You installed Yoast SEO, clicked through half of the setup wizard, and then went back to writing. Six months later the plugin is still running on defaults, your tag archives are indexed, your author archive duplicates your homepage, and nobody has ever checked what your pages look like when shared on LinkedIn. wpbeginner.com has a solid rundown on this.
This guide fixes that. Below is a complete walkthrough of the Yoast SEO settings screen, panel by panel, with a clear verdict for each option: change it, or leave it alone. No fluff about what SEO is, no 40 screenshots of the same menu. Just decisions.
Before you touch anything
- Know your site type. A one-author blog, a 12-person publisher and a WooCommerce store need different answers to the same toggles. We flag those differences as we go.
- Have Google Search Console access ready. You will need it for verification and for checking the sitemap afterwards.
- Make a backup or use a staging site if your site is large. Indexing toggles change what search engines can crawl, and mistakes there are expensive.
- Update the plugin first. The settings interface was rebuilt in Yoast SEO 20 and keeps evolving. If your menu still looks like “Search Appearance” and “Social” as separate top-level items, you are on an old version.
Where the Yoast SEO settings actually live
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Yoast SEO → Settings. Everything is grouped into four blocks in the left column:
| Block | What it controls | How often you touch it |
|---|---|---|
| General | Site features, site basics, site representation, site connections | Once at setup, then rarely |
| Content types | Homepage, posts, pages, products, media and any custom post type | At setup and whenever you add a post type |
| Categories & tags | Taxonomy archives: categories, tags, formats, custom taxonomies | At setup |
| Advanced | Crawl optimization, breadcrumbs, author and date archives, special pages, media pages, RSS | At setup, plus crawl cleanups |
There is also a first-time configuration workflow under Yoast SEO → General → First-time configuration. Run it if you have not: it takes four minutes and fills in site representation and social profiles. Then come back here and refine, because the wizard does not touch archives, breadcrumbs or crawl settings, and those are where the real problems hide.
General → Site features
This is a page of on/off switches for the plugin’s own modules. Most people leave every switch on and never think about it. Here is what each one does and whether it deserves to stay on.
| Feature | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| SEO analysis | On | The traffic light is a checklist, not a ranking factor. Useful for spotting missing meta descriptions and alt text. |
| Readability analysis | On (ignore selectively) | Helpful for general blogs, annoying for technical or legal content. Turning it off removes the nagging. |
| Inclusive language analysis | Optional | Zero SEO impact. Editorial preference only. |
| Cornerstone content | On | Lets you mark your pillar pages so internal link suggestions and the link counter prioritise them. |
| Text link counter | On | Adds incoming/outgoing link columns to your post list. Best free internal linking audit in WordPress. |
| Insights | Optional | Word count and prominent words. Nice to have, not decisive. |
| XML sitemaps | On | Turn off only if another plugin already generates one. Two sitemaps competing is a mess. |
| Open Graph / social metadata | On | Without it, shares on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Slack pull random images. |
| X (Twitter) card data | On | Harmless, tiny amount of extra markup. |
| Enhanced Slack sharing | On for B2B sites | Adds author and reading time to Slack previews. |
| Admin bar menu | Personal preference | Off if you hate clutter in the toolbar. |
| REST API: head endpoint | On for headless, off otherwise | Only needed if a front end fetches your metadata through the API. |
| Usage tracking | Your call | No SEO effect either way. |
| AI features (title and description generation) | On, but edit the output | Fine as a first draft for bulk meta descriptions. Generated text still needs a human pass. |
General → Site basics
Small page, big consequences, because this data feeds your schema markup and your knowledge panel eligibility.
- Website name: the brand name exactly as you want it in search results. Not “Home”, not “My WordPress Site”.
- Alternate website name: only fill this if you genuinely have a second common name (for example “King Content Agency” and “KCA”). Leave blank otherwise.
- Tagline: replace the WordPress default “Just another WordPress site” immediately. It sometimes appears in titles.
- Site image: a 1200x630px fallback image used when a page has no featured image. Set it once with your logo on a branded background.
- Site preferences → restrict advanced settings for authors: keep this on for multi-author sites so contributors cannot noindex or canonicalise a page by accident. Turn it off on a solo site.
