Yoast SEO 文檔

Yoast SEO usage tracking

Yoast SEO has a usage tracking feature. When you run the Yoast SEO configuration wizard we ask you to share some data with us so we can keep improving Yoast SEO. We would like to track a few bits of data, for different reasons, we outline them below. Our usage tracking runs once every few weeks, so we can keep this data about your site up to date.

Opt in / opt out

If you』re using Yoast SEO free, usage tracking is only on when you explicitly opt in. When you install one of our add-ons or Yoast SEO Premium, we opt you in by default (you』ve bought our software, so we assume you trust us). You can however opt out, either on the SEO -> Features page or in the Configuration Wizard.

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!

The data we track in usage tracking

Basic site data

We track basic site data, like: which language is your site in, are you using multi-site or single site WordPress, how many users do you have. This helps us understand which types of sites we』re building software for and helps us determine our testing criteria.

Server data

We track which PHP version you use, what OS your site is running on and which extensions are available. This allows us to determine the minimum requirements for our plugin more easily. We do also track, if we』re able to, which web host you』re running on, to see which hosts we should be talking to in case we run into problems with particular hosts.

Plugin usage tracking

We track which options you use and how you use them (while anonymizing them, of course). This gives us insights into which features people use and what the most common settings are. This allows us to make better product decisions, because we know how you use our plugin.

Your other plugins and your theme

Our usage tracking tracks which other plugins you use and which theme you use. We try to test with the most commonly used plugins used by Yoast SEO users. To do that, we need to know which plugins are the most commonly used by our users, which is why this tracking is important to us.

Your privacy is important to us! For more information, please find our our Privacy Policy here.

Search Appearance: organization or person?

In the Search Appearance settings of the Yoast SEO plugin, you can set whether your site is an organization (for instance, a local business) or a person (say, a personal blog). Based on what you decide, you have different additional settings to choose from. This information may be used in Google』s Knowledge Graph Card. In this help article, we』ll walk you through the settings. If you prefer watching a video, start watching at 3:24.

Good to know: this setting is covered during the Configuration Wizard, but can always be adjusted afterward.

Organization

After choosing 『Organization』, you will need to fill out the name of the organization and add a logo. Social profiles for the organization can be filled out in the Social tab.

Local SEO

If you have a local business (even if it』s your own business and you have no one else employed), you should choose 『Organization』. Furthermore, if you have the Yoast Local SEO plugin installed, then 『Organization』 is the default setting and this cannot be changed.

If you have the Yoast Local SEO plugin installed, then 『Organization』 is the default setting.

Person

『Person』 should be chosen if you have, for example, a personal blog, or a personal portfolio website for your art.

When doing so, you should select an author that is the 『Person』 that the website represents from the available user accounts on your website. Social profiles for this person can be filled out in their personal profile on the website (not in any of the Yoast SEO settings).

The name of the author that is shown in the dropdown menu and which will be outputted, is the 『display name publicly as』 name from the author』s profile.

Configuration guide for Yoast SEO

This article will guide you through all the steps you need to take to configure the Yoast SEO plugin on your site. You』ll find information on both the free Yoast SEO plugin as well as Yoast SEO Premium.

Table of contentsWhere to find the Yoast SEO settingsGeneralSearch AppearanceTaxonomiesSocialToolsPremiumRedirects

Learn more about Yoast SEO!
Not sure what settings are best for your site? Check out our free Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin training. It will teach you to use all the great features of Yoast SEO to their full potential!

Where to find the Yoast SEO settings

After you have installed Yoast SEO free or Yoast SEO Premium, you will have a new menu available to customize your SEO global settings. The plugin also adds SEO settings at the post, page and taxonomy level. Log in to your WordPress website. When you』re logged in, you will be in your 『Dashboard』. Click on 『SEO』. On the left-hand side, you will see a menu. In that menu, click on 『SEO』.

In this article, we』ll go through all of these menu items, see what they are for and how you can optimize them for your site.

