Yoast SEO Plugin – Configure It with Your Current WordPress Hosting Company

Organic Traffic plays the most important role in building a brand. Recent statistics show that 90% of the online transactions take place because of the search engine results. To rank as one of the front pages of a search engine is a difficult task. It takes time and resources. Studies have also revealed that only 0.63% of Google users click on the second page in search engine results. This means the goal is to be the first page of search results. This shows how important it is for a WordPress Website to have an additional SEO Plugin. 

Speaking of SEO plug-ins, Yoast SEO is one of the most popular ones for various reasons. Yoast SEO has various built-in functionalities. Major among them feature control over a website’s SEO. Also, Yoast SEO happens to be one of the most downloaded SEO plug-ins available for WordPress. 

We’ll dive right into how the Yoast SEO plug-in in your WordPress Website or in WP Hosting can help make all the difference in this article.

Understanding Yoast SEO Plugin

Importance of search ranking and how SEO plugins are needed in the website and basic overview Yoast SEO Plugin 

Yoast SEO is a comprehensive WordPress SEO Tool. Yoast helps in optimizing a website and ensures that web pages rank higher in search engines. Yoast was first developed in 2008 by the designers of WordPress. Since then, it has been downloaded a million times. It is easy to configure for beginners and it also has robust features to satisfy advanced site runners. This particular plug-in can be used for meta descriptions, title tags and keywords.There are a lot of WordPress Hosting companies that can help make your website SEO-friendly. But, WeWP’s can help you the best way with budget friendly WordPress hosting services.

Yoast SEO plugin also helps to get rich results on Google. This includes featuring images, star ratings, products and more. It can be easily installed for free in any self-hosted WordPress website. It is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory or can be downloaded directly from Yoast itself. One can always ask their WordPress hosting providers. There is also an option for a premium version with additional benefits.To explore the features of the same, having a managed WordPress hosting is always hassle free.   

Preparing Your WordPress Hosting Environment

Before going into setting up Yoast SEO Plugin on the WordPress Site, let us first know how to install WordPress on a Cloud Hosting Platform or can always choose to have a WordPress hosting provider as WeWP, who will do this for them. WP Hosting can be done across various platforms. 

1. Select a Server Solution

Your website must have a dedicated server and it can be either local or virtual. Virtual servers can be thought of as a computer within another computer. In virtual servers, WordPress and the required server software are installed and accessed via a browser. On local servers, you need to set up both WordPress and the server software on your machine. 

Although it is easier to install local servers, it can be difficult without a definitive guide. On the other hand, virtual servers can be difficult to set up but can support multiple systems. Get in touch with WeWP, the top WordPress hosting provider to understand which is more suitable for your website.

2. Select an IDE

A good IDE or a text editor will help boost your website development speed and productivity. Although there are numerous IDEs available, every developer has a favorite. We urge you explore the popular ones like Atom and VSCode to find what you like the best.

3. Choose a Browser

Today, browsers ship development kits that help developers work better with WordPress. For example, Google Chrome offers Chrome DevTools that help debug sites and test them for responsiveness. Every browser’s development kit differs, but the prime ones undoubtedly are Google’s and Firefox’s.

4. Enable WordPress Installation Debugging

Once you have set up your server and text editor or IDE, you need to enable WordPress’s installation debugging. When you do this, you will be able to see WordPress’s list of errors present in your code. So, fixing them will help you boost your website’s development speed. The WeWP team is adept at enabling WordPress’s installation debugging and setting up all of it.

5. Install Optional WordPress Development Tools (if needed)

Now that you have the basics set up, you are good to go ahead with WordPress development. However, you might have some personal needs for which you can install optional development tools. Want to make your WordPress development easier? Get in touch with WeWP for their WordPress hosting service to get everything set up for smooth development.

Installing Yoast SEO Plugin

Now that a server is ready and launched successfully on a Cloud Hosting Platform. It is time to install the Yoast SEO Plugin. Follow these simple steps to install Yoast, or a managed hosting provider like WeWP can do this for you.

1. Login to your WordPress Website and open the WordPress dashboard.
2. Click on Plugins in the menu on the left.
3. Here, near the top of your screen, click on Add New.
4. Search for Yoast SEO in the Search Box.
5. Click on Install Now to install the plug-in.
6. Click Activate to activate the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website.

After this, one will not have to wait for long; the plugin will be activated. The next step is to configure Yoast on your Website. The first thing that one notices here is the addition of a new tab, ‘SEO with Yoast’s logo,’ in the admin panel.

In this panel, there are 8 sections. These are ‘Dashboard’, Titles and Metas’, ‘Social’, ‘XML Sitemaps’, ‘Advanced’, ‘Tools’, Search Console and ‘Extensions.’ Each of them has a function of their own that contributes in enhancing rankings of the website in the search engine. Having a reputed WordPress Hosting Company like WeWP with WP hosting plans  can also help with the same. 

