If you have checked out any list of most recommended WordPress plugins, or most popular WordPress plugins, You will see a mention of All in One SEO Pack. When we do our free blog setup, we add plugins and other measures necessary to make our user’s blog Search Engine Optimized (SEO). We noticed that one of the things we failed to mention was that just installing this plugin will not help. You have to take some additional steps to get the maximum benefits from this plugin. In this article, we will share with you the recommended settings for All in One SEO Pack, and how you can use this plugin efficiently to maximize the SEO benefits for your blog.
First we will show you the optimal settings you should use. We are using the exact same settings on WPBeginner. Once you have installed the plugin, then go to Settings » All in One SEO. There you will see something like this. Make sure you have the plugin enabled.
Home Title
Home title is the meta title on your homepage. This will be the title that all users will see in their browsers, and this is the title search engine bots use as well. Often bloggers are too focused on the Search Engine bots, that they make their titles full with keywords.
Example of a Bad Title: WPBeginner – WordPress Themes, WordPress Plugins, Resources
Now one would think that this type of title would have SEO Advantage, but it clearly does not because your title is diluted with keywords. Second, it is not user friendly. While search engines will help you get more traffic, it is the word of mouth advertising and user support that counts in blogging.
Good Title: WPBeginner – Beginner’s Guide for WordPress
This title does not dilute itself with keywords. It is essentially the brand name (WPBeginner) and a tagline. Also if you notice, our title is readable. It is something that users can read and not freak out. Search Engines also like this type of titles.
When you are writing your title, make sure that it is under 60 characters and you think it all the way.
Home Description
Also known as meta description. It is solely for search engines, and most users will not see this description at all while they are surfing your site. This description should be no longer than 160 characters because most search engines has a maximum limit of 160 characters. Writing a short description is not easy, because you have to make sure that you can add the right keywords in a sentence.
When someone search for a keyword in google, something like this show up:
The meta description can be seen below the title. If it was less than 160 characters, then you see a full description. Otherwise you will see a cut off version of the description. You need to be smart about the meta description that you are writing so it fits both search engines and your users. This not something that you will get right on the first time. You will have to keep trying and analyze your ranking results.
Home Keywords
This is where you will add keywords that you want to target. Separate them by commas. Make sure you do your research on keywords before targetting the keywords. This is something that you will learn overtime. We have changed our keywords numerous times as the year progresses. If a certain niche or sub-niche is getting you more traffic, you change your keywords in that direction.
Other Title Settings
When you install All in one SEO, the default settings put your home title on all other titles (including single posts title, page title, and others). It also uses vertical bar to separate the titles instead of hyphens. First thing you need to do is get rid of Home title from your single posts title and your page titles. For blogs, you don’t need to have that because it is diluting your title. If you have a title that is 50 characters and a single post title that is 55 characters, then you have exceed your title length. Your page title and post titles are important. If you must, then you can add a custom keyword in your title.
Example: Earthquake in Haiti – CNN
Something like that is good. But something like:
User’s Guide for All in One SEO Pack – WordPress for Beginners.
This is what you will get if you keep the default settings. Probably longer if your blog title is longer than that.
Category titles and all other titles should have your blog name, because those are small words.
Leave other settings as default.
Most people stop at this point. But there is more. Actually the second part is just as important as the first one. You need to add a custom meta title, descriptoin, and keywords for each post and page to maximize the results.
Individual Post Settings
In your post write panel, there is a tab that says All in One SEO Pack. It looks something like this:
Follow the same guidelines for title, description, and keywords. You must fill out these in order to maximize the benefits. Writing a custom meta description, and keywords can significantly help. We have talked with many top bloggers in the industry, and this is something all of them do and recommend to their followers.
Download All in One SEO Pack
For other SEO tips, check our Must see SEO Guide for All WordPress Bloggers.
ALL IN ONE SEO has changed their Layout and options, while fixing most of their compatibility issues. I just updated it and let me tell you, it’s worth it.
Tutorial is still relevant thou, but there are many new features in version 2.0.
Thanks , thats the first post in Google and seriously i learned to set up ALL IN ONE in a right way.
When I go to a new post or page, there is information already in the All in One SEO from a post I wrote months ago. When I write over it, sometimes it saves the new information and sometimes it reverts back to the information from a post I wrote months ago. Reset the plugin, still does it. Any guesses as to what it might be. Thank you.
No clue. This sounds like a compatibility issue between that plugin and another. We would recommend either contacting their support, or switch to WordPress SEO by Yoast.
Thanks for the All in One SEO Pack Guide, it would definitely help in.
Thanks for the tuto. AIOSP is a must have plugin for all type of bloggers.
I have the All in One installed but for some reason I am unable to enable it. It is impossible for me to click on the button. I cant make changes to anything else on that page either. Please help. Thanks.
I get, Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
When I try to activate the plugin
Very very helpful, thanks a lot.
