The All-in-One SEO plugin for wordpress by Michael Torbert certainly has it’s uses, but it can conflict with other plugins and cause validation errors that will actually hurt your SEO if you don’t use it properly.
The All-in-One SEO plugin allows users to create meta descriptions, home page keywords and post/page keywords, page title and page menu attributes, dynamically generate keywords for pages. It can add NOINDEX for categories, tags, search pages and author pages to avoid duplicate content issues and help your PR (Page Rank) on popular search engine results and add additional header information.
The downside is it overlaps with other plugins, and many of your efforts can be lost if decide at a later date to use other solutions in terms of plugins and uninstall the All-In-One SEO plugin.
Personally, the only thing I actually really like about it is the page and post title atributes, Menu Titles, and Keywords features that appear when you are publishing content. The other features tend to conflict with better plugins and produce messy code. I prefer hand coding and plugins that are limited to very specific uses. The all-in-one solutions are great for the basics, this one is the PERT PLUS (popular shampoo and conditioner in one bottle) of SEO plugins, not the premium salon special in my opinion.
All-in-One SEO Plugin with WP-Ecommerce
The All-in-One SEO plugin for WP is the only plugin that plays well with wp-ecommerce by instinct. When running the WP-Ecommerce plugin (free or gold cart version) it should be one of the first things you install right after activating permalinks because WP-Ecommerce gets buggy if the permalinks are not activated right away and the user tries to activate permalinks after products and categories are created. This could cause an online store owner to have to re-install and re-list shop products because the permalinks won’t work.
There is no easy work around for this problem, and if you are stuck with broken links, you want permalinks to be activated but are having problems with broken links on product listings and other pages, the short answer (from an SEO perspective) is:
(1) export your existing product list to CSV (if you have one),
(2) Uninstall the the plugin, completely deleting it from your server
(3) Update your tables using PHP Admin,
(4) Uninstall your sitemap and deactivate whatever plugin you have for a sitemap, again, deleting it from you server (if you have one)
(5) do a fresh install of wp-ecommerce, BUT DON’T ACTIVATE YET!
(6) Re-Install your favorite Sitemap builder, BUT DON’T ACTIVATE YET!
(7) ACTIVATE permalinks and use %postname%, NOT, %category% or some other combination.
(8) ACTIVATE WP-Ecommerce, create the required pages WITH THE PAGE NAMES you want to keep.
(9) ACTIVATE your sitemap builder and submit it to GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS and YAHOO SITE EXPLORER (Microsoft’s webmaster portal was broken when I wrote this, but do the same if its working again). Your sitemap builder plugin probably does it automatically.
(10) Finally, ACTIVATE the All-in-SEO plugin and enjoy the improved SEO for product listings.
(11) Don’t forget to burn your product RSS feed using something like Google’s Feedburner. You’ll need that to be updated after going through this.
All-in-One SEO Plugin with other SEO Plugin
Like all “all in one” wordpress plugin solutions, you’ll find it pretty basic, never complete and overlapping functions with other plugin solutions, in some cases causing messy code on index pages, posts etc.
For example, the also good, Ultimate Noindex plugin by Jonathan Kemp, the ROBOTS META plugin by Joost De Valk, HEADSPACE 2 plugin (one of the best out there), and GREG’S HIGH PERFORMANCE SEO, allow users to NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW things like category, author and tag pages, and/or add META DATA like page titles, descriptions, keywords and/or submit sitemaps to search engines.
These various combination overlaps can cause problems depending on the order plugins are installed and other things like selecting to NOFOLLOW tag archives in the ALL-IN-ONE SEO plugin, then selecting to FOLLOW tag archives in another because you forgot your settings, can confuse search engines, and worse, cause problems with wordpress and cause your SEO to work against you.
One way to avoid this is to only select only the features you want from plugins and leave the other fields blank, but that can cause messy code, and too many queries on your wordpress installation.
Another solution, if you know how to code, is to scrap the unwanted overlapping features on the plugins, but that might make updating a nightmare, unless your doing the updates yourself.
An even better solution is to either find more directed plugins that don’t offer so many features, like ASK APACHE for submitting sitemaps to Google and Yahoo. Many SEO experts have already published great articles on plugin combinations that you can follow.
You certainly don’t need Headspace 2 if your running the All-in-One plugin, because ALT inputs, titles and description meta is all taken care of. But Headspace 2 does a little more if you have it running.
A wordpress expert like Joost De Valk (who ranks first for the keyword “wordpress seo” will give you great tips and plugins for wordpress, he has an awesome tutorial that incorporates his custom plugins that can get your wordpress site up to snuff and kicking butt for SEO, but I’ve seen sites where the user has implemented Joost De Valk’s tips, and then added more plugins that really just mess the site up.