GeneralSearch AppearanceSocialToolsPremiumRedirects

General

This section includes general things that don』t fit elsewhere like (re)starting the configuration wizard which should be the first thing to do. In the configuration wizard, you can configure the most important settings on your site, like define your name for Google』s site name markup, modify whether you are an organization or a person for Google』s Knowledge Graph, connecting to the various Webmaster Tools, and setting which post types should show up in the search appearances.

How to connect to Google Search Console How to connect to Bing Webmaster ToolsHow to connect to Yandex Webmaster ToolsHow to submit your sitemaps

Dashboard

On the Dashboard tab, you』ll find the Yoast SEO configuration wizard, which allows you to easily configure the plugin for your website. You』ll also see a heading called Problems, which shows all the issues we』ve detected that affect the SEO of your site. Lastly, you』ll see a heading called Notifications, which shows all the notifications from the Yoast SEO plugin.

Features

On the Features tab, you can disable and enable the following features within Yoast SEO for your entire site:

SEO analysisReadability analysisCornerstone contentText link counterInsightsLink suggestionsXML sitemapsRyte integrationAdmin bar menu: the Yoast SEO admin bar menu contains useful links to third-party tools for analyzing pages and makes it easy to see if you have new notifications.

Webmaster Tools

The Webmaster Tools tab allows you to verify your site with the webmaster tools of Baidu, Bing, Yandex, and Google (Google Search Console). Webmaster tools give you feedback on how your site is doing in the search results and tell you how these search engines are perceiving your site.

Do you want to learn what the best settings are for your site? Check out our free Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin training. It will teach you to use all the great features of Yoast SEO to their full potential!

Search Appearance

This section allows you to customize the title, meta, and social appearance templates that are automatically applied to your content, prevent duplicate content and decide if a certain post type should appear in the search results.

How to use template variablesHow to prevent duplicate contentThe difference between focus keyphrases and meta keywordsUsing category and tag pages for SEO

General

The General tab of the Search Appearance settings allows you to edit the:

Title separator: what we use to separate different parts of your SEO title from each other. For example, this could be a hyphen (-), a bullet (•), or a vertical bar (|). Homepage: here, you can set the SEO title, meta description, and social settings for your homepage. The social settings are the image, title, and description used when a link to your homepage is shared on social media. Knowledge Graph & Schema.org: these settings determine what your site will look like when it shows up in Google』s Knowledge Graph.

Content Types

On the Content Types tab, you can determine whether you want each of the different content types your site has to show up in the search results and on social media.

For each content type (e.g. post, page, and product), you can set:

the SEO title;the meta description;the schema settings;the custom fields;the social image;the social title;the social description.

The social settings allow you to set a default template for how your posts, pages, or other content types look when shared on social media.

Media

On the Media tab, you can determine whether you want to redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself. When you upload an image to WordPress, that image gets a URL that becomes available. WordPress also automatically generates an entirely new web page, containing just that image: a so-called attachment URL. These attachment URLs are quite empty and because of that it』s better to disable them, and redirect them to the media item itself.

Taxonomies

On the Taxonomies tab, you』re allowed to determine whether you want search engines to show the different types of taxonomies (e.g. categories, tags) in the search results. You can also alter the templates of the SEO title, meta description, and social appearance templates for these taxonomies.

The recommended order of Yoast SEO academy courses

Our Yoast SEO academy platform gives you access to thirteen courses on all key SEO topics. But in what order should you do these courses? Of course, this depends on your needs and wishes. However, we can give you a few tips on the recommended order of Yoast SEO academy courses.

Get free access to all our SEO training courses with the Yoast SEO Premium pluginYoast SEO academy FAQMyYoast quickstart guideHow to access your courses via MyYoast

Free courses

We have five free courses, which are the SEO for beginners training course, the WordPress for beginners training course, the Structured data for beginners training course, the Block editor training course, and the Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin training course.

If you』re a beginner, we』d recommend you to start with the first four to learn more about their respective fields. The Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin course is a bit of a standalone course that focuses on the usage of the Yoast SEO for WordPress (Premium) plugin. So, this one can be done at any moment should you wish to learn more about the plugin and its intricacies and features.

The basics of SEO

Then, we would recommend starting with the All-around SEO training course as it gives you an outline of everything you need to learn about the basics of SEO and expounds upon those first two courses mentioned.

