Yoast SEO settings: RSS

In this article, we’ll discuss the RSS settings in Yoast SEO in your WordPress backend. You’ll see a video explanation, and we’ll explain all the settings on the page one by one.

Video: Yoast SEO settings: RSS

Would you like to watch this video in your own language? Follow these steps to auto-translate the subtitles.

RSS

The Rich Site Summary (RSS) settings exist because, unfortunately, scraper sites republish content from other sites without their permission. If they republish your content, they usually don’t link back to your site. This leads to duplicate content problems in the search results. Because of this, a scraper site with a bit more authority than your blog would simply outrank you with your own content.

For that reason, the Yoast SEO plugin has the functionality to add links back to your site at the end of each blog post, which are not easy to remove automatically. This shows search engines the article’s original source, and this will ensure you will show up as the first result for your own content, just like you want to. 

RSS settings

You can find the RSS settings by going to your WordPress backend, clicking “Yoast SEO” and then “Settings” in the menu on the left-hand side. On this screen, click the “Advanced” header in the Yoast SEO settings menu. In the menu that expands, click “RSS”.

For more information about the other tabs in Yoast SEO, check out the configuration guide for Yoast SEO.

So, Yoast SEO can automatically add content to the beginning and/or end of your blog posts that is difficult to remove. Yoast SEO automatically adds a default template to the end of your blog posts. In these fields, you can use variables that will be replaced with a specific value (e.g. %%POSTLINK%% will be replaced with a link to your post). You can see a list of available variables by scrolling down to the table provided.

You have the option to edit the content that appears after each post in the feed, or to add content that appears before each post in the feed by using the provided field. Adding content before each post in the feed can be helpful for protecting your website from scrapers, as this content is harder to edit. If you do not wish to make any changes, you can leave the default values and Yoast SEO will handle it for you.

RSS variables

There are four RSS variables that you can put into the text boxes in the RSS settings in Yoast SEO. The variables start and end with %%, with a description of the variable in between. Let’s go through them one by one to see what they do and when you should use them.

%%AUTHORLINK%%

The %%AUTHORLINK%% variable adds a link to the author archive for the post author. The author’s name is the anchor text of the link. It’s not part of the out-of-the-box setting for the RSS content in Yoast SEO, because we’re primarily focused on getting the post ranked. But still, it’s a link that you may get out of the scraper sites.

%%POSTLINK%%

The %%POSTLINK%% variable is part of the out-of-the-box setting for the RSS content in Yoast SEO. It adds a link to your post, with the post title as an anchor text. Because the post link variable allows you to build many more links than your scraper competitors, it provides a strong signal that your post is the original one that should rank in the search engines.  

%%BLOGLINK%%

The %%BLOGLINK%% variable is part of the out-of-the-box setting for the RSS content in Yoast SEO. It adds a link to your blog, with the blog name as an anchor text. This is a strong signal that this post was originally posted on your blog.

%%BLOGDESCLINK%%

The %%BLOGDESCLINK%% variable is very similar to the %%BLOGLINK%% variable. The only difference is that with this variable, the anchor text will include a description of your site, rather than just the site name. So why use this one rather than the %%BLOGLINK%% one? It simply adds a little bit more context. It’s not crucial (or it would have been the default variable), but it can’t hurt either!

Using the RSS variables