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Getting the Most Out of All-in-One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin


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This is a guest post by Brian Flores.

You’ve probably noticed that there are several “Top WP SEO Plugin” lists out there that recommend the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. However, very few of them go into any detail about how to actually use it effectively.

Most people know how to use it to populate their posts’ title tags, descriptions, and keywords. This article will explain how to configure the plugin’s more advanced settings so you can fully customize your All-In-One SEO Pack plugin and start getting the most out of it.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you will get a message on your WP dashboard telling you to go to your admin page to configure it. The first step in configuring your All-In-One SEO pack is to enable it. From your admin page, next to Plugin Status, click Enabled.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin - Enabling

Before you continue any further, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Update to save your new setting. This will ensure that your plugin is up and running.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin - Update

At this point you’ll begin learning about the unique features of this plugin. The plugin is a powerful website optimizing tool when used wisely. It will help you quickly and easily configure all of the page-based components of your SEO strategy, but you need to understand how to make it work for you.

Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords

The first three sections involve selecting the title, description and keywords for your home page.

Home Title – The title is what will appear in the top of your user’s browser window. It is also displayed as the name of your web page in search engine results. You should make your title very descriptive and relevant to your website content. Include keywords naturally, but don’t overdo it. Try and limit your title to 65 characters or less, as that is all that most search engines will display.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin - Home Title

Home Description – This should be a simple description of your website. Most, but not all, search engines will display this information within search results. Make this a quick summary of what your visitors will find. Limit this information to 160 characters. Again, avoid overuse of keywords here.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin - Meta Description

Home Keywords – This is the place to include the main group of keywords you will try and rank your website for. While you can put as many keywords or phrases here as you like, keep in mind that the less you use, the more targeted your results will be. This is a key factor in ranking. Keep it specific and relevant.

Canonicalization and Titles

The next two options are Canonical URLs and Rewrite Titles. Having the Rewrite Titles box checked will allow you to control the names of your pages and posts, which is usually fairly important. If you click on either option, it will bring up a description about what each one does more specifically. How you set these is up to you. It’s recommended to leaving both boxes checked.

Formatting Post and Page Titles

The next section involves formatting. Formatting options allow you to control post and page titles and how they are displayed. This is how the default settings appear:

All-in-One WordPress SEO Plugin - Default Settings

Post Title Format – The default format will look like this: %post_title% | %blog_title%. You should remove the %blog_title% part and just leave the post title. Most of your users will already know your blog title, and having the blog title reappear at the title of every page is redundant. This is another option that gives you the ability to become more specific with your keywords and will allow you to rank better for your individual post titles.

Page, Category, Archive, Tag, and Search Title Format – The default format will look like this: %page_title% | %blog_title%. Again, remove the %blog_title% part from each section and just have the option title displayed. Depending on exactly what you are trying to rank for, you may want to leave the default settings.

This is how your settings should look after you switch them.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin - Switched Settings

Additional Options

Now that your formatting is in order, you must decide how you want your keywords to be determined.

Use Categories for META Keywords – Checking this option will automatically use the categories for a post as its keywords. As a preference, you can specify your own sets of keywords for each page and post, so you can leave this option unchecked. If you don’t mind having your keywords selected automatically, checking this box will save you some time and make things a little easier.

Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page – This is another option to automatically generate keywords based on the content of your posts. You can leave this box checked, because it will allow you to specify keywords as you’re writing a post.

The next options involve which sections of your website will be indexed by search engines.

Noindex Options – As a suggestion, you should leave all three of the Noindex option boxes unchecked. In some cases you might not want certain content to be indexed, but the majority of websites should benefit from allowing all their content to be indexed.

Autogenerate Descriptions – The Autogenerate Descriptions option is very helpful and you should leave it checked. With this option selected, unless you write an excerpt for your post, a META description will be generated for you based on post content.

