I have been writing on various blogs for years, and I have seen alot of different WordPress setups and plugins. Today, I want to take a few moments to talk about my favorite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin called All In One SEO Pack and why it is simply the best WordPress plugin around when it comes to the competitive area of SEO.
Understanding SEO Basics
The goal of implementing SEO on your website is to help search engines learn what your site and content on your site are about. To do this, it is important to focus on something called a keyword. Think about a keyword what you type into a search engine to find what you are looking for. It could be a single word, or it could be a phrase.
As you learn about SEO you will probably read a lot about keywords! It will sound daunting at first, but try not to get too overwhelmed. Be sure to check out my guide to writing with SEO in mind naturally! It contains a complete example to show you how to begin using keywords for SEO on your website.
One of the most important things to remember when it comes to SEO is that it does not have to be hard! All In One SEO keeps it easy.
Why You Need a WordPress SEO Plugin
So, why do you need a WordPress Plugin for SEO? Simple! It helps you change your two key aspects of your site’s content, that are otherwise not easy to play around with if you are not a programmer.
- Title
- Meta Description
Changing Your Title for SEO
Sure, you can mess around with the tile of your blog post, but many of us put great thought into our titles, and are hesitant to make changes once we set them. All In One SEO lets you quickly and easily change your title – for search engines only! This means your readers on your blog will see the title you painstakingly crafted, and you can also tweak your title for search engines at the same time.
A great example is a blog post series. Let’s face it, search engines do not care if your post is part one, two, or three, they just care what is inside.
If I was writing a Bicycle Repair Guide (we use the bicycle repair example in XXX and XXX), I may want my readers to be clear on what part of the series they are reading, so I may want this as my blog title:
The Ultimate Bicycle Repair Guide Part 1 of 5 – The Tools You Need
That can be a bit much for a search engine, since we have lots of extra information in there the search engine does not really need to know. For the search engine, I may want my title to be:
Guide to Tools Needed for Bicycle Repair
This is a much better title for a search engine, but not really that interesting to a human being. That is why it is so great to be able to tweak the title whenever you want.
Creating a Meta Description for SEO
This is something that just is not even worth messing with without a WordPress Plugin unless you are an expert coder. The meta description tells search engines exactly what your blog post is about. Load that puppy up with keywords and make it catchy! With All In One SEO it is easy to set and change anytime.
Optimizing your blog post’s title and meta description are two quick and easy wins for your SEO strategy, and two of the most powerful. If you have not been adding meta descriptions or changing titles for blog posts, it is easy to do it after you have installed All In One SEO.
These are just two of the reasons why All In One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin, so let’s take a look at how you would change your title and meta description for a given post:
See the question mark with the word Help in the upper right corner? You will find those handy question marks throughout the All In One SEO plugin. They take you directly to the relevant documentation page to give you further information on a particular setting. Check out this documentation page on Post SEO for a sample of the information All In One SEO plugin can provide.
The All In One SEO documentation is also top notch, and is easy to read and understand to help you become a SEO pro in no time at all. Documentation is an area that people often overlook, but after spending some of my career writing deep technical documentation and guides, it is an area I always appreciate.
Using the All In One SEO WordPress Plugin for Blog Post SEO
The image above is what you will see from the All In One SEO Pack WordPress plugin for each and every post. It could not get any simpler than this. We already talked about the first two fields – title and meta description. When the title is light grey, as it is in the above screen shot, All In One SEO is simply using the title you set as the title of your blog post. Feel free to type a more search engine friendly title right in that box.
See those handy question marks? Just click one and you will find out the information on the setting, and also be able to get more in-depth information from the All In One SEO Pack website. See what happens when I click the box next to NOINDEX?
This information is helpful! Other plugins are full of useless information, and do not have a clean interface like this one. These are two things that are a major turn off for me. For example, another WordPress plugin will analyze things like your “readability”, but honestly I do not care about anything other than making sure I can set SEO attributes on my content quickly and easily. Do not let other WordPress SEO plugins convince you that you need to spend money on features you do not absolutely need!
Other plugins make SEO overcomplicated. They try to convince you you NEED their plugin for SEO since SEO is just SO COMPLICATED, and they are the only ones that can make it easy. Many of these plugins actually make things more complicated. SEO does not have to be difficult, and your plugin should not overwhelm you and create more work for you which is what a lot of these other WordPress SEO plugins do. I found All In One SEO after a lot of trial and error with other WordPress SEO plugins, and have not looked back since.
SEO Beyond Your Blog Post
Did you know you can do SEO on way more than just a blog post? You can set these same attributes we have been talking about on:
- Your Home Page
- Pages
- Categories
- Tags
Beyond your blog posts, setting SEO attributes on other types of content on your website can be helpful. For example, setting a meta description for your home page, other pages, categories and tags is a great ability. I have done this on one of my other sites and have gotten fantastic results. I make good use of tags to group together my blog posts in one place about a particular topic. All In One SEO Pack makes it easy to optimize these pages for SEO and set (and change) a relevant title and meta description.
Here is a list of everything I can set SEO on for my website:
As you can see, if I have it published on my website, I have the ability to set it up for SEO!
Consolidate Other Plugins with the All In One SEO Plugin
In our guide to picking the best WordPress plugins, we talked about trying to solve different problems with the same plugin.
This is important because plugins use resources on your web server. What we want to see in our plugins is multiple features allowing us to reduce our total number of plugins when possible. For a strictly performance perspective, we do not care about our WordPress plugin giving us a zillion interfaces either, we want them to be as simple looking and streamlined as possible.
All In One SEO can also replace other plugins you may be using for:
- Google Analytics
- Webmaster Verification (Google Search Console, Bing, Pinterest)
- Sitemaps
- And more!
Anytime we can reduce the number of plugins on our site, we are heading in the right direction!
Getting Started With All In One SEO for WordPress SEO
You can simply install All In One SEO like any other WordPress plugin. It comes in two versions, a free versions, as well as a premium paid version. The free version is more than enough to help you get used to the All In One SEO WordPress plugin, and start setting SEO on your blog posts. Best of all, if you do decide to upgrade to the Pro version (which I have for all of my websites), all of the data from the free version of All In One SEO will be ported over, so you do not need to worry about re-doing any of your hard work.
Also, do not forget about the little question marks we talked about! Clicking these are enough to get you familiar with the All In One SEO plugin and learn more about SEO practices in general without paying for expensive courses and training.
Do I Need All In One SEO Pro?
All In One SEO Pro has additional features than the free version. In addition to the core functionality of setting SEO attributes on blog posts, you will be able to set SEO up for things like categories and tags like we talked about previously.
If you are using WooCommerce, All In One SEO Pro has additional SEO optimization features. You also get great support, and access to the exclusive Pro support forums, which can be a great help if you are new to SEO.
Why the All In One SEO Pack Plugin is the Best WordPress SEO Plugin
After switching to All In One SEO, I will never use another WordPress SEO plugin again. All In One SEO is easy to use, and will not clutter up your WordPress install with useless features you do not need. It can replace other plugins you may already be using on your site, allowing you to free up your web server resources. Best of all, it is easy to use and intuitive. You can become an All In One SEO Pro in no time at all, and the Pro version unlocks more features and functionality in addition to exclusive support and forums. If you are unhappy with your current WordPress SEO Plugin, or have not begun to use one, I encourage you to take a look at All In One SEO. After all it is free to get started!