Local SEO

If you own a small business and wish to rank locally, you can follow the Local SEO training course. It covers the essentials of Local SEO that can help you improve your website and increase its visibility online.

Ecommerce SEO

Do you own an online store? Then you probably want to do everything you can to let your potential customers find your products. In the Ecommerce SEO course, we teach you how to set up a winning ecommerce SEO strategy and get your business among the top shopping search results

Focus on content or technical SEO

Then, you can decide to focus on either content or technical SEO. There is not necessarily a preferred order, but you could choose a path based on your interest and which you』d like to get started with first.

Content SEO

Should you choose content, then you can continue with the Keyword research training course, SEO copywriting training course, and the Site structure training course. Keep in mind that a small part of the SEO copywriting course is also discussed extensively in the Keyword research course, so we recommend doing the Keyword research training before the SEO copywriting training course.

Technical SEO

Should you choose to focus on the technical side of SEO, then you can continue with Technical SEO training course. To understand how structured data works and what kind of code it requires, you should take the Understanding structured data course.

Other courses

There are also two special courses you might want to keep in mind. The International SEO training course can be done at any moment after finishing All-around SEO.

Finally, you can get the latest SEO news from our experts in the SEO news course. This course is updated monthly. We』d recommend you to keep an eye on that, so you can keep your SEO knowledge fresh and up-to-date!

How to use the Yoast SEO Premium orphaned content workout

Have you noticed how it becomes harder and harder to clean up your site as content piles up? Do you remember the last time you checked your content and wondered: is this still relevant and up to date, or should I remove it? Just like your home, your site also needs a thorough clean-up once in a while! No worries! We』ll help you with the chore of cleaning up with the simple, three-step workout called the Orphaned content workout!

In the workout, we』ll guide you into cleaning up your orphaned content. That』s the content on your site that doesn』t have enough links pointing to it. Therefore, it is hard to find. You』ll have the option to either update and link to the content or remove it. We』ll be there every step of the way to help you do the clean-up as efficiently as possible!

If you haven』t completed the SEO data optimization, you will be required to do so to be able to proceed with the workout. Running the SEO data optimization helps the plugin give you the best internal linking suggestions.

Using the Yoast SEO Premium orphaned content workout

The orphaned content workout is organized as a checklist. After each step, you can click the button 「I』ve finished this step.」 Clicking those buttons won』t make any changes to your site or your content. The checklist is there to help you easily move through the steps. Now, let』s explore the workout! Access the workout To access the Orphaned content workout, go to the SEO menu item and then select Workouts (see image below). Then, find the Orphaned content workout in the index and click Start Workout! Love it or leave it? The first step of the workout is about deciding what you want to do with your orphaned content. Yoast SEO Premium automatically creates a list of orphaned content articles from your site. Those are the articles that are six months or older and have less than three links pointing to them. On the left side, in the first two columns, you can see the articles』 SEO and Readability scores. On the right side, you will see three buttons. Let』s explore what they do: Improve: If you』ve decided that an article is worth keeping but it needs some improvement, click the Improve button. That will automatically add the article to the second step of the workout, and you』ll be able to proceed with it from there. Remove: If you think an article is no longer relevant on your site, you can remove it. However, simply deleting it is bad for SEO and can cause 404 errors. That is why we automatically prompt you to redirect the article to another URL or to your homepage. Hide from search engines: Some of your articles may be outdated or unnecessary for the time being. But, you may want to get back to them and refresh them at some other time. In that case, you can hide those articles from search engines by clicking the button. Yoast SEO will automatically noidex the page, telling search engines not to show that page in the search results.Need help deciding what to do? Read: Keep your content fresh and up to date! Check if your article is up to date In this step, you will see a new list of articles. Those are the ones that you chose to improve in the previous step. On the left, you will again see the Readability and SEO score of the article. See any red or orange bullets? Then the article may need some work. To improve it, follow these steps: a. Click on the article in the workout to access it and read it. b. Look for outdated information. For example, you may be referring to events that have passed, products that are sold out, or software that』s been updated. In addition, there may be some new developments in the field the article is about. If there are, it may be good to edit the content and mention them. For more detailed guidance, check: How to update your content in 10 easy steps. c. Click the Edit button at the top of the screen to access the post or page editor and make the necessary changes. d. Check the SEO and Readability scores and follow the feedback to make improvements (if necessary). Satisfied with your article? Then, go back to the workout and tick the box in the Is it up-to-date column. The plugin will automatically move the article to the next step! Add internal links towards your orphaned content In the third step, you will see a list of the orphaned content articles you marked as updated. In addition, for each article, there is a list of suggested articles you can use to add internal links to the orphaned content. To add the links, follow these steps: a. Click the copy link button to the right of the orphaned article title. That will enable you to use the link later on.b. Find an article in the list relevant to the orphaned article you want to add links to.c. Click on the blue link 「Edit to add link.」 The post or page editing screen opens.d. Find a relevant sentence that is related to your cornerstone article. Use the link you copied in step one and insert it in the sentence you chose. Make sure that the link text is also relevant to the topic of the cornerstone.Note: you』ll need to repeat this process for each of your orphaned content articles. Well done! You did it! You cleaned up the old content on your site in just three steps and freshened up your site』s SEO! In this step, you get an overview of the work you』ve done. Time to pat yourself on the back!

