All in one SEO Pack configuration

Jack Leblond — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:00:21 +0000

You want your WordPress powered site to rank well, right? Like most site owners you have probably read dozens of blogs, and more “Top 10 SEO tips for WordPress”, or perhaps “Must Have WordPress Plugins” posts than you care to remember. The only problem is that many of these articles just say you have to install the plugins, not how to use them. I’ll admit that I am as much at fault as anyone else. Here’s the problem; while some plugins require little or no configuration, and even less on-going attention – All in one SEO pack is not one of them. Miss a check box or ignore a field and you could be doing more harm than good – your site rankings could drop faster than Wile E. Coyote holding an Acme umbrella.

This post will be updated from time-to-time when there are significant updates to the plugin. Items that are new to this post will be bolded. Additionally, I’ll mark items that could be detrimental to your rankings with a caution sign.

Updated on 6/1/2010 – The version currently being covered is 1.6.11.

Version 1.6.8.2 contained some unknown updates so that it was compatible WordPress.2.9, also the developer introduced a “pro” version that is available for purchase. As far as I can see the there are no functional differences between the two versions. The pro version seems to intended for use by hosting companies and consultants who do not want the donation request displayed on the configuration pages of their clients’ sites.

Version 1.6.11 adds an language update, some bug fixes and code optimization.

I am disappointed to say that the author of this tag seems to have less and less time for answering questions and communicating with the millions of people that have made his tag so popular. As a former web application developer, I know first-hand it is a time-consuming and seemingly thankless job. I cannot fault the author for wanting to make some money with a “pro” version. However, I completely disagree with how he has done it. Monthly charges for upgrades is, in my opinion, crazy for this software. I donated before the pro version existed, and I am sure that many others would gladly pay for this wonderful tag if not for the monthly fees. According to the WordPress.org plugins directory, it’s been downloaded more than 5,000,000 times. Lets all send him a dollar so we can get rid of the monthly fees and he can hire a team to maintain the tool while he sits on the beach…how about it folks?.

Visit the SEO pack creator’s page for a reasonably complete change log.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – site settings

From within your WordPress admin, go to the settings area, then select “All in one SEO”. There are a lot of options here, but don’t feel intimidated, we’ll walk through most of them.

Plugin Status	With each new update, the developer has chosen to disable the plugin. Presumably, this forces you to review the settings each time, and hopefully avoid any surprises. You’ll need to enable it after you install and again after each update. Obviously, if you neglect to enable the plugin after an upgrade, you can expect some issues with your rankings.
Home Title	As its name implies, this is where you provide the page title for the “home” of your web site, leave this blank and word press defaults to the site name you defined in your WordPress configuration. According to the 2009 SEOMoz.org SEO Ranking factors survey, page titles are one of the most important factors. Entering a bad, or blank title will cause problems for your rankings.
Home Description	This box provides the Content for the meta-description tag. Leave this one blank and WordPress does not even give you a description tag. That is bad, be sure to fill this in with a proper site description. Page/Post meta descriptions were also included in the ranking survey, but at a lower level. Ignoring or misusing this could impact how well you perform in search results.
Home Keywords (comma separated)	Even though use of the meta-keywords tag has been degraded over the years, it is still an important part of an overall SEO plan. Add carefully selected keywords here. Leave this blank and WordPress does not add the meta-keywords tag to your page. For best results, place your primary keywords in the front of the list.
Canonical URLS	This newly added feature is enabled by default – leave it that way. If you are not familiar with canonical URLs, and would like to be – read this Google webmaster blog post. For the rest of you, just know that this feature helps avoid duplicate content issues with the major search engines. That’s a good thing. Duplicate content is a serious issue. Google has said they are less concerned with same site duplication, and are working to understand it better, but they do recommended the use of this tag.
Rewrite Titles	If set, all page, post, category, search and archive page titles get rewritten. You can specify the format for most of them (as shown below). For example: The default templates puts the title tag of posts like this: “Blog Category >> Blog Name >> Post Title”. That would be considered anti-SEO. With the default settings, Rewrite Title rewrites: “Post Title \| Blog Name”. The default behavior of WordPress titles is very anti-seo, use this setting to correct it.
Post Title Format (other titles too)	Each of the six Title format boxes allow you to customize how the titles are displayed in the various parts of the site. On sites I maintain, I leave all but the Post setting alone. On each of those I insert a few VERY carefully selected keywords (or synonyms). Doing this ensures those keywords are part every title. You may be tempted to stuff your titles with keywords. Don’t, it will backfire on you.
Description Format	There are a four automated formats available for the setting. The default is the best one, leave this one alone.
404 Title Format	The box sets the page title for your 404 (page not found) error pages.
Paged Format	Leave this one alone.
Use Categories for META keywords	If you are hyper-careful and strategic about your category names, go ahead and use this. If you are like the rest of us, leave this one alone and add your keywords manually for each post.
Use Tags for META keywords	If you are thoughtful and strategic about your tag names, go ahead and use this as it could save you some time as you create new posts. Checking this causes the tags you set for a given post to be used as the META keywords for that post. You can also manually add additional words as you normally would as well. Just be careful not to duplicate them.
Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page	If you have changed the default setting of WordPress and the listing of of your posts is somewhere other than your default/home page then this option determines if you want the keywords for that page set dynamically (based on all the posts listed) or if they should be manually entered. I suggest you do it manually.
Use noindex for…	There are three of these boxes, ensure each one is selected. This tells the search engines to not index these areas of your site. This is another method minimizing duplicate content risks. If this is not used, you are allowing the engines to index the same content, but at multiple URLs. This is duplicate content, and it’s bad.
Autogenerate Descriptions	Enabling this feature will tell SEO pack to automagically generate META descriptions for your posts using the first 150 characters of your article. If you are a content rock star and always get your keywords in the first sentence, then this will work great for you. The plugin will look first to see if you set one manually on the post before auto-generating one. Since most of us are note content rock stars, it’s generally safer to enter descriptions manually on each post. I have this feature enabled to save me a few seconds when I occasionally post articles that I don’t care if they rank or not. It’s also a nice safety net for when I just plain forget to do it. NOTE: We’ll discuss further down how/where to enter your post and page descriptions.
Capitalize Category Titles	This is a bit of a mystery. Check this and page titles, of category pages with be will have the first letter of each word capitalized. Other than for visual appeal, I (and several fellow SEOs I checked with) can think of no reason to do this. Google’s Matt Cutts, shared with me “Google tends to ignore upper vs. lowercase. But certainly users respond to the differences quite a bit.” The default behavior of WordPress is to use the text you enter as the category title, as the page title as well, if you want initial caps in one, wouldn’t you want it in both? My recommendation is if you want titles like this, enter them this way and leave this unchecked to save a few processor clicks.
Exclude Pages	Pages listed here will not be processed by the all in one seo pack. This is usefully if you have other, non-WordPress, dynamic content running on your site.
Additional Headers	There are three of these boxes. Text entered here will be added to the head section of your pages. These are useful if you need to add meta validation for webmaster tools. If you use these, use with caution. These are not required for basic SEO practices.
Log Important Events	This is a troubleshooting tool from the developer. If checked and a significant event (No, I have no idea what that would be) happens, it’ll be logged.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – post settings

