Contributors: yoast, joostdevalk, omarreiss
Donate link: https://yoa.st/1up
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Tags: SEO, XML sitemap, Content analysis, Readability, Schema
Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the Yoast SEO plugin.
### Yoast SEO: the #1 WordPress SEO plugin
Since 2008 Yoast SEO has helped millions of websites worldwide to **rank higher in search engines**.
Yoast’s mission is **SEO for Everyone**. Our plugin’s users range from the bakery around the corner to some of the most popular sites on the planet.
Yoast SEO Free contains everything that you need to manage your SEO, and the [Yoast SEO Premium](https://yoa.st/1v8) plugin and its extensions unlock even more tools and functionality.
#### GET AHEAD OF THE COMPETITION
To rank highly in search engines, you need to beat the competition. You need a better, faster, stronger website than the people who sell or do the same kinds of things as you.
Yoast SEO is the most-used WordPress SEO plugin, and has helped millions of people like you to get ahead, and to stay ahead.
#### TAKING CARE OF YOUR WORDPRESS SEO
Yoast SEO is packed full of features, designed to help visitors and search engines to get the most out of your website. Some of our favourites are:
* Automated technical SEO improvements, like **canonical URLs** and **meta tags**.
* Advanced **XML sitemaps**; making it easy for Google to understand your site structure.
* Title and meta description templating, for **better branding** and consistent snippets in the search results.
* An in-depth Schema.org integration that will **increase your chance of getting rich results**, by helping search engines to understand your content.
* Full control over **site breadcrumbs**, so that users and search engines always know where they are.
* **Faster loading times** for your whole website, due to an innovative way of managing data in WordPress.
* **[Premium]** E-mail support for our [Yoast SEO Premium](https://yoa.st/1v8) users.
* **[Premium]** The possibility to expand Yoast SEO with the [News SEO](https://yoa.st/1uv), [Video SEO](https://yoa.st/1uw), [Local SEO](https://yoa.st/1uu) and [WooCommerce SEO](https://yoa.st/3rh) extensions.
#### WRITE KILLER CONTENT WITH YOAST SEO
We know content is king, that's why Yoast SEO is famous for its **state-of-the-art content and SEO analysis**. Yoast SEO gives you:
* **SEO analysis**: an invaluable tool while writing SEO-friendly content with the right (focus) keyphrases in mind.
* **Readability analysis**: ensures that humans and search engines can read and understand your content.
* **Full language support** for: English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Indonesian, Polish, Portuguese, Arabic, Swedish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Turkish, Czech, Norwegian and Slovak.
* **A Google preview**, which shows what your listings will look like in the search results. Even on mobile devices!
* **Innovative Schema blocks** for the WordPress block editor, so that your FAQ and HowTo content can be shown directly in the search results. Plus a breadcrumbs block to guide your users.
* **[Premium] Internal linking blocks** to easily improve the structure of your content. Easily add a **table of contents block**, a **related links block**, a **subpages** block, or **siblings block**! Plus, we’ll keep adding these easy-to-add blocks to improve your site structure.
* **[Premium]** Social previews to show you how your content will be shown on Twitter and Facebook. Plus: Social Appearance Templates to guarantee a consistent look.
* **[Premium]** The Insights tool that shows you what your text focuses on. This way you can keep your article in line with your keyphrases.
* **[Premium]** Optimize your content for synonyms and related keyphrases.
* **[Premium]** Optimize your article for different word forms of your keyphrases, as the singular and plural. But also different verb forms, synonyms, and related keyphrases. This makes for more natural content!
* **[Premium]** Automatic internal linking suggestions: write your article and get automatic suggested posts to link to!
* **[Premium]** An orphaned content filter to detect posts that have no links pointing towards them!
* **[Premium]** SEO workouts to make working on your site as easy as ABC. These SEO workflows will get your site into shape in no time!
#### KEEP YOUR SITE IN PERFECT SHAPE
Whether you are an online entrepreneur, blogger or content creator, a developer, a (WordPress) SEO expert or a business owner, Yoast SEO helps you keep your website in perfect shape by:
* Tuning the engine of your website, so you can work on creating great content!
* Giving you **cornerstone content** and **internal linking** features to help you optimize your site structure in a breeze.
* Translating your content to **structured data** where possible, to help search engines understand your website.
* Helping you manage your team: with our **SEO roles** you can give colleagues access to specific sections of the Yoast SEO plugin.
* **[Premium] Automatically creating redirects** when URLs change or when pages are deleted, and providing tools to manage or create redirects.
* **[Premium]** Showing you **social previews** to manage the way your page is shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Yoast is powered by a team of expert developers, testers, software architects, and SEO consultants. They work constantly to stay at the cutting edge of WordPress SEO, and to improve the plugin with every release.
Yoast SEO is the **only WordPress SEO plugin made by world-renowned SEO experts**.
The Yoast team offers regular support on the WordPress.org forums. But we hope you understand that we prioritize our Premium customers. This one-on-one email support is available to people who have purchased Yoast SEO Premium.
