Ok, it’s time to tackle the last few pages of settings in Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin.
WordPress SEO Social Settings
- Add Facebook Admin– You will link your personal facebook profile here. Alternatively you can use a Facebook App if you have created one. But that is an advanced feature beyond the scope of this book and tutorial.
- Frontpage Settings– Specify and image URL and description. This will be the default which will appear when you or someone else shares your post on Facebook. The image will probably be your business’ logo or brand artwork. The Description should probably be the same as what you created for the Home Page Title and Meta section.
- Default Settings– Specify the default image to be used when someone shares your site on Facebook. This is useful for branding. Display your logo or brand artwork to everyone on Facebook.
If you’re using Twitter, you’ll want to check the Twitter card meta box and your Twitter username. This will help your branding on Twitter when your site is shared or tweeted. On to the next section…
XML SiteMaps
XML Sitemaps are an automatically generated sitemap which helps Google and Bing index all the pages and posts on your website. The more quality content you get onto Google and Bing, the better for your business. Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin will automatically generate the sitemaps and inform Google and Bing when you update or publish new content. (provided you first give Google and Bing your sitemap information, we’ll cover that in another section)
Settings:
- Ping Yahoo!- Check please
- Ping Ask.com- Check please
- Exclude Post Types? No thank you.
- Exclude taxonomies? Check on Format.
Internal Links and RSS Settings
These are fine for now. We may come back and update our RSS settings once we figure out what RSS really is and how it can help our business. But that’s a topic for another time.
Congratulations!
Yes, you have completed another monumental task! You have setup WordPress SEO by Yoast. Now your website is ready for some content. And better yet, your content can now be optimized for the search engines. And people searching for your products and services will be able to find your business easier. If you’re excited to create some quality content, let’s create some branding information which we’ll use across our social networks, about page, and more.
