Yoast Social Share Feature Test – MaAnna Minute Video

See a quick summary of my tests on the Social tab of the Yoast SEO plugin. It’s supposed to help you customize the title, description, and image that displays on social media platforms like Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter. You’ll see how it performed and whether or not it’s worth your time to fill out all that extra info.

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Summary

I fully customized all of the fields in the Yoast SEO on-page module Social tab. And, I used a different image than the one that is embedded in the content or the one that is set as the featured image.

Then I shared the test post to my Google Plus personal profile, my Facebook Business page, and my Twitter account.

Google picked up:

• Custom Google image
• FB title and description

Facebook picked up:

• featured image
• FB title and description

Twitter picked up:

• custom TW image
• custom TW title and description

Then I created a similar post and again, I used a different image for the embed and the featured image.

But, I only customized the meta description in the General tab of the on-page module. I left all of the Social fields blank. Then shared it to those social sites again.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter all picked up the same thing:

• featured image
• default title
• SEO meta description

Pinterest

When I shared either post on Pinterest, I had the choice of using the featured image with custom description, or embedded image and content. Your results may vary depending on how you share it to Pinterest, but then, you can’t control how others share it.

Is it Worth it?

So, is it worth filling in all of those extra fields in the social tab?

Well, that depends on what you need to accomplish.

The SEO meta description is primarily used to customize what will be displayed in SERPs, or Search Engine Result Pages to help you get the click there, instead of it picking up the first content on the page.

If you need to further customize what is displayed on the social platforms, then it will be worth it for you to fill in the fields in the social tab. But, as far as I can tell, when shared on Google Plus, the title and description are going to pick up the Facebook info, so I’m not sure if it’s worth filling in the Google info or not.

Image Size and Page Load

Another thing to consider is the image that’s picked up. In all tests, either the custom image or the featured image was picked up. So, perhaps you could consider using a smaller image to embed, especially one that is within the limits of what your content area can display, and then using a larger graphic for the featured and/or custom image. Doing it that way will speed up your page load time too.

Do it on pages

And one last point. All of these customizations should be done on all of your pages, whether or not you do them on your posts. Your pages really need to not show the first content on the page, or the embedded image. You definitely want to control how they display in SERPs, especially the six pack listing for your domain, well, as much as Google will let you control that.

Keep in mind that it will take time for Google to re-index those changes organically. You can speed up that process by manually submitting those pages via Google Search Console. I run a lot of tests on my site, so you may see all manner of descriptions on mine, if you happen to check it out at the time you’re watching this video. So, just keep that in mind.

Deeper Test Results

My Webmaster Training students will get the full test conditions and results, as well as full details on all of the special performance, security, and SEO tests I conduct.