Yoast SEO for WordPress training – Module 5.

Search Appearance:
Content types & Media
In this lesson, we’ll discuss the Content types tab and the Media tab
of the Search Appearance settings in Yoast SEO. First, we’ll discuss
the Content types tab. After that, we’ll dive deeper into the Media tab,
and we’ll explain why the settings on this tab are important.

Content types
On the Content Types tab, you can determine whether you want each
of the different content types your site has, to show up in the search
results. By default, this tab is divided into two blocks of settings:
‘Posts’ and ‘Pages’. However, more blocks of content types could be
added, depending on other plugins you might have installed. First,
we’ll discuss the settings for posts and pages. After that, we’ll explain
what these other content types could be.

Posts and pages

The first block on the Content types tab is called ‘Posts’, and the second
one is called ‘Pages’. Firstly, the settings in these blocks allow you to
determine whether you want the search engines to show your posts
and pages in the search results. If you want the search engines to index
these content types of your site, you should set these settings to ‘yes’.

In addition, you can alter your title template and meta description
template for both content types. You can use the variables listed on the
‘Help’-tab of the plugin to create your own templates. By editing these
templates, all of the titles and meta descriptions of that content type
will be customized in an instant.

You can also determine whether you want to show the date in the
snippet preview, if you have a date available on your posts and pages.
This is usually determined by the theme you use. The last thing you
can set, is whether or not you want to show the Yoast SEO meta box
in the back end, when you’re editing that specific type of content.
Image 1: Posts settings

Other content types

You might have another plugin installed, which creates another type
of content on your site. For example, when you have a plugin installed
which creates invoices, the content type ‘Invoices’ might show up on
this tab. Obviously, this is only the case when the author of the plugin
did a bad job at creating it, because you shouldn’t want your invoices
to show up in the search results. When other content types show up
on this tab, the same options as you have for posts and pages will be
available for these content types.

Media
Attachment URLs for media
The Media tab exists for one solid reason: attachment URLs. When you
upload an image to WordPress, that image gets a URL that becomes
available. WordPress also automatically generates an entirely new web
page, containing nothing more than that single image: a so-called
attachment URL. These attachment URLs are not useful in 99.5% of
the settings, because there is a risk Google may index these pages
and regard them as low-quality content, since they only contain a
single image. In addition, if users find these attachment URL pages
in Google, they may be quick to leave your site, because they only
find a single image. This leads to a higher bounce rate for your site.

Yoast SEO for WordPress – Module 5.2 2

This is why we have a setting that redirects these attachment URLs
to the attachment itself. This setting is by default ‘on’ for everyone.
Because of this setting, you will be automatically redirected to the
image when you open the attachment URL.

Image 2: Media & attachment URLs

However, if you do use these attachment URLs, you could turn this
setting off. This could be useful if you’re a photographer or when you
own a photography site. If you turn this setting off, all the options
available for the other content types on the Content Types tab become
available for media.

Conclusion
In this lesson, we’ve discussed the different settings that are available
on the Content tab of the Search Appearance settings of Yoast SEO.
We’ve seen that the standard content types for which these settings
are available are posts and pages. However, these settings might also
be available for other content types, like invoices, depending on the
plugins you’ve installed. Finally, we’ve seen what the Media tab is all
about. We’ve explained what attachment URLs are and why these are
not useful for most websites.

Module 1 Module 2 Module 3 Module 4 Module 5.1 Module 5.2

Module 5.3 Module 5.4 Module 6 Module 7 Module 8 Module 9

Module 10

Yoast SEO for WordPress – Module 5.2 3