Performance settings for WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin

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Many people ask me to use WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin or All in One SEO Pack for WordPress. I personally still prefer to use WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast integrated many powerful features.
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It’s the best plugin to improve SEO score of any WordPress website or blog. Though, setting up this plugin might be tricky and a new blogger or one without basic SEO skills, might find it hard to configure. This article will help install and settings the WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin becomes extremely simple.

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Performance Configuration Guide for Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Below is some of the SEO features offered by WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin:

  • Titles & Metas
  • Social
  • XML Sitemaps
  • Permalinks
  • Internal Links
  • RSS

After installing the plugin might suggest changing your Permalinks structure, in Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks.

Use the Post Name is best for permalink structure:

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Yoast WordPress SEO: General Settings:

In Dashboard > SEO > Dashboard, Unchecking Security box if you want allows authors and editors to redirect posts, noindex them and do other things you might not want if you don’t trust your authors.

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Yoast WordPress SEO: Titles & Metas:

In Dashboard > SEO > Titles & Metas > General, you should checking check-box Force Rewrite Titles. WordPress SEO will auto-detected whether it needs to force rewrite the titles for your pages.

Checking: Noindex subpages of archivesUse meta keywords tag?, and Clean up the <head>

performance-settings-for-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-plugin-titles-metas-general

In Home tab is most important setting, Dashboard > SEO > Titles & Metas > Home, i recommended keep your Title with a maximum of 70 characters because Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag. The description should optimally be between 150-160 characters.

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In Dashboard > SEO > Titles & MetasPost Types, use default setting is best.

performance-settings-for-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-plugin-titles-metas-post-types

I do suggest checking the “noindex, follow” check-boxes for Tags and Format in Dashboard > SEO > Titles & Metas > Taxonomies.

performance-settings-for-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-plugin-titles-metas-taxonomies

Using Author Archives and Date Archives can lead to a lot of duplicate content on your website so in Dashboard > SEO > Titles & Metas > Other i suggest checking the “noindex, follow” check-boxes for Author and Date Archives. If you’re running a one author blog u can checking Disable the author archives.
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Yoast WordPress SEO: Social:

In Dashboard > SEO > Social > Facebook, you can checking to check-box Add Open Graph meta data and set Facebook Page URL and image that will show up on Facebook when someone will like or share your homepage.

performance-settings-for-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-plugin-social-facebook
Continue, in Dashboard > SEO > Social > Twiter, you can set Twitter Username without @.

Yoast WordPress SEO: XML Sitemaps:

In Dashboard > SEO > XML Sitemaps, in here you can checking to check-box: Check this box to enable XML sitemap functionality for automatic XML Sitemaps. Below are the settings that I would use for XML Sitemaps feature.

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Yoast WordPress SEO: Permalinks:

Below are best setting i use on my website in Dashboard > SEO > Permalinks.
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Yoast WordPress SEO: Internal Links

In this tab offer Breadcrumbs are useful for making search engine understand your site structure and helps users in navigating your site.

Yoast WordPress SEO: RSS

This tab integrates the feature of RSS footer plugin and using it, you can add a link back to original article in RSS feeds. You can also use it to add advertisement on your RSS feeds. However I do not have make change in here.

In the end: 
This tutorial was written for WordPress SEO by Yoast version 1.5.4. This tutorial include understanding and my research, i hope this tutorial will help you to setup WordPress SEO by yoast correctly.

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