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Yoast SEO: How to Change Your WordPress Title & Meta Description

Stephen Matthews of Wibble
By Stephen Matthews 21 February, 20195 MIN READ
Blog post: Yoast SEO: How to Change Your WordPress Title & Meta Description

Update: since publication of this post, we have added more posts to our SEO blog, notably “SEO guide: Basic steps to take when posting to WordPress“.

Yoast has become the go-to SEO solution for improving SEO and rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) within the WordPress community. It’s full of features that are regularly updated and has been downloaded more than 5 million times. Wibble installs and configures Yoast SEO for all of our WordPress designed and developed sites, by default.

Here I will be showing you how to change the title and Meta Description using Yoast SEO on WordPress – this a task that is regularly carried out with every page or post update. All of Wibble’s web design clients have the option to configure the plugin as described below.

Wibble are a Belfast web design and web development agency. We are experts in all things web design but specifically WordPress development and have put together a number of web design blog posts on general topics around the subjects. You can see some of the web design portfolio work we have done, over the years.

Changing the Title & Meta Description through each Post & Page

1. Login to your WordPress site

WordPress Login Screen

2. Navigate to the Yoast SEO Plugin

If you don’t have Yoast installed go to “Plugins” > “Add New” > “Yoast SEO

Image showing the Yoast SEO Panel screen

3. Select the Post or Page from the left side of the menu

If you would like to start a new Post or Page click “Add New”

4. Scroll down the page until you see the section called “Yoast SEO”

Yoast SEO Section where you can edit the Meta title and description

5. Ensure you are on the “SEO” Tab

Image showing where yoast SEO tab

6. Change the information under the heading “SEO title” and “Meta description”

By using the input boxes, Yoast SEO shows you how it will look on Serach Engines.

If you want to add extra information that is automatically generated, you can click on “Insert Snippet Variable”. This will insert a short code snippet which will be automatically filled in. As shown n the “SEO Title” section, ‘Title’, ‘Page’, ‘Seperator’ & ‘Site Title’ are all snippets which are generated by Yoast SEO.

Arrows shwoing where to change the Meta Title and Description

7. When you are finished editing, click “Update”

Arrow showing where to click to update the post

8. Ensure that the “Snippet Preview” is showing the “SEO title” and “Meta description” properly.

Shows where you can check if the Meta title and Description are showing properly

9. Congratulations! you have just edited the Meta Title & Description using Yoast SEO in WordPress. Now publish your Post or Page.

Changing the SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions for Archives

On WordPress if you have made use of Archives you can also specify the SEO Title, and Meta description for the website.

1. Login to your WordPress site

WordPress Login screen

2. Navigate to the Yoast SEO Plugin
If you don’t have Yoast installed go to “Plugins” > “Add New” > “Yoast SEO”

Yoast SEO panel screen

3. Click on “Settings” on the left side of the menu

Yoast SEO Sidebar which shows where to click

4. Navigate to Archives along the left of the page

5. Change the “SEO title” and “Meta description”

Arrow showing where to click to change the SEO title and Meta description

6. This will then update the meta description and title for each of the archives, respectively.

The steps for the archives section are the same for “Content Types”, “Media” and “Taxonomies”.

We hope this guide to changing the Meta tags and description using Yoast SEO on WordPress was useful – check back for more WordPress help and guidance from Wibble Web Design. If you need any help or support on your WordPress site, contact Wibble.

About Wibble

Wibble are a Belfast web design studio and we specialise in all things WordPress. We have a web design portfolio that we are very proud of – our clients range from small businesses to global giants. Our team of WordPress experts are on hand to design, build and manage a WordPress site, irrespective of size. If you want to work with us on your next web design and development project, we’d love to hear from you.

Dedicated WordPress Help and Support

Wibble have a team of WordPress experts with clients all over the world. We are more than able to help you with any of your web design and development problems, especially providing WordPress support and custom development. Get in touch with Wibble via our start a web project page.


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Stephen Matthews of Wibble

Stephen Matthews

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