All in One SEO Pack Plugin Configuration. Or Why SEO is the Most Tedious Thing in the World.
How to configure the All in One SEO Pack Plugin so that your search traffic doesn’t suck.
Or why SEO is the most tedious thing in the world.
Have I got a nerdtastic treat for you today OR WHAT?!
Like any self-respecting narcissist with a website, I track my visitor statistics in painstaking detail.
One thing I’ve been noticing recently is that the amount of traffic I’ve been receiving from web searches has been significantly down, whereas the amount of returning visitors has been significantly up.
For a while I focused on the latter of these two observations, happy that you like me enough to come back. (Thanks, by the way. I like you too.)
And I kind of forgot about the first bit, writing it off as one of those things.
The world of the internet is pretty predictable most of the time.
One of the things I love the most about business on the internet is that it’s pretty easy to predict what is going to happen.
Let’s think about how someone gets to a website from an internet search:
- They have a question, problem or a thing they want to find out about.
- They type a relevant phrase into Google, Bing or one of the other (crappier) search engines.
- A list of results are returned, matching your search.
- The user picks the one that looks like it matches their query the best.
- They get to your site. They’re either happy that they reached your awesome and information-rich resource, or they’re pissed that your website is a great big pile of spammy nonsense.
Pretty straightforward, right?
Now, there are two things that we can work on in order to get more people to our websites.
- We can work on making our webpages appear higher up the search engine results pages (SERPs).
- We can work on making the title, description and summary details more relevant, interesting and clickable.
Both these points are generally lumped under the banner of SEO. Or Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is the most tedious thing in the world.
It’s a fact of life that if you abbreviate something enough it becomes really boring.
SEO is one of those things. Every hormonal teenager on the internet thinks they’re an SEO expert. Do an internet search for proof.
Really, there is nothing magical about SEO. It’s simply the art of structuring your website and webpages in such a way that they are appear high up the list of possible search engine results for certain key phrases that you expect people are likely to search for.
These key phrases are generally called keywords, even though they are usually composed of more than one word.
Google decides what to return on search results pages based on:
1. How the keyword phrase appears in your webpage.
Ideally you’ll want the keyword phrase to appear in the URL (the address you type in to get to the webpage), the title, description and in the main body of your text.
Ideally you’ll want the keyword phrase highlighted in bold, or in a header at some point. And you’ll want other webpages (they can be on other pages of your site) linking to the page with the keyword in the link text.
You’ll also probably want these keyword phrases to appear in the META tags of your page. If you don’t know what this means then don’t worry. We’ll cover it a bit later.
Many people think that having your keyword phrase loads of times in your webpage helps too. I think they’re wrong. Even if they’re not wrong, doing this will make your articles read like crap and people will think that you’re weird.
2. How important Google thinks your website is.
Google has favorites.
It decides how much value your website has based upon some magic and mysterious criteria that Google puts on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.
It also decides, based on the links between the pages of your website, which are the most important pages on your site.
It sums all this up in a thing it calls PageRank. No-one really knows what this is, but you can get an estimation of it from 0 to 10 by installing Google Toolbar on your computer.
Here are some factors that affect your Google Page Rank:
- The age of your website
- How big it is
- How many other websites link to it
- How much Google likes those websites that link to you.
3. Other stuff
There are many other verified or hypothesized search engine ranking factors. You probably don’t need to worry about them. Here is a good place to start if you’re interested.
Fine. But I can’t really be bothered with all this. I just want to write cool stuff that helps people and makes them laugh.
Yeah. Me too.
I find this SEO stuff a bit ick really. I want to concentrate on writing cool stuff, not on gaming the search engines.
Thankfully, the search engines rules are set up to look for cool stuff (as opposed to spam.) So if you’re writing lots of cool stuff, then you’re really halfway there.
All you need to do, is add a few little tweaks to help the search engines to realize what you’re stuff is, and to realize that it’s cool.
If you’re running Wordpress, then something that will help you a lot is the All in One SEO Pack Plugin.
It does a lot of useful stuff for you, so you can concentrate on making good stuff. The only thing you need to do is have a think about what your keywords should be and put them in the relevant places. Then let the All in One SEO Pack Plugin handle everything else for you.
Cool. So how to I install it?
Go here.
And follow the instructions.
Configuring the All in One SEO Pack Plugin
The All in One SEO Pack Plugin is not one that you can just install and leave alone.
