Doing a search on All-In-One-SEO returned quite a few places it has been mentioned over the past couple of years. Rather than reinvent the wheel here I’m going to point those posts then write a current update on what I’m doing with it now.
Wordpress 2.3 All-in-One-SEO for Meta Tags in the Header → This is the one that kicks it all off and everything I said there is pretty much the way it is today. I have changed a couple of things. In the screen shot the deindex tags is checked that isn’t the case any longer.
The No Index Tags Option in All-In-One-SEO → This little post was specific to the one setting for tags and it is the precursor to the Post Tags are like Signal Flares I wrote yesterday. In that post I said I wasn’t suggesting you turn that option on or off, Now I’m suggesting you turn it ON by Unchecking the box if it is.
Current All-In-One-SEO Settings and Explanation
My All In One SEO Settings
Home Title: This is confusing and should be called Home Page Keywords These keywords are the ones you select for the blog itself not for any particular post. Chose Wisely Grass hopper
Home Description: This is where you put the description of your blog
ReWrite Titles: Check
All of the Title Formats: These are the best formats for each option. There is no need to change any of them. However if you want to add more keyword phrases to the end of post and page formats or all of them for that matter do so by typing them in at the end. For presentation purposes you should keep the same formatting using a bar | between each addition.
For example: If I wanted to add Lab Rats Wanted to the Title tag for posts I would change the post line to:
%post_title% | %blog_title% | Lab Rats Wanted
The same is true for any of the other title options. Does it make a difference? Yes it does. I have several sites that start ranking for those search terms after keyword were added to the the title tags.
The check boxes. Self explanatory here. I want as many lines in the water as I can get. Therefore, I want my Categories, Archives and tags indexed. I’m using excerpts for all of those to be displayed (which is the default for many themes) so there is not duplicate content issues. I know someone is going to ask how you check or set this.
Go to the theme editor and look at your Archive.php or searchresults.php etc. You should see this line in the code somewhere: <?php the_excerpt() ?> if you find <?php the_post() ?> change the word post to excerpt. Don’t forget to save.
Here I’ll mention another favorite plugin of mine Thumbnails for Excerpts which will display a thumbnail of the first image associated with a post when returning searches, category, or archive results.
Auto generate description: I have this checked but I override it for almost every post. Especially post that start with an image. Auto generate will pull in the image code instead of the first sentence of the post. I wrote about this in the post Writing Interesting and Targeted Excerpts
At the bottom of each post editor there is a bar with “All In One SEO Pack” drop that down and you can past your Excerpt into the Description. You can also enter specific keywords if you want to override the default process for keywords. What is the default process: Post Tags, Category, Since I have my categories set up as keywords and I always have post tags that works for me. But you can override this by putting in your own list of keywords.
But remember, keywords aren’t the words you want to rank for, they are keywords related to this post. If you put in keywords that aren’t in the post you are keyword spamming and that leaves you open to other issues with The All Seeing Eye.
