sales. 
2. Local SEO: For businesses with a brick-and-mortar location, the Local SEO tools are invaluable. These features help improve your local search visibility, making it easier for potential customers to find your physical store.

Before committing to the pro version, it’s worth considering the following:

• Yoast SEO Comparison: If you’re undecided about whether to upgrade, I recommend exploring the Yoast SEO plugin as well. Yoast offers a cleaner interface and provides a broader range of options for those looking for more advanced SEO capabilities. You might find that Yoast aligns better with your preferences, especially if you are looking for more flexibility and control.
• Your SEO Process: Consider how much you enjoy the process of optimizing your posts. If you find the manual optimisation work enjoyable and rewarding, the additional pro features will definitely enhance your SEO capabilities. However, if you don’t enjoy it, the advanced tools may not provide as much value.

If you’re committed to deepening your SEO strategy and are a fan of All in One SEO, the premium version offers a powerful set of tools that can take your website’s performance to the next level.

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress, ranking among the top 10 active plugins on wordpress.org. It’s used by over 5 million sites and has pioneered many features that are now standard in SEO plugins across the platform. Along with its comprehensive set of features, Yoast offers a blog that covers a wide range of SEO-related topics, including user experience, analytics, and content creation. They also offer SEO certifications, online courses, and a useful newsletter.

Let’s walk through the steps to install and activate Yoast SEO:

1. Disable All in One SEO (if installed): If you’ve previously installed the All in One SEO Pack, it’s recommended to temporarily disable it to avoid clutter in your admin panel. 
2. Install Yoast SEO Plugin: 
   1. Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin.
   2. In the search bar, type Yoast SEO.
   3. Click Install Now and then Activate. 
3. Activate Plugin: Once activated, you’ll notice a new menu item for Yoast SEO in your admin panel and an icon in the admin bar.

Now, Yoast SEO is ready to help optimise your content. We’ll explore the features in more detail in future videos, but for now, you’re all set with the plugin installed.

Yoast SEO offers a convenient import feature that allows you to transfer SEO settings from other plugins, saving you time and effort. This is especially useful if you’ve previously used an SEO plugin like All in One SEO.

Here’s how you can import your SEO settings:

Steps for Importing SEO Content:

1. Create a Backup:
   Before importing any data, it’s always a good practice to create a backup of your site. If you’re working on a live site, this step is crucial to ensure you can restore your data if anything goes wrong. 
2. Go to Import and Export: 
   • Navigate to Yoast SEO > Tools in your WordPress admin panel.
   • Click on Import and Export, then select Import from other SEO plugins. 
3. Choose the Plugin to Import From: 
   • Yoast will display a list of available plugins.
   • Select the plugin you wish to import from (e.g., All in One SEO Pack).
   • Ensure that the plugin you want to import from is activated. 
4. Select Data to Import:
   Yoast will let you import general site settings (Default settings) and post-specific metadata (Post metadata). Click Import to start the process. 
5. Check Your Data:
   After the import, go to Posts and check that the data has been transferred correctly. For example, you should see the focus keyphrase, SEO title, and meta description from the previous plugin. 
6. Complete the Configuration:
   After importing, you’ll need to go through the configuration workout, which we’ll cover in a future video. For now, make sure the imported data looks correct. 
7. Clean Up Old Data:
   It’s important to clean up any old data to avoid duplicates. Yoast provides a simple tool to remove old SEO data, keeping your site’s SEO settings streamlined. 
8. Turn Off the Previous Plugin:
   Once the import is successful, go back to your Plugins page and deactivate the old SEO plugin (e.g., All in One SEO).

By using this import feature, you can transfer your SEO settings seamlessly from another plugin like All in One SEO and continue optimising your site with Yoast SEO. This tool can save you hours, especially when migrating a fully optimised site.

After installing and importing settings into Yoast SEO, the next crucial step is running the Configuration Workout, which helps you optimise your site’s visibility to search engines. Here’s a breakdown of the process:

✅ 1. Check Visibility to Robots

• If you’re seeing a “huge SEO issue” warning on a test site, it’s likely due to robots being blocked (which is expected).
• On a live site, go to Settings > Reading, and ensure that “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked.