I have done my best to set up All in One. I have filles out the form in settings and activated the plug in everywhere and nothing has happened except a blank form has appeared in the editor on each page. I am using the Village Theme in a Mac if that helps.
when you update a page is there a way of retaining the All in One SEO information at the bottome, eg title, description etc, rather than having to fill it out again every time you change something on the page? thanks
@trektheandes It should stay everytime you update the page. If it is going away, then there is an error. You should start a support request on the WordPress forums.
@wpbeginner definitely disappearing, I shall do just that, thanks
I apologize if this is a second post of the same question, had some confusion in the signup part. However, here is my question. Google is saying I have duplicate meta and meta keywords. I do. Because I have them in the html of my blog. I use AIOSEO and utilize keywords and meta descriptions for it as well for each post. But Google does not seem to see them. Should I remove the meta description and tags in the blog homepage html and just use the AIOSEO keywords and description? I am wondering if Google is seeing them in the script and doesn’t see any of the others.
@Robscottage You shouldn’t need to add meta info on the homepage manually. AIOSEO does that for you.
Thank you for the reply, I am going to try and remove the homepage meta info. I believe that might be why google is telling me that I have duplicate meta descriptions on all my pages. If I do that, I assume AIOSEO will put the meta description on my homepage as needed?
@Robscottage If its saying you have duplicate meta on all pages, then you should see if your theme is outputting meta information also… because some themes tend to do that.
Thanks, I have removed the meta description and meta tags that were in the header file that were not prefixed with the AIOSEO information. I am thinking that was the duplicate piece. Now it seems like AIOSEO is putting it back in, which is OK, I think anyway. I will try to let you know if that solves the problem after google goes over my site again.
Hi Rob, I think you are doubtful whether AIOSEO will insert META or not, right? To convince yourself, what you can do is, goto your site from any browser and click View menu in brower, View Source Code, and then Find for META, you will see the META Keywords and META descriptions there inserted by AIOSEO, hope this will help.
Regards,
binarymag
Hi.
I installed wordpress 3.2.1 and installed All in one SEO Plugin(1.6.13.4).
I did to change the status as enable and also set the title,description and keyword for homepage in the setting.
But my problem is SEO title,Keywords,description doesn’t generated dynamically for all pages…..
In plugin description they said like
“Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines,Generates META tags automatically”
what to do..
how can solve the issue..my client need automatic title,meta keyword generation..
Any one advice me
thanks in advance, please reply asap
@Anitha Use WordPress SEO by Yoast… although automatic meta generation is never a good idea.
May I know the reason as to why it is not a good idea pleasE?
I’ve installed All in One SEO Plugin Options.
I didn’t change anything in the setting.
I read your article.
but I don’t understand fully. @>@
Does The plugin make title tag automatically??^^
Should I insert the metatags for seo by myself ?
@boxeodebogota Not sure what the issue is, but you can always switch to Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin.
Help!! I’ve been using the All In One plugin for almost a month now, recently updated it and it seems like since then my description tags are not posting for individual posts. It seems like the developer wants to charge to help you out and refers you to a forum, where other people also don’t know what’s going on…can anyone help me? I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the thing a few times now to try and reset it, but my custom descriptions in the individual posts are not being generated when someone wants to share the posts etc.
I’m new at all of this so maybe its a setting I don’t know about, but I have all of the options set exactly like the ones you show in this article..please help me, its costing me traffic
@luddite21c We have this running on one of our sites and it still works. The site is running WP 3.2.1
I thought I had found my Nirvana viewing this post. I’m completely new to WordPress and could actually understand what you are saying. I was just about to install AIOSEO when I noticed everybody on the plug-ins page seems to be saying it’s broken in 3.2.1 and that the developers have moved on to other projects. Is this true because I am struggling to understand the Yoast version ( even your excellent post ). I would be grateful for any advice – please explain anything technical as if I was five years old. Cheers.
I hate to admin this, but for some reason when I first installed this plugin a few years ago (I think) I didn’t realize I had to actually fill stuff out- namely the individual post fields. When it finally clicked what I was doing (really) wrong, I literally spent about 70 hours properly filling out the form on individual posts and pages. Sadly, I still have about 400 posts left that I never finished before I gave up. Wish I would have realized this a few years sooner- so many sites tout this plug-in as the do-it-all but none really explain what you need to do to make it work for you.
thanks for wonderful work ! i just want to ask how many keywords should we use in Home Keywords section (in number)
and how many keywords should we use in Individual Post (post keywords)(in number)
thanks in advance, please reply asap
Thank you for this blog post. I had deleted this from my blog as I couldn’t understand what it was wanting from me. Thanks to this post. I understand and will be able to use it to the fullest. Thank you.
Hi Dear Sir,
You are doing a great job not only for beginners but for everybody who is into this field. Thumbs Up
It would be great if you could provide a step by step guide from inception till making an edge in this area. Anyway I learnt a lot from your blog so far.
We do. Just search for Must SEE SEO guide on our site, and you will find it.
Indeed its great plugin,what do you know about seoprcessor plugin please tell me?
We would rather recommend Scribe SEO instead of SEO Pressor.
Thank you so much for this post! I needed some good tips and reminders about All in One SEO Pack and found your advice really helpful.
