Yoast SEO – How to Set Title and Description Tabs for WordPress Websites

While there’s still a lot of debate around the role of content in SEO, one of the most important roles is that of the page’s title. The title is the first thing search engines will look for when they come across your page. It defines the content and determines whether or not it will be displayed in a list of search results. While the content on your page may be important, the title is what will make the difference in terms of whether or not it will be displayed in search results or featured snippets (typically seen above the fold).

While we can’t always control how others will use our content, we can take measures to ensure that our titles are as engaging and informative as possible. One great tool that can help with this is the Yoast SEO plugin. Let’s take a look at how to set the title and description for our pages using Yoast SEO.

How To Set The Title Of A Page

The Yoast SEO plugin provides a page editor that is accessible from the WordPress dashboard. From here, we can click on any page to bring up the page’s editing window.

We can set the title of a page in the header by clicking on the “Title” tab located at the top of the window.

When entering a title, you must use the same format as Google. That is, you must make use of the H1 tag and the optional H2 tag that comes with it. The H1 tag is the HTML title tag, while the H2 tag can be used to define a second level of subheadings. Both are incredibly important as they define the meta data that will appear above the content in search results.

The page’s content is placed in the middle and can be formatted using the familiar WordPress editor.

To set the title of a page, simply edit the page’s content as you normally would with a standard WordPress text editor. Once you are done, you can click on the “Preview” button to see how your content will appear on a mobile device or computer.

After you have set the title, you can click on the “Save page” button to finalize the changes and publish your page. You can also click on the “Preview” button to see how the changes will appear on a mobile device or computer.

How to Set The Description Of A Page

The description is a short blurb that appears below the page’s title in search results.

To set the description of a page, you can either use the meta description or the <h1> tag. If you are using the meta description, make sure that it is unique and contains a minimum of 70 characters.

If you are using the <h1> tag, you must use the <h1> tag for each and every page that you want to set a description for. Doing this will ensure that Google knows which page you are talking about when you use the <h1> tag in your content.

To edit the description of a page, you will once again use the WordPress dashboard to access the page’s editor.

As mentioned above, the <h1> tag is a great tool for setting descriptions for individual pages. In the page editor, click on the “Description” tab at the top of the editing window to bring up the <h1> tag’s formatting options.

From here, you can either paste in the text you’d like to appear below the title or, if you’d like, add a few more lines of description. When you save the page, your changes will appear in search results along with the rest of your content.

As a best practice, we always recommend that you create unique meta descriptions for each and every page. This ensures that each page will have its own unique identifier in the Google index. If you use the same meta description for multiple pages, the search engine will only see this description as a common element and may flag your site as duplicative content. So, while you can use the meta description for the homepage, you should use a unique one for each and every page in your site.

Once you have set the title and description for a page, you can click the “Preview” button to view how it will appear on a smartphone or a tablet. You can also preview how the page will appear at the top of a search result on a desktop.

To save your page, simply click on the “Publish” button to exit the page’s editing window and return to the WordPress dashboard.

As a final step, you can click on the “Save page” button to lock in your changes.

Setting Up Your Homepage

The WordPress dashboard provides us with a number of great features that make setting up our homepage relatively simple. To begin with, the homepage is the perfect place to establish our blog’s branding. So, whether you are a professional blogger or an enthusiast who’s just gotten into the game, the homepage is where you should start.

The next step is to set up a breadcrumb trail. A breadcrumb trail is a navigational structure that helps users find their way around your site by providing them with hints as to what page they are currently on.

In the WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Settings | Permalink page and click on the “Save changes” button to save the home page’s permanent URL (the URL that appears after the “http://” in front of a web browser).

Now that we’ve set up our homepage, let’s focus on the breadcrumb trail. To create a breadcrumb trail, first navigate to the Dashboard | Posts page and scroll down until you see the post you want to use for your breadcrumb trail. Then, from that page, click on the “Previous post” link located at the bottom of the page.

This will take you to the previous post and, as you can see, you are now in the same place as you would if you had clicked on the breadcrumb trail button directly from the home page.

This is an important point to make. When possible, you should always use the breadcrumb trail functionality that is built into WordPress. There are times, however, when a link on a particular page will take the user directly to where they want to go. For example, if you are on a pricing page and you click on a product that is offered at a discounted rate, you should expect to be brought to that product’s purchase page automatically.

How To Update Your Site’s Meta Data

The Yoast SEO plugin provides a variety of options that can be used to update the meta data for our site. The meta data includes the page’s title and description as mentioned above as well as keywords that we want to be associated with the content on our site. So, for example, if we want to rank for the term “blogging tips for beginners”, we can use keywords like “beginner’s guide to blogging”, “how to start a blog in 2020”, and “best blogging tools”.

How To Create Keywords-rich Descriptions

One of the things that makes a site useful to search engines is the use of keywords in the site’s content. For example, if we have a piece on how to improve your blog’s SEO, we may want to include some of the most frequently used keywords within it. These keywords will then appear in bold text in the organic search results.

To create a description that is rich in keywords, use the <h1> tag to create an opening for your text.

From here, you can either paste in some of the keywords you’ve chosen or add some more. When you save the description, you will notice that your site’s traffic will increase.

How To Use Internal Links

An internal link, or an internal page link, is a link that points to content on the same site. In other words, it is an internal reference to other content on the same blog or website. When a user clicks on an internal link, they will be taken to that page’s content (assuming you’ve set up correctly).

To create internal links, you can either use the WordPress dashboard or the <h1> tag. The dashboard is the preferred method as you can use the link generator button to quickly create links to any page.