How to use AllinOne SEO plugin to it’s fullest potential
Was talking to a webmaster friend yesterday and he asked me if the All in One SEO plugin is really doing any good. The reason was that he’ve been using the All in One plugin and could not really find out any significant results with it. I asked him what he did with him, to which he replied that he had installed it and is waiting for the results. Ahha…I asked the same question to a few more webmasters and 3 out of 7 told me they weren’t really sure how to use the plugin. They’ve installed it and kept it as it is expecting results.
So that’s exactly why this post comes to you today. This is for those who have been using the All in One SEO plugin (and knows not fully about it) and for the ones who are planning to use it.
What is the All in One SEO plugin for ?
All in One SEO plugin does not take care of everything SEO. It takes care of three things on your blog.
1 – Your title tags
2 – Your meta tags (Keyword and Description)
3 – Your no index properties for a page
Your title tags are that line of text that appear on the browser window while loading your page.
For a normal blog, they are navigation helpers and appears something like Yourblogname>> Blog Archive >> Post title, and it appears almost the same (last part changes) on all the posts.
Results?
All the pages will carry more or less the same title. And you might already know that title tags are one of the most important SEO metrics.
All in One SEO plugin helps you have unique Page Titles for each post, completely configurable so that you can “make them” SEO friendly.
Essentially, you can use the title tags uniquely on post pages, homepages, category pages, tag pages, archives etc.
The real power of All in One SEO plugin
The real power lies not in the right settings but how you use individual posts to leverage on your keywords.
All in One SEO plugin will help you show a completely different page title (what appears on the browser window) than the original post title. As for the normal blogs, both are the same. Using the All in One SEO plugin, you can change the page title after publishing your post and make it more palatable for the search engines.
I agree that SEO friendly page titles are not always human friendly. For the same reason, many a times, we are confused which format to follow. Now, AllinOne SEO helps you out of the situation. While you publish a post, create a user friendly page title, may be the same post title. But soon after it get’s read by all and is pushed to to archives, it might be good idea to change the page title to a much more SEO friendly format.
So a user reads a user friendly version (spotted on the post title on the page) and search engines sees a keyword rich seo version (seen on serps and browser window). Just make sure you don’t over do it.
Same formula should help and work with meta descriptions, but I’m unsure if they will directly affect the search rankings, but hey we have an option so use it anyway.
Some more power uses for All in One SEO
All in One SEO comes with an option to selectively use “meta nofollow” tags on posts, pages or categories.
With this option, you can chose if you want to block search engines from crawling category pages, single post pages, pages and tag pages. It simply adds a meta nofollow tag while the option is checked in the options menu.
This is an excellent tool to avoid duplicate content issues on your blog. You could opt for nofollow-ing your category, archive and tag pages and leave the posts pages so that there is no duplication. Check out the screenshot to see what I mean.
WordPress is a great blogging platform and getting it search engine optimized really isn’t a hard task. Using proper permalinks and robots.txt file to prevent duplicate content and a few other methods can really make a difference. The All in One SEO plugin is really the best bet.
What is your opinion about the Platinum SEO Plugin?
@Binny – I would prefer “All in One” and “Head Space 2″ for a bit “geeker” folks. Rajesh have done a great job with Platinum (http://www.dailyseoblog.com/2008/06/forget-all-other-seo-plugins-heres-a-brand-new-one-to-replace/) and it does a good job.
Is there any plugin that changes h1 title tags to individual posts, and h2 in frontpage?
And I don’t know how to do it myself
I can’t find one
Mia, you can do it manually by editing the files.
Edit the Main Index Template, index.php and find the post title code (search for Edit the Single post page, single.php and find out your post title again, change the H2 to H1.
Now, if you don’t have H1 and H2 in the code, find out the classes in which the titles are enclosed, you could find it in the div id=”class” tag around the titles. Find those classes from the stylesheet.css, and change the H2 to H1.
This would largely depend on your theme and how it is constructed, but the above tweak should work for most themes.
Cheers!
Thanks for the compliments mani
@Rajesh, Did you find that after installing Platinum SEO plugin, you get blank pages on posts? Or is it just me? (i haven’t tried the update).
I am missing the autogenerate Description in AllinOne SEO plugin. Is it the latest version ? Where exactly is it? Right now, I have to manually type the description after each post
Sorry, I got it now !!
Hi Mani, really don’t know how to use this software. anyways hope i will try and succeed!
I have one question Manikartik that I uploaded all in one seo plugin and i set default setting but my title doesnot change it remains the same as of home page title
should I have to change something in my template?
here is my blog
http://vmasti.com
Hi Sattarmalik, you have to edit the posts manually and in the custom fields, there would be a field for All in One SEO where you can give in unique Title and Desc. If you want to do it in a mass edit mode, Try the Headspace plugin.
Thanks for reply but I know basic uses of all in one seo I have two wordpress blogs with different themes, on one blog it works but on other it gives the problem I am really confused what to do?problem of title. title of all posts doesnot change and remains same of home page title. even i made setting to
Rewrite Titles: yes
plz help me
and post title format %post_title% | %blog_title%
Sattarmalik, are you sure you are using a cache plugin, in which case the changes may not show up immediately.
Thanks my problem solved now its working
Thanks
i am using all in one seo plugin
hi daily blooger. Should I use two alloneseo? I have http:mainblog.com and http:mainblog.com/pics&vids
mainblog and pics&vids are two differnt wordpress install and contents are related to main blog. Should I use tow allinoneseo or just on main blog?thNKS
How I can upload this plugin in my site,Please help me..