You’ve probably heard the term SEO before, and you might even know some SEO practices. That’s good for your site and business. Using WordPress is a solid move in the right direction, thanks to the clean code on the platform, which helps with SEO. Another tool you should be using is the Yoast plugin.

The great thing about Yoast is it offers a complete SEO solution. Well over a million users have downloaded it as word has spread about its value. If you haven’t done so, get Yoast, because it will transform how you approach your site.

You can use Yoast for more than just meta tags. It helps with creating meta descriptions for each page or post, meta keywords, and post titles. One of the most useful aspects of this plugin lets you verify Google authorship for your website, which is a big boost to SEO.

This plugin checks different things on your page, which can help tune it up. For example, it sees if your posts are long enough for good SEO, if you’ve used subheadings, reminds you to write a meta description and set keywords, etc.

With Yoast, you can make XML sitemaps, which can work with pictures. As you type out the meta info, the plugin displays a preview of the Google search results, giving you an idea of how your page will be displayed when it turns up in a search. You can use this feature to boost search rankings and click through rates.

Yoast will help keep search engines aware of updates to your site. You can configure it to notify Google and others each time new content is published, impacting search results accordingly.

Another great advantage is the ability to really get under the hood of your website and manipulate things. Yoast lets you remove a certain page, post or even groups of posts from the sitemap. You can add custom RSS footers to posts in WordPress, which is a great extra tool.

Instead of getting a randomly-generated preview on Facebook, Yoast lets you display the appropriate image, title and description, all with the help of OpenGraph meta data. And you can use Twitter cards on your site.

You need to be aware that going with the Premium Yoast SEO plugin comes with more features. Among the many extras are the ability to set several focus keywords, access to a redirect manager, and more. It also means access to one-on-one email support.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Yoast’s capabilities. Because this plugin is powerful and complex, setting it up can be on the difficult end. That being said, taking the time to learn its many features will pay off immensely.

And if you need help with SEO on your website, we provide a professional SEO services that can put you at the top of the search engines, as we’ve done for many other clients.