This can be especially useful in the event that you forget to include a description before publishing the post. Remember that your post description is the main content of your search engine result, so you don’t want to be without one.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugins - Checkboxes

What’s Left

The last few options only need to be changed if you have a specific situation such as the need to exclude a particular page from being indexed. They can most likely be left just as they are.

Click Update and save your changes.

All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin - Update

At this point your All-In-One SEO Pack is perfectly configured and ready to go. To see it in action, open up a Add New post (or edit an old one). Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see a new box titled All-In-One SEO Pack. This part of the plugin is the main attraction for most users. Within this box, you can specify the title, description, and keywords of any post or page.

As always, keep your keyword use here specific and relevant. All-In-One SEO Pack makes targeting your ranking keywords much easier than ever before. You no longer have to rely on your home page keywords to support your entire website.

All-In-One SEO Pack is a very useful, highly recommended plugin that will help get your blog or website ranking for keywords. It makes it really easy for webmasters to optimize their website without having to think about coding. So it’s definitely beneficial to install it on all your WP websites.

What SEO plugins do you use with WordPress? Do you have any additional advice about using these settings? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Comments

  1. That is a very detailed how-to for the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin configuration. Kudos for all the screenshots that you provided and spent time editing. And the entirety of your post of course.

    By the way, does your recommendation also help to increase the chance of getting Site Links for Google? Or is it totally a different thing and not related to page ranking?
    Ramcel just posted Two Reasons Why a Great Content Can Be a Failure

  4. Hi, great post. But I prefer wordpress seo by yoast. It has far more options than all in one seo like robot meta tags, rss footer, 301 redirect and so on. If you want a guide for how to setup different options wpbeginner has an awesome tutorial on it. And from my experience, I started recieving search traffic for various terms without any optimization from my part. I highly recommend this plugin than all in one seo.
    Rison Simon just posted Want To Speed Up Your Site For Free 4 Free CDN Options To Choose From

    • Thanks for the suggestion, Rison. I heard that WordPress SEO by Yoast is still in Beta so some of its kinks are being worked on. It offers great functionality, especially to a SEO expert.

      I think, however, that All-In-One SEO pack is a popular plugin in because of its ease of use. I just wanted owners of the plugin to enhance their advanced settings so they can get more bang for their buck.

  7. This is the first time I’ve seen a step-by-step description on how to set up this very important plugin. I’ve always left the default settings in place, mostly because I had no idea what they meant.

    Thanks to you, I’m now not only running the plugin to its optimal performance level, but I learned a bit about SEO as well. Thanks for that!
    Dr. Bob Clarke just posted How I Boosted my Blog’s Alexa Ranking by 108 in 30 Days

    • Hi Dr. Bob, I’m very happy that this post benefited your site and helped you have a better understanding of SEO. It’s not the end all/be all for SEO and WordPress, but it’s a great start.

  8. Excellent tutorial Brian, I just removed the blog title from everything. You also cleared a little confusion between the home title and home description…right now mine are both the same.

    I would like to know though, why everyone is stuck going old school with the AIO plugin, when there is the Platinum SEO plugin…EVERYTHING AIO has and MORE; including the ability to transfer settings.

    Is AIO even still supported? Seriously. 🙂

    New from Dennis Edell@Direct Sales Marketing100 Down Thousands to Go!

  9. Hi Brian,

    You have touched a great topic which almost 99% of bloggers don’t. You can read posts about suggested or “best” plugins that recommend all-in-one seo, but not how to get the most out of it. That is indeed great.

    However, I have recently removed it because my Thesis theme takes care of the necessary seo my blog.

    Thanks for the wonderful information though.

    Cheers,
    Jane.
    Jane just posted How About a Professional Guide to your New Blog

    • I’m glad this article post had some relevance! Pretty cool plugin you have!

  11. Thanks Brian,

    Although I’ve added this plugin long before but never tried it as I was looking for some post to help me get through & at the right time you hit the nail on the head. I’d like if you write up a post on essential plugins of wordpress for your blog.