✅ 2. Launch the Configuration Workout

• Go to Yoast SEO in the menu.
• Click on the Configuration Workout notification.
• This wizard walks you through essential SEO setup tasks for your business or website.

✅ 3. Optimise SEO Data

• This step lets Yoast scan your site like a search engine would.
• ⚠️ Requires a live site (not a local development site).
• May take several minutes — keep the page open until it finishes.
• Optional: You can continue with other steps while this is running.

✅ 4. Business or Personal Site Info

• Tell Google whether you’re a person or a company.
• Helps Google structure your data for search results.
• Enter your:
  
  1. Business name
  2. Logo
  3. Tagline

✅ 5. Social Media Accounts

1. Add your main social media profiles (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram, Pinterest).
2. This metadata may appear in your Google Knowledge Panel, improving brand recognition.

✅ 6. Site Data Sharing with Yoast (Optional)

• Lets Yoast analyse plugin compatibility and usage trends.
• Helps improve their plugin and provide better support.

✅ 7. Newsletter Subscription (Optional)

• You can sign up for tips, news, and updates from Yoast via email.

✅ 8. Finish Setup

• Once SEO data optimisation is complete, click Finish Workout.

Your site is now better understood by search engines, increasing the chances of being ranked accurately.

Once you’ve configured your sitewide SEO settings, it’s time to focus on individual posts and pages. This is where Yoast SEO becomes especially powerful, helping you tailor each piece of content to perform better in search engine results.

Accessing the Yoast Meta Box

Open any post or page in the WordPress editor and scroll down to find the Yoast SEO meta box. This section includes the SERP preview, readability analysis, and a space to define your focus keyphrase. Each of these plays a vital role in enhancing your visibility.

Writing an Effective SEO Title

The SEO title is what users see first on search engine results pages. It should be informative and enticing enough to encourage clicks. Yoast lets you edit this directly, and tools like Headline Studio can help improve your title’s impact.

For example, instead of a basic title like Beginner Photography Gear List, you could go with:

“7 Budget-Friendly Tools That Helped Me Master Photography Faster”

This version adds specificity and emotional appeal, making it more likely to attract clicks. Avoid unnecessarily long titles that might get cut off and remove any default variables like your site name or separators unless they add value.

Writing a Persuasive Meta Description

The meta description supports your title by summarising the content in a compelling way. Don’t rely on auto-generated excerpts. Instead, write something like:

“These photography tools helped me capture sharper, brighter images without spending a fortune — perfect for beginners looking to grow fast.”

Yoast provides a colour-coded bar to help you keep the length optimal — green means it fits well within search engine display limits.

Selecting a Focus Keyphrase

Your keyphrase should reflect what your target audience would search for. Rather than a single word, think in terms of natural search queries. For this example, something like beginner photography tools would be appropriate.

Ensure each keyphrase is unique to avoid competing against your own content. Each post should be optimised for a distinct phrase.

Refining with the SEO Analysis Tool

Once you input your keyphrase, Yoast evaluates your content against several best practices. The results are shown as red, orange, or green indicators. While perfection isn’t necessary, aim to convert as many lights to green as possible.

Focus on areas such as: 

1. Including the keyphrase early in your text
2. Adding internal and external links 
3. Using subheadings for clarity
4. Optimising images with alt text

Even small adjustments improve your ranking potential over time.

Checking Readability

Yoast also checks readability — an often overlooked but important factor. It identifies overuse of passive voice, long paragraphs, and missing transition words. While readability doesn’t directly impact search rankings, it greatly enhances the user experience and keeps readers engaged.

Once you’re satisfied with the headline, description, keyphrase usage, and readability, save your changes. Going through your site and applying these improvements to each post may take time, but it adds up to a solid SEO foundation.

Once your blog post is written, the next step is ensuring it’s optimised for search engines. The Yoast SEO plugin makes this process easier by giving you visual feedback in the form of colour-coded bullet points.

Let’s look at how to make real improvements using a practical example from a live post.

Understanding the Feedback

When you enter your focus key phrase, Yoast highlights areas that need attention:

✅ Green: Good

🟠 Orange: Needs improvement

🔴 Red: Problematic

The aim is not perfection, but steady improvement—transforming more of these bullets into green through smart, relevant updates.