Did you know that [Yoast SEO Premium](https://yoa.st/1v8) contains a lot of extra features:
* A **redirect manager** that prevents “404: page not found” errors
* Optimize without worrying about over-optimization with **intelligent word form recognition** available in multiple languages.
* **Internal linking blocks** to structure your site easily.
* **Internal linking suggestions** while you’re writing.
* Preview your content to see what it will look like in the search results and when shared on social media using the **Google preview** and **social preview**.
* **Cornerstone content checks** that point search engines to your most important pages.
* Connect Yoast SEO to Zapier to easily **create zaps that instantly share your published posts** with 2000+ destinations like Twitter, Facebook, and much more.
If you are serious about your WordPress SEO, install the [Yoast SEO Premium plugin](https://yoa.st/1v8)! **Costs a little, saves a lot of time!**
#### OUR EXTENSIONS TO FURTHER IMPROVE YOUR WORDPRESS SEO
Check out these SEO add-ons by Yoast:
* **[Yoast Local SEO](https://yoa.st/1uu)** optimizes your website for a local audience.
* **[Yoast Video SEO](https://yoa.st/1uw)** ensures that Google understands what your video is about, increasing the chances of ranking in the video results.
* **[Yoast News SEO](https://yoa.st/1uv)** for news websites that want to improve their visibility and performance in Google News.
* **[WooCommerce SEO](https://yoa.st/3rh)** for all online shops that want to perform better in the search results and social media.
These extensions work fine with the free version of Yoast SEO. Of course, the premium extensions also include 24/7 support.
Oh, don't forget: our **[Yoast Academy](https://yoa.st/3ri)** is for all entrepreneurs, bloggers, and anyone who wants to learn more about optimizing websites, improving your WordPress SEO, and if you want to take your content to the next level!
Yoast SEO integrates seamlessly into a range of themes and plugins. We work particularly well with:
* The [WordPress block editor](https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/) (or ‘Gutenberg’ editor).
* The official [AMP](https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/) plugin, which changes your templates to use the ‘AMP’ HTML format.
* Google’s [Web Stories](https://wordpress.org/plugins/web-stories/) plugin, which helps you to create ‘[web stories](https://amp.dev/about/stories/)’.
* The [Advanced Custom Fields](https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/) plugin, when you also activate the [ACF Content Analysis for Yoast SEO](https://wordpress.org/plugins/acf-content-analysis-for-yoast-seo/) plugin.
* The [Elementor](https://wordpress.org/plugins/elementor/) website builder.
* [Zapier](https://zapier.com/apps/yoast-seo/integrations), which helps you automate your publishing flow.
* [Algolia](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-search-with-algolia/) integration to improve the quality of your site search.
Do you want to report a bug for Yoast SEO? Best to do so in the WordPress SEO [repository on GitHub](https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo). Please note that GitHub is not a support forum and issues will be closed if they don’t meet the bug requirements.
Want more information on search engine optimization and Yoast SEO? Have a look at:
* The [Yoast SEO Plugin](https://yoa.st/1v8) official homepage.
* The [Yoast SEO Help center](https://yoa.st/1va).
* [WordPress SEO - The definitive Guide by Yoast](https://yoa.st/1v6).
* Other [WordPress Plugins](https://yoa.st/1v9) by Team Yoast.
* Also follow Yoast on [Facebook](https://facebook.com/yoast), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/yoast/) & [Twitter](https://twitter.com/yoast).
Starting with Yoast SEO consists of just two steps: installing and setting up the plugin. Yoast SEO is designed to work with your site’s specific needs, so don’t forget to go through the Yoast SEO configuration wizard as explained in the ‘after activation’ step!
### INSTALL YOAST SEO FROM WITHIN WORDPRESS
1. Visit the plugins page within your dashboard and select ‘Add New’;
1. Search for ‘Yoast SEO’;
1. Activate Yoast SEO from your Plugins page;
1. Go to ‘after activation’ below.
### INSTALL YOAST SEO MANUALLY
1. Upload the ‘wordpress-seo’ folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory;
1. Activate the Yoast SEO plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress;
1. Go to ‘after activation’ below.
1. You should see (a notice to start) the Yoast SEO configuration wizard;
1. Go through the configuration wizard and set up the plugin for your site;
== Frequently Asked Questions ==
= How do the XML Sitemaps in the Yoast SEO plugin work? =
Having an XML sitemap can be beneficial for SEO, as Google can retrieve essential pages of a website very fast, even if the internal linking of a site isn’t flawless.
The sitemap index and individual sitemaps are updated automatically as you add or remove content and will include the post types you want search engines to index. Post Types marked as noindex will not appear in the sitemap. [Learn more about XML Sitemaps](https://yoa.st/3qt).
= How can I add my website to Google Search Console? =
It is straightforward to add your website to Google Search Console.
1. Create a Google Search Console account and login into your account.
2. Click ‘Add a property’ under the search drop-down.
3. Enter your website URL in the box and click ‘Continue’.
4. Click the arrow next to ‘HTML tag’ to expand the option.
6. Log in to your WordPress website.
7. Click on ‘SEO’ in the dashboard.
9. Click on the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab.
10. Paste the code in the Google field and click ‘Save Changes’.
11. Go back to Google Search Console and click ‘Verify’.
If you want more details steps, please visit [our article on our help center](https://yoa.st/3qu).
