Yoast SEO Setup: How to Install and Configure Yoast (2026)

This Yoast SEO setup guide walks through installing the plugin, its first-time configuration and every settings screen that matters, then shows how to use Yoast on each post. Yoast SEO is free, runs on 10,000,000+ WordPress sites according to WordPress.org, and was last tested with the current WordPress 7.1.3. Every menu name and option below comes from Yoast’s own help center, checked on 12 October 2026, so you can follow along screen by screen.

New to SEO on WordPress in general? Our WordPress SEO tutorial covers the whole process for any plugin; this page is only about setting up Yoast.

Before you start your Yoast SEO setup

• Use one SEO plugin only. If you have Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress installed, decide which to keep. Yoast says its built-in import and export tools can bring your existing SEO data and settings across when you switch.
• Back up your site before changing SEO settings on a live blog.
• Check Settings → Reading in WordPress and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is not ticked.

Step 1: Install Yoast SEO

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
2. Search for Yoast SEO; it’s listed as “Yoast SEO” by Yoast.
3. Click Install Now, then Activate.

A Yoast SEO menu appears in your dashboard. On WordPress.org the plugin (version 28.6 when we checked) is rated 4.8 out of 5 from more than 27,000 reviews, needs WordPress 6.9 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer, and was updated on 29 September 2026.

Step 2: Run the first-time configuration

Yoast’s guided setup has five steps. You can re-run it later, and Yoast notes that your existing settings stay in place until you choose to change them.

1. SEO data optimization. Yoast scans your existing content so it can see your site roughly the way search engines do, which improves its suggestions and internal-linking tools. On a big site this can take a while, but you can carry on with the next steps while it runs.
2. Site representation. Choose whether the site represents an organization or a person. An organization gets a name and logo; a person is linked to a WordPress user profile. Yoast uses this for the structured data search engines read.
3. Social profiles. Add your social media profile links so search engines can connect them to your site. If the site represents a person, the profiles come from that person’s WordPress user profile instead.
4. Personal preferences. A few choices about Yoast itself.
5. Finish.

Step 3: Go through Yoast’s settings

Everything else lives under Yoast SEO → Settings, grouped as below.

Site features

Turn whole features on or off. Keep the SEO analysis and readability analysis on; they power the checks you’ll see when you write. The inclusive language analysis is off by default and you can switch it on here. Site features also holds Yoast’s AI tools, the llms.txt option and cornerstone content, which lets you mark your most important articles so Yoast’s tools prioritise them.

Site basics

Set your website name, an optional alternate name (for example an acronym) and tagline. These override the ones in WordPress’s General settings. Choose a title separator: Yoast recommends a short one, and points out that Google has recently been replacing many separators with hyphens, so a hyphen is the safe choice. Add a site image as the fallback for posts without an image.

Site representation

The same organization-or-person choice as in the setup, with fields for your name, logo and social profiles. Yoast explains that Google can use this information for its Knowledge Graph, the data behind the knowledge panels in search results.

Site connections

Verify your site with search engine tools by pasting in their verification codes: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Baidu, Yandex and Pinterest are listed. Verifying lets you see how your site performs in each.

Content types

For your Homepage, write an SEO title and meta description. For Posts, Pages and any other content types, Yoast recommends leaving Show in search results on, and lets you set templates for SEO titles and descriptions using variables such as the post title and site name. Each post can override the template.

Categories & tags

Decide whether category and tag archives can appear in search, and set their title templates. A common approach is to keep categories in search (they work like topic hubs) and keep thin tag pages out unless you’ve written something useful on them.

Advanced

Yoast’s Advanced settings include:

• Breadcrumbs: how breadcrumb trails look, if your theme shows them.
• Author archives: on a single-author blog, you can turn these off so they don’t duplicate your blog page.
• Date and format archives: usually best turned off on a blog.
• Special pages: title templates for internal search results and 404 pages.
• Media pages: redirect attachment pages to the file itself, so thin image pages don’t appear in search.
• RSS: add a link back to your site at the end of posts in your feed, which helps when others copy your feed.
• Llms.txt and Schema: manage your llms.txt file and check Yoast’s structured data settings.
• Crawl optimization (Premium): trim unnecessary URLs and code WordPress adds.

Click Save changes on each screen.

Quick settings for a new blog

These are our suggestions for a typical blog, not Yoast’s defaults; adjust them for your site.

Step 4: Use Yoast on every post

When you edit a post, open the Yoast SEO panel in the editor sidebar or below the post:

1. Enter a focus keyphrase: the main search phrase the post should rank for. Use a different one for each post, so your pages don’t compete.
2. Check the search appearance preview: write an SEO title and meta description, and tidy the slug (the post’s address). Don’t change the slug of an old post that already ranks.
3. Work through the SEO analysis: Yoast’s red, orange and green lights suggest improvements. Treat them as advice, not rules; a green light doesn’t guarantee a ranking, and an orange one is often fine.
4. Check readability: sentence length, subheadings, passive voice and transition words.
5. Look at Insights: the Flesch reading ease score, reading time and word count.

Choosing a good focus keyphrase

Yoast’s analysis is only as useful as the keyphrase you give it. Pick the phrase a searcher would actually type, check that people search for it, and make sure no other post on your site targets it. Long, specific phrases are usually easier to rank for on a new blog than short, broad ones. Our guide to keyword research explains how to find and choose these phrases, step by step.

Once you have a keyphrase, use it naturally in the SEO title, the first paragraph, at least one subheading and the meta description. Yoast will flag where it’s missing, but it can’t judge whether the post really answers the search; that part is up to you.

Yoast SEO free vs Premium

The free plugin covers everything in this guide except crawl optimization and Premium-only social appearance templates. Yoast SEO Premium costs $9.90 a month, billed annually at $118.80 (excluding VAT), when we checked. According to Yoast, it adds AI tools that draft SEO titles and meta descriptions, more schema types, AI crawler controls, more analysis features, the Local, Video and News SEO add-ons, and 24/7 support.

For a new blog, the free version is enough. Consider Premium when you’re publishing often and the AI drafting and extra analysis save you real time.

Common Yoast SEO setup mistakes

• Chasing green lights. Stuffing the keyphrase to turn a light green makes writing worse. Write for readers first.
• Running two SEO plugins. Duplicate titles, descriptions and schema confuse search engines.
• Hiding the wrong content. Turning off “Show in search results” for posts or pages removes them from search; double-check before saving.
• Changing old slugs. Editing the address of a post that already ranks breaks links unless you add a 301 redirect.
• Forgetting Search Console. Verify your site and submit Yoast’s sitemap (yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml) so you can see what Google indexes.

Keeping Yoast up to date

Yoast releases updates often; it was updated on 29 September 2026, shortly before we checked. Turn on automatic updates for the plugin, or update it when WordPress shows a new version, and check the “tested up to” version on WordPress.org after major WordPress releases. If an update ever causes a problem, a recent backup lets you roll back quickly while you report it.

After your Yoast setup

Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console, then focus on content and links: Yoast handles the technical basics, but rankings come from useful posts and the sites that link to them. For other plugins that work well alongside Yoast, see our list of the best WordPress plugins.