The Yoast SEO workouts FAQ

Still have some questions about this workout? Head to the Yoast SEO Workouts FAQ page!

Schema options in News SEO

Just like the Yoast SEO plugin, the News SEO for WordPress plugin automatically adds Schema.org structured data to your pages. Search engines use structured data to understand your pages better. This allows them to present your pages in an enhanced way. If you have a news site and use News SEO, this means you help search engines discover and understand your news articles. And, if Google understands that your articles are news articles, they might appear in Google News! Awesome, right? This article will guide you through the schema options in the News SEO for WordPress plugin.

Need help setting up your News SEO plugin? Check out the Configuration guide for News SEO.

Table of contentsWhere to find the Schema options in News SEO?The Schema settings for news articlesSetting a default schema type

Where to find the Schema options in News SEO?

Log in to your WordPress site. You』ll be in your Dashboard. Click Posts, then select one of your posts or add a new one. You』ll be in the post editor. Open the Yoast SEO sidebar. Scroll down to the Schema heading and click it to open the Schema settings. You』ll see the Schema settings. Here, you can select what type of page or content this is.

You can also find the Schema settings in the Schema tab of the Yoast SEO meta box, below the post or page editor.

The Schema settings for news articles

In the Schema settings, you can change what type of content your page or article is. If you have the News SEO for WordPress plugin, you』ll get additional news-related options to choose from:

OptionSchema.org typeDescriptionNews articleNewsArticleAn article that reports news or provides background context and supporting materials for understanding news.Analysis articleAnalysisNewsArticleA news article that, while based on factual reporting, incorporates the expertise of the author offering interpretations and conclusions.Ask The Public articleAskPublicNewsArticleA news article expressing an open call asking for input, insights, clarifications, anecdotes, documentation, etc., on an issue, for reporting purposes.Background articleBackgroundNewsArticleA news article providing historical context, definition, and detail on a specific topic.Opinion articleOpinionNewsArticleA news article that primarily expresses opinions rather than journalistic reporting of news and events. Reportage articleReportageNewsArticleA news article that is the result of journalistic news reporting conventions.Review articleReviewNewsArticleA news article and critic review providing a professional critic』s assessment of a service, product, performance, or artistic or literary work.

These news-related options are additional to the standard Schema options in the Yoast SEO plugin.

Setting a default schema type

It』s also possible to set a default schema type for your blog posts or pages. To do so, follow the steps described in this article about selecting the Page or Article type in your Schema settings. Here, you』ll also find the additional news-related schema options listed above if you have the News SEO plugin for WordPress.

Using the Store Locator

You can see on our live Local SEO demo site what the store locator looks like and how it works: https://local.yoast.com/location-finder/

Want to learn all about local SEO? In our Local SEO training, you』ll learn how to optimize the website of your local business for search engines. So you』ll start ranking in your area! Check out our Local SEO training.