Reviewing the Title

One of the most common issues is a title that’s too long. While it may look fine on your site, Google may cut it off in search results.

The solution is simple:

1. Manually rewrite the title
2. Place the key phrase at the beginning
3. Keep the character count within Google’s display limit

These small adjustments improve clarity and relevance for both users and search engines.

Writing a Meta Description

Without a meta description, Google will generate one automatically—often pulling unrelated text from the page.

To write a better one:

1. Place your key phrase near the beginning
2. Summarise the value of the post clearly
3. Mention a benefit that encourages the reader to click

Keep it natural and informative, rather than keyword-stuffed.

Describing Images with Alt Text

Images are an important part of user experience, but search engines rely on alt text to understand what they contain.

Adding alt text is straightforward:

1. Select the image
2. Use the block settings to add a short, accurate description
3. Only include the key phrase if it’s genuinely relevant

This enhances accessibility as well as SEO.

Linking Internally

Internal links help search engines and readers navigate your content more easily. If you reference related topics—such as CTAs or analytics—link to existing content on your site.

This tells search engines what’s valuable and guides users to deeper resources. Even adding just two or three internal links can make a meaningful difference.

Improving Key Phrase Placement

If your key phrase doesn’t appear early in the content, Yoast will flag it. Ideally, the phrase should appear in:

• The opening paragraph
• Subheadings where appropriate
• The conclusion or “Final thoughts” section

These placements provide clear signals to search engines while keeping the content natural.

Enhancing Readability

Yoast also evaluates how easy your content is to read. It checks for things like paragraph length, passive voice, and transition words. These suggestions often improve the reader experience as much as they help with SEO.

Making small edits—shorter paragraphs, clearer sentences—goes a long way in keeping readers engaged.

Making Use of Yoast’s Visual Tools

Yoast offers helpful interface tools:

• The eye icon highlights relevant sections for each suggestion
• A sidebar version of the plugin offers quick access to the analysis panel

These make optimisation faster and more intuitive, especially for longer posts. After applying these improvements, your post will likely show many more green bullet points—and, more importantly, be more discoverable and engaging.

In this example, we began with six green bullets and finished with thirteen. It took around 15–20 minutes, which is a reasonable investment for better search performance.

Don’t aim for perfection. Aim for progress.

To further enhance your content’s reach and engagement, it’s important to add social media-specific information to each page. This feature is available in Yoast SEO Premium, which allows you to tailor how your content appears when shared across various social platforms.

Configuring Social Media Metadata

In addition to SEO settings, Yoast lets you customise how your content is presented on social media. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Edit Post Page
   Open the Yoast SEO Meta Box and click on the social sharing icon. This section allows you to configure the specifics for each platform. 
2. Set Up Image, Title, and Description 
   • Facebook and Other Networks: By default, Facebook uses the Open Graph protocol, which is also supported by other platforms like Pinterest. Therefore, the image, title, and description you set for Facebook will automatically work across most social networks. 
   • Customisation for Platforms: While Yoast enables you to customise the metadata (image, title, description) for each social network, I recommend keeping a universal title and description for all platforms to maintain consistency. However, if desired, you can tailor this information to optimise for each platform individually.

Customising for X

To ensure your content is displayed optimally on X, make sure to set the default card type for X:

1. Navigate to Yoast’s Social Settings
   From your WordPress Admin panel, click on Yoast > Social in the sidebar. 
2. Configure X Settings
   Under the X tab, select Summary with large image as the default card type. This tells X to display a large image along with a brief summary when the post is shared. Note, however, that X’s algorithm ultimately decides the final display.

Why Social Media Optimisation Matters

By adding this metadata, you ensure that your content looks appealing and informative when shared on social platforms. Whether shared on Facebook, Pinterest, or X, the right image and description will entice users to click on your content.

When you’re writing new posts, adding an SEO title and meta description is usually straightforward. However, editing existing content — especially dozens or even hundreds of posts — can become time-consuming. That’s where the Yoast SEO Bulk Editor becomes incredibly useful.

Why Use the Bulk Editor?

