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WordPress is an SEO-friendly CMS for building websites and blogs, but it doesn’t include enough default features to help you rank at the top of search results. To truly establish a solid SEO presence online, you need to install and configure a WordPress SEO plugin.
While there are many SEO plugins available, the Yoast SEO plugin is a longtime favorite of WordPress users. The plugin has been in usage for over fifteen years, it supports over 56 languages, it has over ten million active installations, it has amassed over 25,000 five-star reviews, and it offers solid functionality that plays well with other plugins and themes. The core plugin functionality can also be augmented with premium extensions to further support SEO for WooCommerce stores, news websites, local businesses, and videos.
One of Yoast SEO’s most valuable features is its ability to generate XML sitemaps. An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website, helping search engines like Google crawl and index your content more efficiently.
Without a properly configured sitemap for WordPress, search engines may miss key pages, leading to lower visibility in search results. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to get set up with Yoast and how to correctly configure your Yoast SEO sitemap to maximize your site’s WordPress SEO potential.
The General tab in Yoast is dedicated to site features, site basics, site reputation, and site connections. This section is an important one and users should configure each item carefully.
This area of the plugin allows you to turn functionality on and off. From writing and site structure to social sharing and tools, these settings will establish what features are used within the WordPress website. When in doubt, leave features active.
These settings cover basic elements like the website name, tagline, and alternate names if applicable. There isn’t anything fancy in this section, but the settings should be reviewed and configured at plugin installation.
A lot of website owners skip over this section and that is a grave mistake. This section configures core elements of schema markup which is used to populate Google’s Knowledge Graph. Said another way, these settings help Google understand the who and what of your website or blog. They establish your entity data within Google, and they help Google better connect your site to key elements like organizational names, social profiles, and your logo.
These settings are used to link your website or blog to external properties like Google, Bing, Pinterest, and Baidu or Yandex. This section is only used if you are required to provide metadata to third-party websites for validation of ownership.
The Content Types tab in Yoast is dedicated to determining what portion of content you’d like to show up in search results. This section will default to base WordPress content like pages and posts. Each site will have a unique list here, as the options are derived from the content used within your website. A small website with few custom post types and plugins will only have a couple of options listed. A larger website with lots of different content types and plugins will have a lengthy list of content to configure.
It is important for you to walk through each content type listed to determine if you want something to show up in search and if you’d like to create default meta titles and descriptions for each content type available.
A word of caution: you might see unexpected content types, and you might be wondering where they came from. These extra content types come from your installed WordPress theme and plugins. Many of these extras can be turned off so they do not appear in search results. If you’re unsure what each type of content is, you can use the default XML sitemap to review content associated with the content type. This will help you decide if it should or should not be hidden from search engines.
The next section of the main Yoast settings is related to categories and tags. The default is to show you data related to blog posts. However, if you have custom post types or plugins installed you might see many items to review. Some may even have the same label, which can make this section a bit confusing. Just like the content types, if you’re not sure what an item is, head on over to your XML sitemap to determine what the content is and where it might originate from.
The final section of the main settings is dedicated to all the extras Yoast helps you configure. These will include breadcrumbs, author archives, RSS feeds, and more.
For the most part, these settings can be left as is and you do not need to spend a lot of time reviewing and editing them. The one item I recommend you always review and validate is the Author Archives. To assist in Google E-E-A-T it is best to make sure this feature is turned on and you have a dedicated page for each author.
An XML sitemap uses a standardized format to communicate directly with search engine crawlers. Unlike an HTML sitemap designed for human visitors, an SEO sitemap written in XML provides structured metadata about each URL on your site. The metadata gives search engines valuable context that helps them allocate their crawl budget more effectively across your content.
When you enable XML sitemaps in Yoast SEO, they are automatically generated and updated whenever you publish or delete content. Having Yoast create sitemaps automatically ensures that they always reflect the current state of your site without any manual intervention. The Yoast sitemap also intelligently splits your URLs into organized sub-sitemaps by content type, so it’s easier for search engines to parse and prioritize content.
Once you’ve walked through all of the main settings, it is important for you to thoroughly review your XML sitemap output. The hardest part of doing this is finding the actual sitemap!
To locate your XML sitemap go to General -> Site Features and scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll see the XML Sitemaps box and the button to View the XML Sitemap. Clicking this button will take you to the main XML sitemap at yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml.
This main XML Sitemap is a list of all XML sitemaps produced by the plugin. Each item will produce a list of URLs specific to that content type. If you discover missing content or find content that should not be present, you simply need to return to the Content Types section of the plugin and review what you have active. Changing the visibility settings of each content type will turn the individual XML sitemaps on or off.
As with any software, it is easy to make simple mistakes that can cause unforeseen issues. It happens because we’re human and we all make mistakes. The important thing is to catch these mistakes before the search engines do.
Here are the most common mistakes I’ve seen in using Yoast:
Configuring the Yoast plugin settings and reviewing your XML Sitemap can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve covered the basics in this post, the Yoast website has lots of help guides available, and our Knowledge Base has additional troubleshooting articles to help should you need them.
An SEO plugin like Yoast is a powerful tool for optimizing your site’s visibility, but plugins alone aren’t enough. Your website must also be fast, reliable, and always available to visitors and search engine crawlers.
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