= How do I implement Yoast SEO breadcrumbs? =
The steps below are a temporary solution as manual edits made to theme files may be overwritten with future theme updates. Please contact the theme developer for a permanent solution. We’ve written an article about the [importance of breadcrumbs for SEO](https://yoa.st/3qv).
To implement the [breadcrumbs](https://yoa.st/3qw) function in Yoast SEO, you will have to edit your theme. We recommend that prior to any editing of the theme files, a backup is taken. Your host provider can help you take a backup.
Copy the following code into your theme where you want the breadcrumbs to be. If you are not sure, you will need to experiment with placement:
if ( function_exists( 'yoast_breadcrumb' ) ) {
yoast_breadcrumb( '<p id="breadcrumbs">','</p>' );
Common places where you could place your breadcrumbs are inside your `single.php` and/or `page.php` file just above the page’s title. Another option that makes it really easy in some themes is by just pasting the code in `header.php` at the very end.
In most non-WooTheme themes, this code snippet should not be added to your `functions.php` file.
Alternatively, you can manually add the breadcrumb shortcode to individual posts or pages: `[wpseo_breadcrumb]`
If you need more details or a step by step guide, read our [Implementation guide for Yoast SEO breadcrumbs](https://yoa.st/3qx).
= How do I noindex URLS? =
Yoast SEO provides multiple options for setting a URL or group of URLs to noindex. [Read more about how to do this in this guide](https://yoa.st/3qy/).
= Google shows the wrong description, how do I fix this? =
If you’ve crafted nice meta descriptions for your blog posts, nothing is more annoying than Google showing another description for your site completely in the search result snippet.
Possible causes could be:
1. wrong description in code
2. Google cache is outdated
3. Search term manipulation
4. Google ignored the meta description
You can [read more here on how to solve the issue with the wrong description](https://yoa.st/3qz).
= How often is Yoast SEO updated? =
Yoast SEO is updated every two weeks. If you want to know why, please read [this post on why we release every two weeks](https://yoa.st/3q-)!
= How do I get support? =
As our free plugin is used by millions of people worldwide, we cannot offer you all one on one support. If you have trouble with the Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin, you can get help on the support forums here at [wordpress.org](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wordpress-seo/) or by checking out our help center at [yoast.com/help/](https://yoa.st/3r1).
The plugins you buy at Yoast are called ‘premium plugins’ (even if Premium isn’t in its name) and include a complete year of free updates and premium support. This means you can contact our support team if you have any questions about that plugin.
[Read more on how to get support](https://yoa.st/3r2)
= I have a different question than listed here =
Your question has most likely been answered on our help center: [yoast.com/help/](https://yoa.st/1va).
1. The Yoast SEO plugin general meta box. You'll see this on edit post pages, for posts, pages and custom post types.
2. Example of the SEO analysis functionality.
3. Example of the readability analysis functionality.
4. Overview of site-wide SEO problems and possible improvements.
5. Control over which features you want to use.
6. Easily import SEO data from other SEO plugins like All In One SEO pack, HeadSpace2 SEO and wpSEO.de.
Release Date: October 19th, 2021
Yoast SEO 17.4 is out today! This release comes with several fixes and enhancements to help database performance on larger sites by cleaning up data and streamlining retrieval. Happy updating! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.4 in [our release post](https://yoa.st/release-17-4)!
* Improves two queries used to determine whether or not a site has been fully processed using our SEO data optimization. This should prevent potential slowdowns in extremely large sites.
* Fixes a bug where the `url` property in the search page schema would be empty.
* Fixes a bug where a duplicate canonical tag was output for web stories created with the Web Stories plugin. Props to [swissspidey](https://github.com/swissspidy).
* Fixes a bug where a race condition could occur that caused the rewrite rules to be flushed on every page request when using a persistent cache like Redis. This may speed up your site’s load times if it’s using persistent caching.
Release Date: October 5th, 2021
Yoast SEO 17.3 is out today! This release includes general bug fixes to some SEO assessments and improvements to indexables data management. Now is as good a time as any to start optimizing your content with Yoast SEO! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.3 in [our release post](https://yoa.st/release-17-3)!
* Improves the accuracy of the Keyphrase in slug assessment by correctly detecting multi-word keyphrases with at least one hyphenated word in the slug.
* Changes the default color for overall scores to red.
* Fixes a bug where the meta description bar indicator color would not always match the color of the assessment bullet.
* Fixes a bug where the placement variables Category, Name and Tag would not show up in the snippet preview.
* Fixes a bug where the `path` of open graph images of the JSON head would be incorrect.
* Adds version management to our indexables framework; this makes the SEO Optimization process more robust, and prepares for future features.
For the changelog of earlier versions, please refer to [the changelog on yoast.com](https://yoa.st/yoast-seo-changelog).
It is recommended that you Edit text format, this type of Fix handles quite a lot in one request