Instead of opening each post individually, Yoast’s Bulk Editor allows you to quickly update SEO titles and meta descriptions from a central interface. This is particularly valuable during a major SEO audit or when optimising older content for improved search performance.

How to Use the Bulk Editor in Yoast SEO

1. Accessing the Tool
   Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard, then navigate to:
   Yoast > Tools > Bulk Editor. 
2. Editing Titles and Descriptions 
   1. You can toggle between titles and meta descriptions using tabs.
   2. It’s helpful to sort by publication date to work through the most recent or oldest posts first. 
   3. For example: 
      • Update a basic title like “Spring Gardening Tips” to something more targeted like “5 Essential Spring Gardening Tips for a Healthier Lawn”.
      • Change “Freelancing as a Career” to “How to Start a Successful Freelance Career in 2025” to make it more relevant and keyword-rich. 
3. Writing Effective Meta Descriptions 
   1. Focus on common search terms your audience is likely to use.
   2. Example for the gardening post:
      “Discover five practical tips to help your lawn thrive this spring. From fertilising to weed control, everything you need in one place.”
   3. Example for the freelancing post:
      “Thinking of freelancing? Learn how to find clients, set your rates, and grow your freelance business in 2025.” 
4. Saving Your Changes 
   1. Be sure to click Save after editing titles, and again after editing meta descriptions.
   2. You must save each tab separately before switching.

Filter by Post Type

If you’re dealing with a large volume of content, start by filtering:

1. Products
2. Blog posts
3. Pages

This method keeps things organised and makes the editing process more efficient.

Important to Note

1. The Bulk Editor modifies the SEO title, not the actual post or page title shown on your website.
2. To change the visible blog title, edit each post individually or use an export-import method via a spreadsheet.

Optimising how your website appears in search engine results (SERPs) is crucial for improving visibility. Yoast SEO allows you to configure several settings that influence how your content appears in search results. One key feature is the title separator, which we briefly mentioned earlier. This symbol separates the page title from your site name in the search results.

Key Settings to Configure

1. Title Separator
   The title separator is purely aesthetic. It’s the symbol that appears between your page title and site name on search engines. While the default dash or pipe character works well, feel free to choose one that fits your brand’s style. 
2. Homepage Settings
   The next settings relate to your homepage, especially if it’s set up to show a list of your blog posts. If you have a specific page set as your homepage, navigate to that page directly to adjust its SEO settings. You can also access this page from the Settings > Reading section in WordPress. 
3. Knowledge Graph
   If you ever want to change the knowledge graph, which helps search engines understand the context of your site, you can easily update it here. 
4. Content Types
   One of the most useful settings on the Search Appearance page is Content Types. Here, you can decide which types of content (posts, pages, etc.) will appear in search engine results. 
   1. By default, posts and pages show up in search engines. 
   2. If you’ve installed plugins, you may see additional content types, such as a custom post type for coupons. If these types don’t need SEO optimisation, you can disable the Yoast SEO meta box for them. This keeps things simple for whoever manages the content, especially if they’re not concerned with SEO. 
5. SEO Title and Meta Description Defaults
   You can set default SEO titles and meta descriptions for each content type. For instance, if you typically have shorter blog post titles and brief site titles, you can adjust the default SEO title to suit. You might even choose to include categories in the SEO title for better context and keyword targeting.

Additional Customisations

While most sites won’t require in-depth customisation, Yoast offers many advanced settings for users who want more control. If needed, you can adjust the default settings for each content type or even tailor how each is displayed in search results.

Once you’re satisfied with your changes, make sure to Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

An essential feature of Yoast SEO is its built-in support for XML sitemaps. These sitemaps are valuable because they provide search engines with a comprehensive list of your site’s content—ensuring that pages, posts, and other content types are easily discoverable without requiring individual crawling.

While it’s possible to install a separate plugin solely for sitemap creation, Yoast’s integration makes it convenient to manage everything in one place, especially since SEO and sitemaps work hand-in-hand.

How to Enable and View the XML Sitemap

1. Navigate to your WordPress admin dashboard.
2. Go to Yoast SEO > General > Features.
3. Scroll to the XML Sitemaps section.
4. Click the small question mark icon to learn more or view your sitemap directly by clicking the link.