- Show SEO settings for content types: hide the Yoast panel on post types you never optimise (internal-only CPTs, for instance).
General → Site representation
Yoast asks whether the site represents an organization or a person. This choice drives your Organization or Person schema, so pick honestly:
- Organization: agencies, shops, SaaS, media brands, non-profits. Add the organization name, a square logo of at least 112x112px, and ideally your email, phone and address if your version offers those fields.
- Person: personal blogs, freelancers, consultants, portfolio sites. Select the WordPress user that represents the site and make sure that user’s profile has a bio and an avatar.
Further down the same page you enter your social profiles: Facebook page URL, X handle, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and “other profiles” for anything else (TikTok, GitHub, Crunchbase). These populate the sameAs property in your schema, which is how search engines connect your website to your accounts. Only list profiles you actually own and keep active.
General → Site connections
Verification codes for Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Baidu and Yandex. Paste only the code value, not the full meta tag. If you already verified through DNS or a Google Analytics/Tag Manager connection, you can skip this page entirely. There is no benefit to verifying twice.
Content types: the heart of your search appearance
Every post type gets its own panel with three tabs: Search appearance, Social appearance and Schema. This is where most badly configured sites lose ground.
Homepage
If your homepage is a static page, Yoast tells you to edit the SEO title and meta description on the page itself. If it is your latest posts feed, you set them here. Rules that matter:
- Write a homepage title that leads with what you do, not just your brand: Content Marketing Agency for SaaS Brands | King Content Agency.
- Keep the title around 55 to 60 characters and the description around 150 to 155 so nothing gets cut.
- Set a dedicated homepage social image. It is the one shared most often.
Posts and Pages
| Setting | Recommended value |
|---|---|
| Show Posts/Pages in search results | On. Turning this off noindexes every item of that type at once. Only do it for private post types. |
| SEO title template | %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%% is a solid default. On long brand names, consider dropping the sitename for posts. |
| Meta description template | Leave empty. An empty field lets Google pull a relevant snippet, which beats a templated excerpt. Write descriptions manually on important pages. |
| Social appearance | Leave the title and description templates at default. Add a fallback social image only if many posts lack a featured image. |
| Schema: page type | Posts: Web Page. Pages: Web Page. Adjust individual pages (FAQ page, About page) in the post editor’s Schema tab. |
| Schema: article type | Posts: Article or Blog Post. Pages: None. A service page is not an article. |
Useful title template variables
| Variable | Outputs |
|---|---|
%%title%% |
The post or page title |
%%sitename%% |
Your website name |
%%sep%% |
The separator you chose (|, -, etc.) |
%%page%% |
“Page 2 of 5” on paginated content |
%%primary_category%% |
The primary category of a post |
%%term_title%% |
The archive term name |
%%currentyear%% |
The current year, auto-updating |
Tip: the separator lives in Content types → the separator dropdown at the top in some versions and in Site basics in others. A vertical bar or a hyphen both work. Do not use the long dash, it eats pixels in the SERP.
WooCommerce products and custom post types
Every registered public post type appears here. For products, keep them indexed, set the schema article type to None, and let Yoast WooCommerce SEO (or your theme) handle Product schema. For CPTs created by plugins that are not meant for visitors (popups, form entries, sliders, testimonials without their own pages), switch Show in search results to Off. This is one of the most common sources of junk in a sitemap.
Media / attachment URLs
Under Advanced → Media pages (or Content types → Media, depending on version), keep “Enable media pages” set to Off, which makes Yoast redirect attachment URLs to the parent post. Standalone image pages are thin content and serve no purpose for 99% of sites. Photographers selling prints are the exception.