In fact, the reasons that my website search traffic had started to suck was that, on upgrading Wordpress to version 2.8, my plugin had resorted to its default settings. The result was that my search result titles and descriptions now looked like ass and no-one was clicking on them.
So here’s how to set things up so your search traffic will rock.
| Home Title | Put the title of your whole website in here. This is the title that gets displayed at the top of your website home page and the title that will appear in the search results for your website. Make it good and relevant, and include your main keyword if you can do it without it looking ick.If you leave this blank then Wordpress defaults to the name you defined in the main Wordpress configuration. |
| Home Description | Describe what your website does here. Include a few keywords if you can.This description is displayed below the title of the site in the search results pages.
If you don’t fill this in then your the text in the search results will simply display the first bit of text on your homepage. This could be totally irrelevant and create confusion in the mind of the searcher. Confused people don’t click, so put something good in here. |
| Home Keywords | List relevant website-wide keywords in here, separated by commas.
The jury is out on how much attention the search engines pay to these keyword META tags, but you might as well put some in anyway. It can’t hurt. |
| Canonical URLs | Leave this option checked.
This helps avoid duplicate content problems. It is believed that the search engines don’t like duplicate content too much, so leave this checked. |
| Rewrite Titles | Check this box.This one is really important. By default Wordpress puts the Category or the Home Title at the front of every Google search result and then the post description afterwards.
This is a bad thing because the post or page description is generally much more relevant to the term that the user is searching for. Putting the page description first gets you more relevancy points from an SEO perspective, and it means that the user is much more likely to click on your link. By default, this option will rewrite the title of a post to be Post Title | Blog Title. This is much better. |
| Post Title Format | %post_title% | %blog_title% |
| Page Title Format | %page_title% | %blog_title% |
| Category Title Format | %category_title% | %blog_title% |
| Archive Title Format | %date% | %blog_title% |
| Tag Title Format | %tag% | %blog_title% |
| Serach Title Format | %search% | %blog_title% |
| Description Format | %description% |
| Paged Format | - Part %page% |
| 404 Title Format | Nothing found for %request_words% |
| Use Categories for META keywords | This lets you use post categories as meta keywords for each post. You might want to do this or you might not.
I don’t. |
| Use noindex for Categories | Check this box. It prevents duplicate content, which is believed to be bad from an SEO perspective. |
| Use noindex for Archives | Check this box. It prevents duplicate content, which is believed to be bad from an SEO perspective. |
| Use noindex for Tag Archives | Check this box. It prevents duplicate content, which is believed to be bad from an SEO perspective. |
| Autogenerate Descriptions | Check this box.
If enabled then the plugin will automatically generate a description for your post (the thing that appears below the title in a the search engine results pages) from the first 160 characters of your blog post. The plug-in will allow you to override this with a unique description for every post, but this is great when you’re posting quickly. |
| Additional Headers (3 boxes) | Leave unchecked.
These are a bit complicated to explain and I can’t be bothered right now. You don’t need this. |
| Log Important Events | Leave unchecked.
This probably lets you log problems with the plugin developer. Not sure. Don’t really care. |
Here’s how mine is set up:
The final bit – Overriding the defaults for specific posts
Now you have everything set up then you can leave everything alone and never really worry about it again, if you like.
However… the plugin also allows you to override some the default title, description and meta tags for each post and you’ll want to do this for posts in which you’re targeting a very specific search term.
These settings appear in the Wordpress Visual Editor, as shown below:
Go Forth and Optimize!
You now have the power within you! Go forth and optimize your website!
Rock on!
JJ Jalopy.
Comment by Rob Northrup
12 July 2009
Great tips JJ! Have a great one…
Seize the Day,
Rob
Personal Asset Protection For Small Business Owners
Have You Covered Your Assets?
Rob Northrup´s last blog ..Never Co-Mingle Personal & Corporate Funds
Comment by Duane Cunningham
13 July 2009
Hi JJ,
You my friend need to get out more!..lol
Awesome advice and will really help a lot!
Duane
Comment by Pa
13 July 2009
Good to see you remember your Douglas Adams! Pa taught you something.
Comment by Darryl Pace
13 July 2009
JJ,
That’s good stuff, man. Super useful!
Health, Fitness — Darryl Pace
Fitness Product Review
Darryl Pace´s last blog ..Free Weights and Machines
Comment by Lynn Lane
14 July 2009
JJ,
Thanks for the great tips. Always good to drop by your blog for some things that I can use.