You’ll now see your sitemap, which is what search engines will access. Take a moment to review:

1. If you have 10 blog posts, click into the post sitemap and confirm that all 10 are listed.
2. Repeat the process for pages, categories, and any other custom post types.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

To help Google discover your content faster:

1. Log into Google Search Console and add your website if you haven’t already.
2. Once your site is verified, navigate to Index > Sitemaps in the left sidebar.
3. Locate your sitemap URL in Yoast—it usually ends in /sitemap_index.xml.
4. Enter this URL into the “Add a new sitemap” field and click Submit.

If you see an error:

• Confirm that your site is publicly accessible (not blocked by robots.txt or password-protected).
• Be patient—Google may take time to crawl and process your sitemap.

You can remove outdated sitemaps if your site has undergone major changes or restructuring.

Why Yoast’s Sitemap Feature Stands Out

Unlike other plugins that require manual updates after every new post, Yoast automates sitemap updates in the background. Once configured, you rarely need to revisit this setting.

In short, this feature helps ensure search engines keep up with your site’s latest content—without extra work on your end.

Earlier in the course, we walked through connecting a website to Google Search Console. If you haven’t completed that step yet—or if you wish to connect to additional webmaster tools—this can be done through Yoast SEO > General > Webmaster Tools.

Verifying Your Site

There are several methods available to verify ownership of your website. If you’ve already completed verification through another method, there’s no need to repeat the process. However, if you’re just getting started, Yoast provides quick links to guide you through the verification steps for popular tools such as:

• Google Search Console
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Yandex Webmaster Tools
• Baidu Webmaster Tools

Each tool will provide a unique verification code, which you can paste into the relevant field in the Webmaster Tools section of Yoast SEO.

Changes to the Google Search Console Integration

Yoast SEO previously offered a feature that directly integrated with Google Search Console, allowing it to automatically display crawl errors and other insights within the WordPress dashboard. However, this functionality was deprecated after Google removed access to the required API.

Although this feature is currently unavailable, Yoast is actively working on a replacement. In the meantime, it remains valuable to connect your site to webmaster tools manually. You’ll need to log into each tool’s dashboard to review any issues or updates.

Looking Ahead

While Yoast no longer pulls in Search Console errors automatically, staying connected to these platforms ensures that you can still monitor your site’s health and performance. Keep an eye on Yoast updates, as a new integration solution may become available in future versions.

Errors in Google Search Console often highlight issues that impact how search engines crawl your site. A common one is the Soft 404, which occurs when a page technically exists but has little to no content, leading Google to treat it as missing.

Let’s walk through an example using a real site. In Search Console, under the Coverage report, we may spot pages marked with crawl errors. On closer inspection, we might find outdated or empty pages—such as a no-longer-used sales page. These pages no longer serve a purpose and should be removed or redirected.

Handling with the Free Version of Yoast

If you’re using the free version of Yoast SEO:

1. Delete the page in WordPress.
2. WordPress will then serve a standard 404 error, which is actually helpful. Google will recognise that the page no longer exists.
3. In Google Search Console, you can return to the error report and click Validate Fix. Google will attempt to re-crawl and resolve the issue.

Handling with Yoast SEO Premium

If you’re using Yoast SEO Premium, you gain access to an automated redirect feature:

1. Navigate to the page and click Move to Trash.
2. Yoast will prompt you with a redirect option.
3. Choose Redirect to another URL, enter the new destination (e.g. a relevant landing page or updated version of the content), and confirm.

This is extremely efficient, especially when updating or deleting older content. Redirects ensure that:

• Users don’t land on error pages.
• Search engines pass on the SEO value of the old URL to the new one.
• External links to your site remain valuable and functional.

If you’re not using the premium version, there are several free redirection plugins available in the WordPress repository, though they may require more manual work.

Confirm with Google

After making changes, return to Google Search Console and click Validate Fix. This tells Google to re-crawl the affected pages and remove the error from your report if it has been resolved.

Regularly reviewing your site in Search Console—monthly or quarterly—is a great habit to maintain both SEO performance and user experience.