Table of contentsPost/Page buttonSidebar widget

Post/Page button

In the WordPress block editor, you can add the store locator to any post or page with the Store Locator Structured Data Block. Simply click the plus icon in your post editor and add the Store Locator block.

Adding the store locator in Gutenberg

Once you』ve added the store locator block, your customization options will appear in the right sidebar. You』ll be able to customize:

the behavior of the map (zooming, dragging, filters, radius);the maximum number of results;the type of map you want to display (road map, satellite, terrain, or hybrid);what information you want to display (state, country, phone number, fax, email address, URL).

If you』re still using the classic editor, you』ll have to add a shortcode to your post or page like this:

Adding the store locator to the classic editor.

When you click the 「Store locator」 shortcode button, you will get a popup to allow you to customize the same options explained above.

Choose the options and define what the results should look like. This will then insert a shortcode into your page, which looks something like [wpseo_storelocator]. We recommend you give that a line of its own in your content.

Sidebar widget

Under Appearance > Widgets, you』ll find a Store locator form. This widget is used to display a location search feature. This will make it easier for users to find out where your multiple locations are situated. This widget is only available when you have the Multiple locations option turned on in the Business info settings in Local SEO. The widget comes with several features that need to be explained.

This is what your widget will look like in the back end:

Store locator sidebar widget options

The title of the widget shows up above the search box to show visitors what they can expect.The search label shows up just above the search input field. We recommend using a label like 「Find Nearest Business」 or 「Search」 or any other label you think may entice users to use the search box.The default Radius is set to 10km (6m) and is used to calculate the radius of the search.Select a page to put your search box on.

The widget will output the following result on the front end of your site:

Store locator search widget

Video SEO: FAQ

Our Video SEO for WordPress plugin helps you with optimizing your videos for search engines. In this article, we』ll answer frequently asked questions about our Video SEO plugin.

Where can I find Video SEO in my WordPress post or page editor? You can find Video SEO in the sidebar and in the Video SEO meta box below the post or page. In Video SEO 13.6, we』ve integrated Yoast Video SEO into the block editor (or Gutenberg) sidebar. This makes it a lot easier to use Video SEO while writing and editing your content, as you no longer have to scroll down to find the Video SEO meta box! Why doesn』t the Video SEO plugin index videos on my category page? The Video SEO plugin only indexes videos on your taxonomy pages that are in the description of that taxonomy. If the videos are shown as excerpts of underlying pages, it will not index them. If you want the videos on your taxonomy indexed, follow the steps described in this article on how to index videos on taxonomy pages. Does the Video SEO plugin work with videos marked as private? Currently, if your video is set to private before it』s indexed by our plugin, it may not be recognized. We』re working on a solution for this, but for now, we have a workaround for indexing private videos with the Video SEO plugin. Why is my video not showing in the search results? In this post on videos not showing in the search results, we explore why your video might not show up in the search results, and we tell you what the solution is for this issue. You might also find the article How to rank with your videos in Google useful. What video hosting platforms are supported for the Video SEO plugin? This article on supported video hosting platforms for Video SEO plugin lists all the hosting platforms that have been proven to be possible to optimize with the Video SEO plugin. Why doesn』t my video sitemap work when I have custom post type 『Video』? When you have the custom post type 『Video』, the Video SEO plugin will automatically detect a naming collision and change the video sitemap name. Please go to SEO > Video SEO and click 『XML Video Sitemap』 to get the correct video sitemap URL. In this article, we explain how to change the XML video sitemap URL. Can I change the XML video sitemap URL? Yes, follow the steps described in this article on how to change the XML video sitemap URL. Why is my video not detected? Are you getting an error message saying our plugin has not detected a video in your content? We』ve listed possible causes and solutions in this article.

How to remove a user from your Google Search Console property

When you contact Yoast support to solve an issue, you may need to give a support team member access to your Google Search Console property. After we』ve answered your question or resolved the issue, we advise you to remove the user. In this post, you can learn how to do that.