Enhancing Performance with Your Hosting Provider

Yoast SEO plugin is used to increase website optimization and performance. Here are a few ways in which one can enhance their website’s performance with their managed hosting provider leveraging Yoast SEO Plugin. Yoast SEO can help a lot but you must ensure that it is set up properly with your website. WeWP’s expert team is adept at configuring Yoast SEO with existing WordPress systems. So, you can reap all of these benefits and enhance your WordPress website’s performance in no time.

1. Write Better Content

This Yoast SEO Plugin feature enables the addition of a Yoast SEO metabox, in which one can add a meta title and description for a blog post.It also allows one to choose a focus keyword for your post. As soon as the focus keyword is chosen, Yoast SEO analyzes the post content. It assigns an SEO Score. It also suggests steps to improve the SEO Score.

2. Effortlessly Hides or Shows Content to Search Engines

If one wants to create a landing page for an ad campaign but does not want to get indexed in search. Yoast is the way to go about it. Yoast SEO allows one to restrict search engines by adding no-index to pages that one does not want to get indexed. Additionally, it allows one to hide author archives on no-index categories, tags or archive pages. Yoast SEO adds canonical link elements all throughout your website. This will help the search engine to understand which links are to be indexed. 

3. XML Sitemaps and Search Console Integration

With the Yoast plugin in WordPress, one need not install another plugin for XML Sitemaps. Yoast SEO automatically generates XML Sitemaps for the website and submits them to Bing and Google. One can also manually add XML Sitemaps to Webmaster tools account. But, Yoast has Search Console integrated within the Yoast SEO Dashboard. This tells how the site performs in search results without leaving the WordPress dashboard. If one is using a WordPress hosting service, make sure to ask them about timely updates from the search Console. 

4. Protect RSS Feed from Content Scrapers

One of the major problems that many websites face is that there are a lot of scraper websites. These scraper websites claim to create content from across the web with the use of RSS feeds. They have scripts installed that automatically get content from other websites. They make use of RSS Feeds and they publish these articles. This can be dangerous as search engines may start ranking those sites first. Yoast SEO solves this problem. It adds a link to your own article with each RSS Feed. This tells search engines the location of the original article. This beats the scrapers in search rankings. 

5. Editing Robots and .htaccess files made easy

Sometimes there is a need to examine or edit the site’s .htaccess or robots.txt files. These files are in the site’s root directory. This normally requires connecting to an FTP Client to see them. Yoast SEO has a built-in tool for the same. It allows one to see both the .htaccess and robots.txt files. It also allows you to edit those files from the WordPress Dashboard. It is not advised to make changes in these files, please do contact your managed hosting providers before making changes. 

Common Issues and Troubleshooting

Once the Yoast is successfully installed in the WordPress Website, there might be times where some issues are encountered. Here are a few common issues that usually occur in Yoast. There are possible solutions as well here, but nonetheless one can always reach out to WordPress Hosting Company for resolving these issues. Having said this, WeWP not only can help resolve this issue but also provide WordPress hosting services.

1. Yoast SEO Meta Box Not Popping up

Problem: The Yoast meta box does not appear on page edit screens

Troubleshooting: Make sure that the Yoast SEO is enabled in the Screen Option at the top of the page 

2. XML Sitemap Problems

Problem: The XML sitemap is not generating. It is showing a 404 error.

Troubleshooting: Make sure that XML sitemaps are enabled, check on the .htaccess file.

3. SEO Analysis Issues

Problem: Yoast SEO Analysis feature is not providing recommendations 

Troubleshooting: Clear all browser cookies and cache, ensure Javascript is enabled

4. Slow Performance

Problem: Website slows down after the installation of Yoast SEO

Troubleshooting: Increase the memory limit of WordPress, optimize your database.

5. Issues in Google Search Console

Problem: There are errors in Google Search Console related to Yoast SEO

Troubleshooting: Have the latest version of Yoast SEO, check robots.txt and .htaccess files for mistakes. 

Here are the 5 commonly occurring issues that one can expect to encounter while using Yoast. There are quick fixes as well provided for the same. One can resort to these quick fixes by themselves or have managed hosting providers to resolve the same.

Conclusion

Yoast SEO can bring a big world filled with opportunities. It can help website owners get the best web search engine results and a substantial amount of traffic. Moreover, Yoast SEO offers a lot of features which are essential for proper website optimization. It is one of the top picked SEO Tools by experts to increase website traffic. It is also very easy to use. The plugin has a built-in onboarding tour, help messages next to each option, and instructions built right into the plugin itself. 

However, these many features are quite technical and can appear daunting to many beginners. There are a lot of WordPress hosting providers but you need the best to get ahead. Reach out to WeWP, the top-notch WordPress hosting provider and get the guidance needed at reasonable WordPress hosting prices.