When it comes to WordPress, there are many SEO plugins which will help you to optimize your blog for search engines. I’m sure you must have heard of All in one SEO plugin or WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. All in one SEO is one of the old, and most used SEO plugins out there, until Yoast released WordPress SEO by yoast. If you are planning to use AIO SEO plugin, I would rather recommend you to use WordPress SEO by yoast. (2013 update)
There are many plugins which helps you in optimizing your blog for example Platinum SEO and all in one SEO. I have used Platinum SEO too, but some how I liked All in one SEO more. All in one SEO is an out of box free SEO plugin which helps you optimize your blog for on site SEO. Saying that, I meant you can configure all meta options and add noindex and nofollow tag sidewide.
Specially, noindexing part is important, because I’m sure you would not like Google to index your low quality pages like tags, search and categories. Infact, I have seen sites getting lower ranking because of submitting low quality pages. I also suggest you to noindex not so important pages from search engine perspective, like Contact (If it’s a normal blog), privacy policy and so on. For this purpose, you can consider using Meta robots plugin.
WordPress is said to be optimized for SEO by default but apart from default settings, there are better optimization which can be use to boost our search engine result. In recent discussion with Founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg, we talked about Integrating All in one SEO plugin by default. Matt wanted any plugin should be users choice rather then implementing it by default. Now there are WordPress themes like Thesis, Genesis which are coming with default SEO options and are better optimized from SEO POV.
Here is a quick configuration guide for All in one WordPress Plugin, which will help you to make your blog search engine friendly.
What is meta tag in All in one SEO Plugin:
Very first option which you will be configuring is meta tags. Don’t confuse meta tag with post title, and in this setting what ever you will fill, that’s how search engine will index your blog. The name, itself is self explanatory but if you still have some doubt, feel free to ask via comments.
This is how my All in one SEO wordpress plugin setting looks like
WordPress shows your Tag line as your description in search result, this can be over ride by entering information in all in one SEO plugin.
Home keywords is something which needed to be filled carefully : These are the main keyword for which you will be targeting the search results.
Apart from that within options Post Title format Page title format You can define how you want the search engine to see your page. If you have home title as keyword then adding a hometitle at the end of page title format is advisable. Else for branding purpose you can consider adding your blog name, though make sure your total post meta title should not exceed more than 65 characters.
The major SEO part falls when you write a post and this is where most of the people make mistakes:
Settings for single post All in one SEO plugin
There are three options in the single post settings:
Titles, Description and Keyword
Meta Title
When you write a post there is a difference between how you want search engine to see your post and how you want your readers to see the post title. This option gives you freedom to make your post title search friendly as well as reader friendly too. default title is what you reader will see and when you enter the another title in the All in one SEO option, that will be used for search engine.
- If you will see my post on Top Torrent clients
- User friendly Title: Top list of popular Torrent clients
- Search engine friendly title: The complete list of Top Torrent client for Windows, linux ,mac
Meta Description:
Meta description is one of the most important part of search engine optimization. Meta description is what search result will show in the search result of your page. You can enter a custom keyword rich description or this plugin will automatically pull up the first 160 words as description.
Keywords :
By default wordpress use your categories as meta keyword though it is not a good practice. You can enter your keyword for which you want to target the search result but make sure the keyword for which you are targeting should be there in the original post. using 4-5 keyword is good practice but overdoing or repetition of the same keyword is bad for optimization. Regarding categories you can see my previous post on Importance of proper categories for better SEO.
Download: All in one SEO plugin
You can also check my previous post on how to use robots.txt to stop search engine bots to crawl your admin page and how to use Alt tag to boost your traffic from Image search result.
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Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 1206 articles.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve yet to find someone that talks about the no indexing of category pages and tag archives.. Why is no-one talking about this?
Yup its better to noindex them because they will have the same contains..
I prefer keeping them as noindex but dofollow.
Dofollow will help to index all the internal pages effectively.
Not a bad idea to leave them dofollow. With the changes to nofollow over the past year it makes sense to just leave all internal links dofollow; even if they’re noindexed pages, that doesn’t mean pagerank can’t still flow through them to other pages, after all.
.-= Noah | Marketing Blog ´s last blog ..CRM Systems Should Be About Relationships With People =-.
This is a MUST HAVE plug in for everyone. Thanks for the post as the do follow for internal link purposes is an important concept to pass on some link juice indeed. I think internal linking is often overlooked.
Thanks for the tips on the best way to use all in one SEO. I’ve been using it for a long time just doing my own thing with it, and would recommend it to anyone using wordpress.
On another note, you’re a 100% correct on the number of keywords to use for each post. Through some testing i’ve found that less is often more. In other words, targeting a few ‘key’ keywords is better than targeting dozens.
I am very happy to read and follow the instructions from you, so far I been using All In SEO Pack but I only use to create the canonical and the extent, keywords, and descriptions of the settings temporarily for the title by search engine seo friendly yet I do, but after read this article I am more confident now and I will soon use these functions. thanks for the tutorial.
This is a great post, All in one SEO is the must have plugin for every blog which are interested to generate the traffic from search engines.
Hi, Great tips – one question though. I recently installed the all in one SEO plugin and have posts up already with keywords attached (via the normal wordpress post option). Is it now overkill to add keywords to the all in one SEO plugin options on admin post creation page. Should I remove the old ones? Do all in one SEO over right the old ones?
You also don’t mention anything about ‘Canonical URLs’ check box – is it advisable to keep this checked?
Many thank in advance.
Chris I would suggest remove it frm Old ones as if you will use All in ONE SEO too to add keywords on the same post, meta keywords will show keyword twice.
About Canonical URL’s, in latest version of Wordpress, it handles it by default though being on the safer side you can keep it checked.
Do let me know if you have any more questions..
About Rewrite Titles CAUTION: misconfiguration of this setting could negatively affect your rankings! The default behavior of WordPress titles is very anti-seo, use this setting to correct it.
Harsh, After install all in one seo pack my search engne results shows like – http://www.example.com/tag/tech.. How i solve this
Dear Harsh I Have A Big Burden Because Of The News Causing Me A Big Question In My Head
You Know About The News That All In One Seo Plugin Is No Longer Maintained so what do you wanna say (will you still use that plugin) what should a newbie Do ,what plugin we can use now what do you suggest
Ram you can start with WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/
Will You Still B Sticking With The All In One Seo Plugin
Ram I use Thesis theme which has inbuilt SEO option and superior than any other theme. I moved from All in one SEO to Thesis theme long time back.
Thanks Harsh for sharing about All in one plugin, tell me how can i use noindex/follow command in “Tags” via All in one plugin you have any idea please help me ??
Dear Harsh please tell me in detail what you have said in Meta Title description ?
You mean to say that in Post Title we can write anything to make the title interesting to read for readers.
And in All in One SEO Title we can use keyword rich title and that Title will be displayed on search engine like Google.
Am I right? Please do let me know in detail.
Dear Hars,
How about today All In One SEO’s settings? because Google is still improving its logarithm, and many people were confusing about it.
thanks
@Elfatica
I would recommend you to switch to WordPress SEO by yoast, as it offers more advanced feature and will import all your all in One Settings too. You can read this tutorial to get started and feel free to ask any questions:
http://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-set-up-yoast-wordpress-seo-plugin-configuration.html