Wordpress SEO

Posted on | August 19, 2009 | 2 Comments

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, “the process of improving ranking in search engine results” (Wikipedia), and is very important in helping potential customers or readers find your blog.

All in One SEO Options

The All in One SEO Pack plugin for Wordpress is a powerful solution for increasing your SEO and getting more pageviews and visits. It allows you to change various elements of your site which make your page come up higher on the results on Google.

The All in One SEO Pack allows you to change a number of features which will increase your number of visitors if done correctly.

• Plugin Status is whether the plugin is enabled or not. If you want the plugin’s features to work, be sure to select enabled.
• Home Title will set the title of your blog to whatever is in this box. The title of your pages is very important to SEO and should be short, sweet, and to the point. Pica Design recommends keeping the total word number under 10 words, all of which help accurately describe what is on the page (limiting words like a, the, and, etc.). Examples include: Donna’s Local Maine Pottery; GreenVision Environmentally Friendly Homes; or Maine Wedding Cakes, Specialty Catering and Gourmet Dining.
• Home Description is a good place to put the title of your blog if you didn’t use it in your title. It uses <META> tags, which are used less and less by modern search engines, but can still benefit your SEO. This space can also be used for a succinct description of what your website is about, for example “Maine Delights sells cakes for any occasion and is perfect for weddings or parties. We also offer catering for events and will ensure that your guests remember your function forever.”
• Home Keywordsalso use <META> tags, but as with Home Description, can still benefit your SEO. Use this space to put 40 to 50 unique words which describe your blog, product, or website.
• Canonical URLs will generate canonical URLs for all the pages on your site. This will help search engines better scan and crawl your content.
• Rewrite Titles will make the titles of your blog (what is displayed at the top of your browser) more search engine friendly. It will change titles like “Blog Archive >> Blog Name >> Post Title” to “Post Title | Blog Name” which increases your relevancy on search engines and makes it more readable as well.
• Post Title Format is what “Rewrite Titles” will rewrite titles to on posts. The most common setting is %post_title% | %blog_title% . (If you click on “Post Title Format” you can find a list of macros to customize your title.)
• Page Title Format is what “Rewrite Titles” will rewrite titles to on pages. The most common setting is %page_title% | %blog_title% . (If you click on “Page Title Format” you can find a list of macros to customize your title.)
• Category Title Formatis what “Rewrite Titles” will rewrite titles to on category. The most common setting is %category_title% | %blog_title% . (If you click on “Category Title Format” you can find a list of macros to customize your title.)
• Archive Title Formatis what “Rewrite Titles” will rewrite titles to on the archive. The most common setting is %date% | %blog_title% . (If you click on “Archive Title Format” you can find a list of macros to customize your title.)
• Tag Title Formatis what “Rewrite Titles” will rewrite titles to on tags. The most common setting is %tag% | %blog_title% . (If you click on “Tag Title Format” you can find a list of macros to customize your title.)
• Search Title Formatis what “Rewrite Titles” will rewrite titles to on searches. The most common setting is %search% | %blog_title% . (If you click on “Search Title Format” you can find a list of macros to customize your title.)
• Description Format is the <META> description that each of your posts will display. You can have it display tags other than just the description you write here. The default is %description%.
• 404 Title Format allows you to set the title of 404 error pages. The default is ‘Nothing found for %request_words%’
• Paged Format lets you change the titles of each page of your posts when they are more than one page long. The default is ‘ – Part %page%’
• Use Categories for META keywords automatically inserts the used categories into the META description.
• Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page will automatically generate keywords for your page posts. “Check this if you want your keywords on a custom posts page (set it in options->reading) to be dynamically generated from the keywords of the posts showing on that page. If unchecked, it will use the keywords set in the edit page screen for the posts page.”
• Use noindex for Categories will keep your category pages from being seen by search engines, which will help keep duplicate content from search engines.
• Use noindex for Archives will keep your archive pages from being seen by search engines, which will help keep duplicate content from search engines.
• Use noindex for Tag Archives will keep your tag pages from being seen by search engines, which will help keep duplicate content from search engines.
• Autogenerate Descriptions will automatically generate descriptions for your posts if you don’t specify them yourself or if there’s no excerpt
• Capitalize Category Titles will capitalize the titles of your categories for you.
• Additional Post Headers will copy the text written into the headers of all your posts verbatim
• Additional Page Headers will copy the text written into the headers of all your pages verbatim
• Additional Home Headers will copy the text written into the header of your home page verbatim
• Log important events will log ‘important events’ into a .log file for debugging

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