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The questions we get asked most about Yoast, with short answers. Hardly any of them are about the plugin: they are about what people expect from it.
About the traffic lights and rankings
| Question | Answer |
| Does the green dot guarantee first place? | No. The green dot says you met the plugin’s checklist. Google never sees it and never uses it |
| How many times should I repeat the keyword? | As many as sound right read aloud. Repeating it to light up the dot makes the text worse for the person buying |
| Readability is red. Is that serious? | No. It is writing advice, and it is arguable. Long sentences in a technical text can be the right choice |
| Can I ignore a warning? | You can. The plugin does not know the context of your page |
About Google
| Question | Answer |
| I changed the titles and Google still shows the old ones | That is normal. It re-reads pages when it feels like it, and there is no way to force it. You can ask for one page to be re-read in Search Console |
| The description I wrote does not appear in the result | Also normal. Google uses your description when it wants to, and often writes its own from the page text |
| Where is my sitemap? | Yoast publishes it at an address of its own, usually ending in sitemap_index.xml. The plugin shows you the link in its settings |
| How do I keep a page out of Google? | In the Yoast box inside the page, on the advanced tab, say it should not appear in search results. Blocking it in robots does not work: a blocked page can stay indexed |
| I deleted a page. Now what? | If similar content exists, redirect to it. If not, let it return a 404: that is the correct answer and Google handles it |
About the plugin and the site
| Question | Answer |
| Does Yoast slow the site down? | Barely, and mostly in the dashboard. If the site is slow, this is almost never the cause: what actually makes a difference |
| Can I run Yoast and another SEO plugin? | No. They control the same things and conflict. Pick one: how to choose |
| My theme also has title and description fields | Turn that part of the theme off. Two things writing the same title gives unpredictable results |
| Do I have to connect Yoast to an account? | The free version requires no account at all. People who buy the paid version use their Yoast account to download it and activate the licence |
| What is an orphaned page? | A page that nothing else on the site links to. You fix it by linking to it from a related page |
| Do I need the paid version? | For most sites, no. The paid version is a Yoast product and is bought from them |
| Be wary of anyone promising first place. Position in the natural results cannot be bought and nobody guarantees it, not even us. What works is boring and slow: a fast site, pages that answer real questions, and time. |
When the problem is not the plugin
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| Have a backup before touching addresses. Working on SEO means working on addresses, and that is where sites get broken without anyone noticing: making and testing your own backup. |
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Suspect the problem is the server and not the plugin? Ask us to look |
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