Lynn Lane
http://www.Warriorofsuccess.com
Warrior Of Success Training
Lynn Lane´s last blog ..Toxic People/Friends
Comment by Anthony Lemme
14 July 2009
Stay nerdtastic…it serves me so well. As long as I come here I will not have to work so hard at chanelling my inner nerd. Mine was disabled. This really helped man! Thanks.
Anthony
http://www.anthonylemme.com
Anthony Lemme´s last blog ..Maca: “Peru’s Natural Viagra”
Comment by Lisa McLellan
14 July 2009
Great reminders. I need these often as i haven’t found my memory since my 40th birthday. Thank you!
Lisa McLellan
Babysitting Services – Babysitters and Nannies
Comment by JJ Jalopy
14 July 2009
@Rob – Cheers bro!
@Duane – You’re so right my friend!
@Darryl – Always a pleasure…
Comment by JJ Jalopy
14 July 2009
@Pa! Hey Pa! How could I forget?!
Thanks for introducing me to it!
Comment by JJ Jalopy
14 July 2009
@Darryl, @Lynn – It’s a pleasure guys. It’s great to have you drop by.
Comment by JJ Jalopy
14 July 2009
@Anthony – I know you’ve got an inner nerd in there somewhere, just waiting to come out!
Glad it helped.
Comment by JJ Jalopy
14 July 2009
@Lisa – Haha. I lost my memory a long long time a go. Now where did I have it last???
Comment by John Ho
15 July 2009
JJ,
Awesome tips!
I also upgrade to the latest WP version AFTER I implemented what you suggest in this blog post.
Finger crossed that it all works out.
Many Thanks!
John Ho
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion (WordPress Blog)
Numerology Expert Birthday Numeroscope (Vox Blog)
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion
Comment by Pam Schulz
16 July 2009
WOW!!! Great information JJ – Thanks!
Pam
Expert Houston Retirement Planning & Wealth Management Services
Pam Schulz´s last blog ..A Blog About My Blog
Comment by Don Shepherd
27 July 2009
great info. now if i can get rid of my “page not found” error since upgrading i’ll be doing alright.
Don Shepherd
Central Oregon Expert
Don Shepherd´s last blog ..Comment on Central Oregon Flyfishing by Eddy M
Comment by JJ Jalopy
27 July 2009
@Don – Howdy! I LOVE the hat.
I’m sure we can sort out that problem in no time. I’ve sent you an email… Let me know how to recreate it and I’ll let you know what to do. We’ll get that blog of yours back up and running in no time I’m sure!
Comment by David Wood
28 July 2009
Rockin’ post my nerdy friend.
SEO bores the heck out of me and scares me a bit. As always, you make stuff simple and fun…
Comment by JJ Jalopy
29 July 2009
@Dave – Thanks dave. Boring but oh so valuable…
Comment by Tykhon Dziuban
4 August 2009
Sorry for offtopic.
But has anyone ever seen a content generation tool based on Youtube service, like “Tube Extractor” – http://tykhon-ua.com
It can fetch comments and post them on your blog or CMS!
Id like to get some feedback on this if anyone interested.
Thanks and sorry again for offtopic.
Comment by Sanjay
9 August 2009
Everyone do not take SEO as boring and tedious task. I find it very interesting. The only boring part is to create articles for my blog.
Anyway, I had installed ‘ All in one SEO Plugin’ but found a bit difficult to configure it. After reading this great article, I was able to configure properly. Thanks.
Comment by JJ Jalopy
12 August 2009
@Sanjay – Thanks for your comment my friend. I actually quite enjoy SEO. (I was just being flippant really!) I’m glad I could help out!
Comment by frank
7 October 2009
I searched for 30 minutes to find an article like this one, so many bad articles on allin one SEO plugins.
Thank you so much. You are making my http://www.travelmastery.com a lot better and are going in my thank page
frank´s last blog ..Top 7 best Sky pictures , photographed in France
Comment by V.C
14 May 2010
My site is new and has been doing well on google search. Suddenly, my new posts have not been indexed on google for over weeks. When I look at my platinum seo pack configuration, all tags and archives are allowed to index. I just hope google doesn’t ban my site
Comment by David Begum
24 June 2010
Some seo experts charge top dollars for website optimization.’.`
Comment by Christopher Taylor
29 July 2010
i hear that SEO experts earn thousands of bucks just optimising some large high traffic websites.;:’