For most website owners, the free version of Yoast SEO on WordPress.org is more than sufficient to cover essential SEO tasks. However, for those looking to save time and access advanced features, Yoast’s premium plugins can be a worthwhile investment.

Key Features of Yoast SEO Premium

✔️ Automatic Redirects
As discussed earlier, the premium version includes an automatic redirect manager. Whenever you delete a page or change a URL, Yoast prompts you to set up a redirect immediately. This is a massive time-saver, especially for large websites undergoing regular content updates.

✔️ Multiple Focus Keywords
With the premium version, you’re not limited to just one focus keyword per post. This is particularly valuable for industries where synonyms and related phrases are common, helping your content rank for a broader range of search queries.

Additional Premium Plugins from Yoast

In addition to Yoast SEO Premium, there are other plugins tailored to specific use cases:

Yoast WooCommerce SEO

Ideal for eCommerce stores:

• Rich Pins for Pinterest: Automatically includes metadata such as product price, availability, and direct links to your product pages.
• Integrated Breadcrumbs: Replaces default WooCommerce breadcrumbs with Yoast’s version, avoiding compatibility issues.

Yoast Local SEO

Perfect for businesses with physical locations:

• Helps mapping platforms (like Google Maps) accurately understand and display your location.
• Enhances your local presence in search results by optimising contact pages and structured data.

Other Add-ons

• News SEO: Optimises your site for inclusion in Google News.
• Video SEO: Helps your videos get indexed and properly displayed in search results.

Should You Upgrade?

While the free version of Yoast is powerful enough for most users, the premium plugins can:

• Save you considerable time.
• Improve SEO efficiency.
• Enhance your performance in niche areas like local search, eCommerce, or media content.

For businesses like Topsy Turvy Cake Design with a physical storefront, Local SEO would be especially beneficial. Ultimately, if your budget allows and you want to scale your SEO with less manual work, the premium offerings are worth considering.

If you regularly build websites for clients, there’s a simple way to save time and streamline your SEO setup process. Instead of configuring Yoast SEO settings from scratch on every new site, you can export your settings once, clean the file, and reuse it.

Export and Reuse Yoast SEO Settings

1. Export Your Settings

• Go to Yoast SEO > Tools > Import and Export.
• Click on Export Settings, then press the bright blue button to generate your file.
• This will give you a text-based configuration you can copy and paste into a code editor (e.g. Atom, VS Code, or Sublime Text).

2. Clean the File

To make this file reusable across multiple sites, remove site-specific data:

1. ✅ Delete the home URL
2. ✅ Remove company details (e.g. company name, logo, organisation type)
3. ✅ Erase social media links and Facebook Connect keys, if present

You’re essentially keeping all the general SEO configurations while stripping out anything tied to a specific brand or domain.

3. Save and Reuse

• Save the cleaned file securely.
• On any new WordPress installation, go to Yoast > Import Settings, paste in the cleaned content, and apply the settings.
• This skips the Welcome Wizard and preloads your preferred configurations.

Why This Matters

If you manage multiple client sites, this approach saves considerable time and ensures consistency in how SEO is implemented across projects.

Now that your site is configured with an SEO plugin, it’s time to build a habit of content optimisation—something that can make a significant difference in your website’s visibility.

Start with the Right Keywords

Before writing a blog post:

1. Spend at least 15 minutes researching keywords relevant to your topic.
2. Choose one primary keyword and optionally a few related terms.

This small investment in research can greatly increase your chances of ranking well in search engines.

Write and Then Optimise

After drafting your post:

• Use your SEO plugin (Yoast or any alternative) to optimise the content.
• Ensure the keyword appears in the title, meta description, headings, and naturally within the text.
• Aim for a green light or good readability score provided by your plugin.

Make It a Habit

• Always choose your keyword before you write.
• Always optimise your post before you publish.

This structured approach keeps SEO at the heart of your content creation process.

Keep Writing and Stay Consistent

Not every post will become a hit—but some may surprise you. Posts written years ago can still drive traffic today. The key is consistency and continuous improvement.

“I’ve written articles that rank #1 on Google—none of which would have happened without post optimisation.”

Consider exploring headline writing and content strategy courses to strengthen your writing even further. 

Most importantly—keep publishing!