2 Questions about Yoast SEO Plugin

4 replies
  • SEO
  • |
1. On the "Titles and Metas" section of the plugin menu, do you check "use meta keywords tag?" This allows you to provide additional keyword for each post you wish to target. Did you engage this feature? why or why not?

2. Under the same section: "Titles and Metas" and under the sub-section: Post Types - do you fill out that info or leave your stuff as is? For example my post title says: %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%% and my page title says: %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
#plugin #questions #seo #yoast
  • Profile picture of the author LloydMS
    I don't worry about meta keywords. I don't think they are that important and they just give clear information to competitors about what keywords I'm targeting.

    I leave the defaults in Titles and Metas > Post Types. But then I always fill out those fields on the individual posts and pages to make sure it's exactly what I want. The defaults are fine just in case you forget to customize a page/post.
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  • Profile picture of the author redstanford
    Thanks Lloyd. How about the "force re-write titles"option? Is that good or bad?
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    • Profile picture of the author jordanwarrior
      Originally Posted by redstanford View Post

      Thanks Lloyd. How about the "force re-write titles"option? Is that good or bad?
      Blogging these days has far less to do with perfecting all the SEO options than it does with writing informative content. You should definitely not include meta keywords as they're utterly worthless, and have been for some years. These days search engine algorithms know which keywords should be included without you telling them. Plus, meta keywords can get you in trouble simply because they're purely for SEO purposes and Google knows that.

      I would recommend a title format of %%title%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%. The site name is for branding and is based on personal preference. I personally basically only use %%title%%, but do use %%title%% | MySite.com, etc at times. I wouldn't enable the force rewrite titles option, and instead would stick with writing my own headlines that increase CTR's.
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  • Profile picture of the author trevord92
    Force re-write titles is only needed on certain themes and Yoast does its best to autodetect whether it needs to do that.

    Much depends on your preference for titles - I prefer mine not to have the site name included so will leave the box ticked if needed.

    You can always test to see whether or not Wordpress is doing what you thought it should be doing - just view the page and check whether the title shown is what you're expecting.
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