    Thanks.
    hyderali just posted Super Sunday – Funny Videos

  12. A great guide to a very popular plugin!
    Just a note on the NoIndex option. You should only leave those unchecked if you are using only excerpts of your posts on archive pages like Categories and Tags. However, if you have your posts in full on those pages, NoIndex would be preferable because it’s duplicate content and you want the original single post page for each blog to be the one that is indexed and displayed in search engines, rather than your category/tag page. The archive pages change over time as you add new posts so it’s possible that it shows up in a search result for a particular post, but the user arrives there and the post has already been bumped to a different page and they do not find what they are looking for. Hope that helps!
    Lucy Beer just posted Get More Clients &amp Sell More Products with Effective Search Engine Optimization SEO

  14. There are a number of these tools available today, and I will say that the All in One SEO Pack is one of the most intuitive. While SEO is as much an art as it is a science and to the relatively uninitiated SEO can seem terribly complex. Plugins of this kind make on-site optimization terrifically easier and I recommend them for many of my clients. ScribeSEO (I have no relationship with them) is also a great tool for bloggers with SEO interests, and while there is a cost involved, the expense is nominal.
    Jesse Green just posted How a Few Used Social Media for the Betterment of Many – quakebook

  15. I used to have this plugin on all of my blogs, but I removed it when I went to the Thesis theme, Brian. I’ve heard some bloggers suggest that this is the way to go, and others that advocate using this plugin over what Thesis provides. What’s your opinion?

    I like having one less plugin to worry about, and I don’t seem to have issues sharing posts with any of the social media accounts. Am I missing out on something?
    Brad Harmon just posted Why Your Blog is Costing You Business

  16. Hi, Brian

    one who survived with plugins All In One SEO Pack, its configuration is very easy because it user friendly. Easily understood by anyone who just saw it.
    When I create an article entitled “My Article Only Need 1 Minute To Indexed By Google” I got a comment that I hoped it would compare with a similar plugin that is Yoast SEO WordPress. I accept the challenge of my visitors and my results are just a headache because there are too many configurations to Yoast. This made ​​me immediately to get rid of my SEO plugin list.
    selfishyayun just posted I Wanna Create Dofollow Directory

  21. I see so many recommend this plugin – but very few that actually take the time to show people how to use it.

    I will sharing this link with my readers so they too can enjoy this very detailed post.

    Tks Donna
    Donna Hamer just posted Facebook Lists

  24. Thanks for the information. I use this plugin on all my blogs. I always wondered what alot of the check boxes meant. So I just left them as the default setting. Now I will go back and retro -tune all my blogs.
    Pat just posted Job Search Tips

  26. Hi, Kevin Stacey here..

    First off, this post is extremely thorough! I don’t see too many bloggers going into detail like you have…that’s the mark of a blogger who knows their SEO plugin. For optimization, free plugins like All in One SEO Pack are really great as it lays down the basic SEO foundation for a WordPress site, but every blog is different and nothing works best for everyone.

    I always suggest looking at a side-by-side comparison of the best seo plugins for WordPress in order to make an informed decision of what the best plugin is for that blogger and their website’s specific needs.

    Here’s my most recent write-up on the subject:

    SEO Pressor vs Easy WP SEO vs Scribe SEO
    http://www.bestseopluginforwordpress.com/wordpress-seo/the-best-seo-plugin-for-wordpress/

    Check it out and let me know what you think.

    Great article btw…I’ll be referencing this post on my main blog.

  27. Hey, thanks a lot for this detailled description for the legendary. All in one SEO! :-))

    I personally switched to the (paid) WPSEO last year and it found some interesting Post title format:
    title | category | tags

    Looks a little weirder in the browser, because the title gets so long, but it seems like Google likes it. Maybe it is worth a try (maybe not on your mainblog first.) :-).

    Thanks again for this great tutorial – now I got a page to send people to who always ask “How do I setup my AIOSEO?”

    Greetings,
    André
    Andre just posted Spickzettel gegen Flugangst? Tipp13