Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the tool used to manage how your pages, posts, and custom post types appear in Google search results. It helps control metadata, readability, indexing rules, social previews, and overall on-page SEO health.

It doesn’t automatically “do SEO for you,” but it gives a clear framework to optimise individual pages and keep the site consistent.

✏️ Editing SEO Titles & Descriptions

Every page/post has a Yoast panel beneath the main editor.

You can edit:

SEO Title — what appears as the blue link in Google
Meta Description — the short text preview under the link
Slug — the URL path
Preview — how the result will look in search

Strong SEO titles and descriptions help click-through rates but should not be stuffed with keywords.

Where to edit:

Scroll to the Yoast SEO panel → SEO tab.

🟢 The SEO Analysis

Yoast gives traffic-light indicators (green / orange / red) for:

Keyphrase usage
Headings
Intro paragraph
Image alt text
Link usage
Readability and sentence structure

It's always good to aim for Green here but ensure the content is still optimised for humans.

Under the Social tab, you can set:

Social share title
Social description
Social image (OG Image)

If these are not set manually, Yoast will fall back to your SEO metadata.

Useful when:

Publishing blogs
Promoting pages on social
Avoiding poor or auto-cropped previews

⚙️ Advanced Settings (Indexing & Canonicals)

Under the Advanced tab, you can set:

Index / Noindex — whether search engines should list the page
Follow / Nofollow — whether bots follow links
Canonical URL — prevents duplicate content issues

Do not change these unless you know why you’re doing it.

If unsure → check with KIJO before altering indexing rules.

Pages that might be set to noindex:

Thank-you pages
Internal utility pages
Staging/test content
Duplicate versions of category pages

🔍 XML Sitemaps

Yoast automatically generates your XML sitemap and keeps it updated.

This helps search engines crawl your content.

No manual interaction is usually required.

💡 Best Practices

Write metadata for users first, algorithms second.
Keep titles clear, concise, and reflective of the page’s purpose.
Use one primary keyphrase per page to keep things focused.
Avoid duplicate meta titles across multiple pages.
Always add alt text to images — this helps both accessibility and SEO.
Before editing indexing settings, ask KIJO to avoid harming SEO.

🛠️ What Yoast Does Not Replace

It does not replace:

Proper keyword research
Content strategy
Technical SEO
Backlink building
Speed optimisation
ADA/image accessibility requirements

It’s a tool, not a strategy.