The Yoast SEO Admin bar menu makes it easy to spot notifications from the plugin. It also offers some useful links and resources.
Note: The admin bar menu is slightly different, depending on whether you are editing an article in the WordPress backend, or previewing it on the front end. Namely, on the front end, you will find the Analyse this page menu item, with useful links to third-party tools.
The admin bar in the backend
The Yoast admin bar menu in the WordPres back end
The configuration wizard
When you first install Yoast SEO, you are greeted with the Configuration wizard. It』s the place where you determine all the essential SEO settings. Of course, we don』t set those settings in stone. As you work on your site, a time may come when you want to change something. Use this menu item to access the configuration wizard and make the desired changes.
In this article, we mention the configuration wizard. In Yoast SEO 17.7, we』ve replaced the configuration wizard with the new configuration workout. Check out this help article to read how to use the configuration workout!
Keyword research
Keyword research is essential for SEO. That is why at Yoast, we extensively write about it. We even create a Keyword research training that you can access through the Admin menu bar.
In this menu item, you can also find a link to Google ads. Another useful tool we link to is Google Trends, where you can get insights into search terms.
SEO tools
These are the same tools you see in the Yoast SEO settings in the Admin menu. We recommend you take the free Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin training to learn more about each setting.
The admin bar on the front end
The Yoast admin bar menu on the front end
When you are logged in to your WordPress account, and when you preview a page on the front end, you will see an additional menu item in the Yoast admin bar menu – Analyze this page. There are plenty of links to third parties there. Let』s briefly explore which each of them offers.
Check links to this URL
Clicking on this link takes you to Google Search Console. More specifically, it takes you to the section in Google Search Console, where you can check the number of links that point to your pages.
Keyphrase density
Yoast SEO analyses the keyphrase density in your texts. Clicking on the Keyphrase density tool in the Yoast admin menu takes you to a third-party page. You can use this tool to compare the density of your keywords to that of your competitors.
Check Google Cache
Use this option when you want to check how Google sees your site. The tool also helps you see if Google has crawled the latest version of your page.
Google structured data test
Structured data is crucial for getting rich results. With the Google structured data test, you can check if your code is following the Google structured data guidelines.
Facebook debugger
Yoast SEO takes care of your page』s appearance on Facebook. Sometimes, Facebook does not pick up the changes correctly. In such cases, it is useful to go to the Facebook debugger and check if there are any bugs you can fix.
Pinterest rich pins validator
With rich pins in Pinterest, you can enrich a pin by adding some extra information directly to it. To be able to do that, you first need to authorize and validate your site with the pins validator.
HTML validator
With this free tool, you can check if your HTML markup is written in accordance with the W3C standards.
CSS validator
With this free tool, you can check if your CSS is written in accordance with the W3C standards.
Google page speed test
This tool is a powerful ally in optimizing your page speed. This tool provides valuable insight into the speed of your pages. It also gives you tips on how to optimize your page』s speed.
Mobile-friendly test
Mobile SEO is an aspect of SEO you should not neglect when optimizing your site. With the Google mobile-friendly test, you can quickly check if your page is optimized for mobile.