Remove a user from Google Search Console

To remove a user you』ve granted access to your Google Search Console property, follow these steps. Open Google Search Console』s user admin Select the verified property that matches your preferred URL format including http or https and www or non-www because Google treats each format as separate but related properties. Click 『Delete』 for the email address provided to you by a Yoast team member. Click 『OK』 on the confirmation screen to remove the user.

That』s it! You have safely removed the user. Want to learn some more about Google Search Console? Read:

How to use Google Search Console: a beginners guideHow to create a Google Search Console dashboardDid Google Search Console send an email with an error message?

Google Search Console: Breadcrumb Schema Report

We will use the term 『error』 throughout this article but please note that the same process can be used for warnings that appear in Google Search Console.

Google Search Console notifies webmasters of issues with their breadcrumb schema. If your site』s breadcrumb schema report shows errors, we』ll help you determine where the issue occurs and which support team can help you resolve the issue. Determine which product on your site outputs the breadcrumb markup By default, Yoast SEO does not output breadcrumb schema. Please verify that you have enabled Yoast SEO breadcrumbs.If you are not using Yoast SEO breadcrumbs, something else on your site (most likely your theme) is added the breadcrumb markup. Please contact the team for the product that adds breadcrumbs for assistance resolving the issue. Not sure what products adds breadcrumbs for your site, a conflict check can help.If you are using Yoast SEO breadcrumbs, there is a chance that something else adds their own breadcrumb markup so we』ll next check if the breadcrumb error is located inside the Yoast SEO breadcrumb markup. Determine if the error occurs inside the Yoast SEO breadcrumb markup This test will require a little testing so we』ll walk you through it step by step below. Before starting, you will need to have at least one URL that is listed in the Google Search Console has having a breadcrumb schema report error. Locate and fix the cause of the error A list of errors, causes and solutions is here. Validate the fix in Google Search Console Once you have fixed the breadcrumb output, please use Google』s Structured Data Testing tool to confirm that the breadcrumb code validates with no errors before using the 『Validate Fix』 button in Google Search Console.

Is the error caused by the Yoast SEO breadcrumb schema markup?

This test will require a little testing so we』ll walk you through it step by step. Before starting, you will need to have at least one URL that is listed in the Google Search Console has having a breadcrumb error.

Go to Google』s Structured Data Testing Tool.Paste the URL from Google Search Console that has a breadcrumb error.Click 『Run test』.

On the left side, you will see the underlying source code used to display this specific URL. One the right side, you will see all of the schema markup found for this specific URL.

By default, Yoast SEO outputs a single schema section based on the content of the page. If you see multiple schema sections, another plugin, add-on or theme is also outputting schema.

On the right side, click on the section that is marked as having an error.Scroll to the error and click on it. This will highlight the location where the error exists on the left side (code side).If the error occurs in the JSON-LD section that starts with <script type='application/ld+json' class='yoast-schema-graph, the breadcrumb output is handled by Yoast SEO, one of our add-ons or has through custom code integration (used by other developers to modify default breadcrumb behavior).If the error occurs outside of this code, the breadcrumb output is handled by another product on your site. Please contact the team for the product that adds breadcrumbs for assistance resolving the issue. Not sure what product adds breadcrumbs for your site, a conflict check can help.

Errors, Causes and Solutions

Missing title or image for post or page

One of name or item.name must be provided. / Either 「name」 or 「item.name」 should be specifiedA value for the image field is required. / The image field is recommended. Please provide a value if available.

Title: The breadcrumb schema markup does not have a title. This could mean that either the post or page itself doesn』t have a defined title (appears as (no title) in the page overview), has an empty breadcrumb title. To add a custom breadcrumb title, please follow the steps here.

Image: A featured image was not selected for the post/page. Please set a featured image by editing the post or page.

Incomplete breadcrumb markup

A value for the id field is required / Missing field 「id」A value for the item field is required / Missing field 「item」A value for the itemListElement field is required / Missing field 「itemListElement」

The breadcrumb markup is incomplete. With default settings, this is not likely to occur with Yoast SEO breadcrumbs. Please contact support for further assistance.

Other error not listed above

As this report is still new, it is possible that we』ve missed or not seen the error you received. Please contact support for further assistance.