When creating a new post you’ll want to scroll to the bottom of your post editing page to the All in one SEO Pack section. There you will see the following four options.

Title	You can optionally enter a page title here, if left blank SEO Pack will use the post’s title. If you are attempting to rank in a competitive market (who isn’t) entering an alternate title here allows you to make use of additional keywords or synonyms. Don’t stuff keywords here, you will regret it. Also, the closer your primary keyword is to the beginning, the better. According to the 2009 SEOMoz.org SEO Ranking factors survey, page titles are one of the most important factors. Entering a bad, or blank title will cause problems for your rankings.
Description	This is the META-description for the post. Carefully craft these as search engines consider them in ranking and display them in results. SEO Pack shows a counter as you type letting you know how close you are to the recommended 160 character limit. Try to get strongest key word/phrase as close to the front as possible. Page/Post meta descriptions were also included in the ranking survey, but at a lower level. Ignoring or misusing this could impact how well you perform in search results.
Keywords	This is the META-keywords for the post. As mentioned above, use of the keywords tag has been degraded over the years, but it is still used by some engines. Put your most important ones closer to the front.
Disable on this page/post	If for some reason you wish to NOT use the SEO pack on a page, check this box.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – page settings

When creating a new page, be sure to update the All in one SEO pack settings, found near the bottom of the editing screen. Page settings are almost identical to the post settings, with just one additional option – menu label.

Title	You can optionally enter a page title here, if left blank SEO Pack will use the WordPress page title. Remember, entering an alternate title here allows you to make use of additional keywords or synonyms. Don’t stuff keywords here, you will regret it. Also, the closer your primary keyword is to the beginning, the better. According to the 2009 SEOMoz.org SEO Ranking factors survey, page titles are one of the most important factors. Entering a bad, or blank title will cause problems for your rankings.
Description	This is the META-description for the page. Carefully craft these as search engines consider them in ranking and display them in results. SEO Pack shows a counter as you type letting you know how close you are to the recommended 160 character limit. Try to get strongest key word/phrase as close to the front as possible. Page/Post meta descriptions were also included in the ranking survey, but at a lower level. Ignoring or misusing this could impact how well you perform in search results.
Keywords	This is the META-keywords for the page. As mentioned above, use of the keywords tag has been degraded over the years, but it is still used by some engines. Put your most important ones closer to the front.
Title Attribute	Text you enter here will become the link title text for links to this page. Link titles appear when you hover over a link. The affect they have on ranking is debatable, but it’s minimal at best. This is more of a usability feature as it allows you to provide additional information about the link. Link titles can add a nice touch if used correctly.
Menu Label	The sets the text used in your site menus for this page, left blank it will be the same as the WordPress page title. Link anchor text is a VERY powerful SEO tool, use this carefully. This can help a lot, or hurt you badly.
Disable on this page/post	If for some reason you wish to NOT use the SEO pack on a page, check this box.

What are you waiting for?

There you have it, all the info you need to configure your All In One SEO Pack and get your page rankings climbing. This plugin makes it easy for anyone to optimize their WordPress blog posts and pages for better search engine placement.

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All in one SEO Pack configuration

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All in one SEO Pack configuration

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – site settings

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – post settings

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – page settings

What are you waiting for?