Categories & tags: the duplicate content decision
Taxonomy archives are where most WordPress sites accidentally publish hundreds of near-identical pages. Decide based on whether the archive is genuinely useful to a visitor arriving from Google.
| Archive | Index? | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Categories | Yes, if you use a tidy structure and add descriptions | A well-built category page is a hub that can rank for broad terms. An empty one is not. |
| Tags | Usually no | Most tag archives duplicate categories. Index them only if you curate tags deliberately and each has real volume. |
| Format archives | No | “Gallery” and “Aside” archives have no search value. Yoast disables them by default in recent versions. |
| Product categories (WooCommerce) | Yes | These are your money pages for category-level queries. |
| Product tags / attributes | No, with rare exceptions | Faceted duplication is a crawl budget killer on large stores. |
Also on this screen: “Remove the category prefix from the URL”. It turns /category/seo/ into /seo/. It looks cleaner, but on an existing site it changes every category URL and you must set up redirects. Leave it alone unless you are configuring a brand new site.
Advanced → Crawl optimization
This section strips code and URLs that WordPress adds by default. It will not send you to the top of Google, but on big sites it reduces crawl waste and page weight. Safe defaults:
- Turn off: shortlinks, RSD/WLW links, oEmbed links, the generator tag, emoji scripts, and the pingback HTTP header. Nothing modern depends on them.
- Feeds: disable global comment feeds, post comments feeds, post authors feeds, search results feeds and Atom/RDF feeds. Keep the main post feed if you use it for email newsletters, syndication, Apple News or podcast distribution.
- URL cleanup: “Remove unregistered URL parameters” can break filters, calendars, booking flows and tracking on complex sites. Test carefully on staging before enabling it on a store.
- Campaign tracking parameters: safe to enable if you keep utm parameters in the allow list. Check that your analytics still records campaigns afterwards.
- Search term highlighting and search parameter filtering: enabling these is usually good, it stops odd internal search URLs from being crawled.
Advanced → Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs help users understand hierarchy and give Google an extra structural signal. Yoast generates BreadcrumbList schema automatically once enabled.
- Enable breadcrumbs. If your theme has its own breadcrumbs, do not run both. Pick one.
- Separator: the default “»” is fine, “/” or “›” look cleaner.
- Anchor text for the homepage: “Home” works. Do not stuff a keyword in there.
- Prefix for the breadcrumb path: leave empty. “You are here:” is dated and adds nothing.
- Taxonomy to show in breadcrumbs for posts: set to Category so the trail reads Home › Category › Post.
- Bold the last page: personal preference, slightly better readability when bold.
- Insert the code: if your theme does not support breadcrumbs natively, paste
<?php yoast_breadcrumb( '<p id="breadcrumbs">','</p>' ); ?>into your template, or use the Yoast Breadcrumbs block in a block theme.
Advanced → Author archives, date archives and special pages
| Setting | Single-author site | Multi-author site |
|---|---|---|
| Author archives | Disable. They duplicate your blog index. | Enable and index. They support author expertise signals when the bio is real. |
| Authors without posts | Hide | Hide |
| Date archives | Disable | Disable, unless you are a news publisher using them for navigation |
| Search results page | Noindex (Yoast default) | Noindex (Yoast default) |
| 404 page title | Customise the wording, leave the noindex | Same |
Advanced → RSS: the fields let you append a line to every feed item, typically a link back to the original post. Keeping the default backlink helps if scrapers republish your feed. Do not overload it with three promotional links.
XML sitemaps: check them, do not over-configure them
Yoast does not give you a long list of sitemap options, and that is deliberate. Your sitemap contents are decided by the “Show X in search results” toggles you set in Content types and Categories & tags. Anything set to noindex is excluded automatically.
- Confirm the feature is on in Site features → XML sitemaps.
- Open
https://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xmland scan the list of sub-sitemaps. - Ask yourself for each one: do I want these URLs in Google? If you see
author-sitemap.xmlon a solo blog or a sitemap full of popup CPTs, go back and switch that type off. - Submit the index URL (not each child sitemap) in Google Search Console → Sitemaps.
- Re-check the coverage report a week later.
Excluding a single URL: do not hack the sitemap. Open the page, go to the Yoast panel → Advanced, and set “Allow search engines to show this page in search results?” to No. It leaves the sitemap on its own.
Social defaults, done properly
Social settings are no longer one big tab. They are split across three places, which is why people miss them:
- Site representation: your social profile URLs, used for schema.
- Site basics → Site image: the global fallback image for shares.
- Content types → Social appearance: per post type fallback image, title and description templates.
