Yoast WordPress SEO is a powerful plugin that helps improve the chances that your site’s content will be discovered by search engines. The plugin “goes the extra mile” to make your WordPress content more accessible. It automatically adds OpenGraph meta tags to your content based on the keywords and descriptions you enter. You can see the tags it adds if you do a “view source” on your page or post. It is typically 20 or 30 lines from the top. See below for an example:

If you are not that familiar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), there is a great post recently published in the Emerging Tech in Libraries site on the Commons called Gentle SEO Reminders that covers some of the basics and is a great introduction.

Once activated, the plugin creates a new form section on your page or post admin screen:

The plugin claims to help you write better content by having you choose a focus keyword and description. It automatically analyzes if this keyword is found in the article heading, page title, the url, description, and the page content, and suggests ways to improve.

There are many other settings that are available, and these are documented on the plugin’s website. You can set up default templates that auto-populate some meta tags so that you won’t need to go back to every page and post of your site and fill in the data. There is a lot of functionality to explore, but even if you just use its rudimentary features, the plugin seems to provide great ways to improve your site’s search engine results.