Hi,
Thanks for this easy to read guide! Just a quick questions though…
I inputted a description in the “Home Description” section, but when I see my link on Google, the description under the link is totally different. Any ideas why?
Thanks!
Something else in your theme is overriding it which means your theme is not well coded.
Hi,
Thanks for this guide! Just a question though…
My home description is not showing up in the google search. In google, the description for my site is different than the one i put into the home description. Do you know how to fix this?
Thanks!
Quick Q – as Meta Keywords are not utlised by Google and can infact in some ways be utilised by the ‘competition’ would it still be wise to include the Keywords in All in 1?
We include them in ours. Different SEO experts will have different opinions on this.
Hi guys,
Nice, simple guide to the All in One SEO Pack plugin.
One of the members of my online marketing coaching forum at ClickMillionaires.com asked about this WordPress tool yesterday.
So I was going to write up an answer but am happy to link to this tutorial instead!
Thanks for writing it,
Scott
When I add a new post, do I still fill out the meta tag info for the picture as well as all the other tags or do I just use All in one SEO?
Do both.
I never use the Individual Post Settings, I was hoping my tags would be used as keywords, is there no setting for this?
If you use Yoast’s plugin, the one that we recommend, it actually does that automatically if you set it up right.
http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-install-and-setup-wordpress-seo-plugin-by-yoast/
Hi !
This is useful advice and best of all it’s clearly written a beginner to WordPress would have no problem in setting-up the plugin. It worked great for me when I installed the plugin in my site.
Thank you,
Lilian Saum
Hey,
Check out my new website.. I am still working on some of its aspect. What would you suggest about it..I installed AIOSEO already and am loving it.
One specific question that I did have about AIOSEO was, I enter tags for my posts, will these tags be overridden by the AIOSEO keywords? If yes, can I leave my posts’ tags space empty?
Help appreciated.
tags and keywords are used for two separate purposes. Keywords in AIOSEO is for Search Engines. Tags are for your users, so they can find those posts using your WordPress search.
Thanks for the tips! Going to implement them now and analyze the results. Thanks again for a clear and simple tutorial.
This is indeed a very useful plugin. I use AIOSP on my website and I love it.
Hi Harsh,
Merry Xmas and happy new year in advance
Can you tell me why All in one SEO truncates (remove) the rhe backslash (\) from Title. For example, if type ACPI\HPQ0006 in the title, and after publishing if I checked the title, it will be truncated to ACPIHPQ0006. The \ between word ACPI and HPQ0006 is missing. I found that if you use \ in the title with all in one SEO, it is removed, is this a bug or am I doing something wrong.. please help
I posted same query in WordPress support but no one responded.
Link is: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-all-in-one-seo-pack-all-in-one-seo-truncates-special-characters-like-etc
Please help me
It does that because a backslash is not a valid character in a URL specially not in the middle of it. Usually the slashes are used to split up directories within the server, so adding in the title will mess things up. Thus they are not allowed in any SEO plugin for WordPress.
How to override the default page titles, keywords and description for a particular page generated by custom page?
Thanks so much for this tutorial! Its easy to understand and feels very effective!
Although, there is one thing I didnt quite understand. The last part about filling out a custom meta title, description and keywords for teh individual post settings, do you mean that those are possible to have saved so that they always stay the same for every post I make in my blog? And if so, is that really what I should do? Should I not have individual titles for each one so that my readers actually get a correct idéa of what the post will be about?
Thanks again!
No it means that you should write a new one for each post.
Thank you very very much! I followed all of your tips about all in one seo! Keep up the good work. I am very happy that I met your blog.
This is one of the best & simplest tutorials I’ve seen for All in One SEO. You streamlined the whole experience, thanks.
Great!
I am a beginner to SEO and Google optimization, and there is something I still do not know. My question is : in writing the title, the description and the keywords,in All-in-one-SEO-pack setting, do we have to add at the beginning the titiele, description and keyword tags ( like Blog Title; ; ) or can we just insert our title, description, keywords in the plug-in tabs directly? The same question for All- in -one SEO-pack in posts.
Thanks.
Nice tips.
But one more question: how many keywords would be good for seo?
10 – 15 should be fine… Don’t overload the keywords.
Thank you for this, but you stopped halfway through the All in One options.
Could you please post the optimal settings for the rest of the options in the All in One settings panel?
*SEO for Custom Post Types:
*Use Categories for META keywords:
*Use Tags for META keywords:
*Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page:
*Use noindex for Categories:
*Use noindex for Archives:
*Use noindex for Tag Archives:
*Autogenerate Descriptions:
*Capitalize Category Titles:
*Exclude Pages:
Hey Christina,
The reason why we stopped there because you can leave the rest at default settings. SEO for Custom Post Types was introduced recently when WP 3.0 was introduced.
I really appreciate this post and this site in general. Thank you very much!
Really usefull.
nice tips
That’s seriously one of the best and simple tutorial I have seen for ALl in oNE SEO…
I always suggest to my readers to write meta description atleast…and if you really possessive about traffic..Always write two way Title
1. For readers
2. For search engine.
Perfect tutorial.