- Individual posts → Social tab in the Yoast sidebar: override the image, title and description for one specific page.
Practical rules: use 1200x630px images, keep important text away from the edges, and never rely on a logo alone for article shares. After publishing something important, run the URL through a preview debugger for the platform you care about, because caches are stubborn.
The per-post settings you should actually use
Global settings set the baseline. These four fields in the post editor do the heavy lifting:
- SEO title and meta description: write them manually on every page that matters. Use the preview to check truncation.
- Cornerstone content toggle: switch on for your 5 to 15 most strategic pages, no more.
- Advanced → Canonical URL: only fill this in when you know exactly why. A wrong canonical silently removes a page from Google.
- Advanced → Meta robots: noindex for thank you pages, checkout confirmations, gated asset landing pages and duplicate campaign pages.
Settings most people should leave alone
- The category prefix removal on an existing site.
- Meta description templates for posts and pages. Blank beats generic.
- Aggressive URL parameter cleanup on e-commerce, membership or booking sites without testing.
- Noindexing your whole blog post type because a consultant mentioned thin content. Fix the content instead.
- Turning off the XML sitemap because you “already have one” from a caching plugin. Verify which one actually resolves first.
- The RSS delay and feed hacks if you rely on the feed for a newsletter or podcast.
Post-configuration checklist
- Open your homepage source and confirm the title, description and canonical are what you expect.
- Load
/sitemap_index.xmland verify nothing junk is listed. - Test a blog post and a service page in the Rich Results Test to confirm Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList and Article schema are present without errors.
- Share one URL on LinkedIn or Slack and check that the image, title and description render correctly.
- Submit the sitemap in Search Console and check the Pages report a week later for a jump in “excluded by noindex” that you did not intend.
- Set a calendar reminder to review these settings after any major plugin, theme or WordPress core upgrade.
FAQ
How do I set up Yoast SEO on WordPress from scratch?
Install and activate the plugin, run Yoast SEO → General → First-time configuration to set site representation and social profiles, then go through Settings in this order: Site features, Site basics, Content types, Categories & tags, Advanced (crawl, breadcrumbs, archives), and finally verify your sitemap in Search Console. Budget about 30 minutes for a normal site.
What are the best Yoast SEO settings for a blog?
Index posts, pages and categories. Noindex tags, date archives, format archives, media pages and the internal search page. Disable author archives if you are the only writer. Enable breadcrumbs with Category as the taxonomy. Leave meta description templates empty and write them per post.
Does the free version of Yoast cover everything in this guide?
Yes. Every setting described here exists in the free plugin. Premium adds redirect management, multiple focus keyphrases, internal linking suggestions, orphaned content detection and the AI features, but the configuration itself does not require a licence.
Should I noindex category and tag archives?
Tags: almost always yes, unless you curate them like a real taxonomy. Categories: no, keep them indexed and improve them by adding a unique description and a sensible structure. A category page with 30 relevant posts and 150 words of context can rank on its own. This article covers the same ground in more depth.
Is Yoast better than All in One SEO or Rank Math?
They all output correct titles, canonicals, schema and sitemaps when configured properly. Yoast has the deepest documentation and the most predictable schema output, which matters for larger sites. The bigger performance difference comes from how carefully the settings are configured, not from the badge on the plugin.
Do Yoast green bullets improve rankings?
No. The traffic lights measure whether you followed a checklist, not whether your page deserves to rank. Treat a red bullet as a question worth answering, not an order to obey. A page can rank number one with an orange readability score.
Where did the old Search Appearance and Social menus go?
They were merged into the unified Settings screen from Yoast SEO 20 onwards. Search Appearance options now live under Content types and Categories & tags, and social options are split between Site representation, Site basics and each content type’s Social appearance tab.
Final word
Configuring Yoast is not about flipping every switch to on. It is about deciding, for each type of URL on your site, whether it deserves a place in Google’s index and what it should look like when it gets there. Work through the panels once with the table above open, document what you changed, and you will not need to touch most of it again for a year.
If you would rather have someone audit the configuration and the content strategy behind it, that is exactly the kind of work our team does every day.