The great thing about wordpress as a blog or wp as a CMS is the massive community that exists to answer questions. If your thinking of this plugin, and you are going to be using other plugins for your SEO solution, I recommend you look at overlapping fields, and try to keep your uses of SEO Plugins as minimal as possible to keep your site running smoothly.
The All-In-One plugin is very good, recommended, but it’s uses should be considered, especially when more advanced SEO savvy options and plugins are going to be employed.
If you are in Toronto or the GTA, and are looking for some help with your Wordpress SEO, or wp-ecommerce setup don’t hesitate to contact me for help. If it’s simple I’ll just link you to a good answer, or you can always hire me to a look at your site and fix the problem for you.
SEO with fries = Search Engine Optimization Services | Wordpress Expert Services | Viral Marketing and Digital Content Distribution | Social Media Management | Web 2.0 Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Film & Video Production | Video Post Production | Blogging + Blog Creation |
All in One SEO plugin for Wordpress with other SEO WP Plugins
The All-in-One SEO plugin for wordpress by Michael Torbert certainly has it’s uses, but it can conflict with other plugins and cause validation errors that will actually hurt your SEO if you don’t use it properly.
The All-in-One SEO plugin allows users to create meta descriptions, home page keywords and post/page keywords, page title and page menu attributes, dynamically generate keywords for pages. It can add NOINDEX for categories, tags, search pages and author pages to avoid duplicate content issues and help your PR (Page Rank) on popular search engine results and add additional header information.
The downside is it overlaps with other plugins, and many of your efforts can be lost if decide at a later date to use other solutions in terms of plugins and uninstall the All-In-One SEO plugin.
Personally, the only thing I actually really like about it is the page and post title atributes, Menu Titles, and Keywords features that appear when you are publishing content. The other features tend to conflict with better plugins and produce messy code. I prefer hand coding and plugins that are limited to very specific uses. The all-in-one solutions are great for the basics, this one is the PERT PLUS (popular shampoo and conditioner in one bottle) of SEO plugins, not the premium salon special in my opinion.
All-in-One SEO Plugin with WP-Ecommerce
The All-in-One SEO plugin for WP is the only plugin that plays well with wp-ecommerce by instinct. When running the WP-Ecommerce plugin (free or gold cart version) it should be one of the first things you install right after activating permalinks because WP-Ecommerce gets buggy if the permalinks are not activated right away and the user tries to activate permalinks after products and categories are created. This could cause an online store owner to have to re-install and re-list shop products because the permalinks won’t work.
There is no easy work around for this problem, and if you are stuck with broken links, you want permalinks to be activated but are having problems with broken links on product listings and other pages, the short answer (from an SEO perspective) is:
(1) export your existing product list to CSV (if you have one),
(2) Uninstall the the plugin, completely deleting it from your server
(3) Update your tables using PHP Admin,
(4) Uninstall your sitemap and deactivate whatever plugin you have for a sitemap, again, deleting it from you server (if you have one)
(5) do a fresh install of wp-ecommerce, BUT DON’T ACTIVATE YET!
(6) Re-Install your favorite Sitemap builder, BUT DON’T ACTIVATE YET!
(7) ACTIVATE permalinks and use %postname%, NOT, %category% or some other combination.
(8) ACTIVATE WP-Ecommerce, create the required pages WITH THE PAGE NAMES you want to keep.
(9) ACTIVATE your sitemap builder and submit it to GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS and YAHOO SITE EXPLORER (Microsoft’s webmaster portal was broken when I wrote this, but do the same if its working again). Your sitemap builder plugin probably does it automatically.
(10) Finally, ACTIVATE the All-in-SEO plugin and enjoy the improved SEO for product listings.
(11) Don’t forget to burn your product RSS feed using something like Google’s Feedburner. You’ll need that to be updated after going through this.
All-in-One SEO Plugin with other SEO Plugin
Like all “all in one” wordpress plugin solutions, you’ll find it pretty basic, never complete and overlapping functions with other plugin solutions, in some cases causing messy code on index pages, posts etc.
For example, the also good, Ultimate Noindex plugin by Jonathan Kemp, the ROBOTS META plugin by Joost De Valk, HEADSPACE 2 plugin (one of the best out there), and GREG’S HIGH PERFORMANCE SEO, allow users to NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW things like category, author and tag pages, and/or add META DATA like page titles, descriptions, keywords and/or submit sitemaps to search engines.
These various combination overlaps can cause problems depending on the order plugins are installed and other things like selecting to NOFOLLOW tag archives in the ALL-IN-ONE SEO plugin, then selecting to FOLLOW tag archives in another because you forgot your settings, can confuse search engines, and worse, cause problems with wordpress and cause your SEO to work against you.
One way to avoid this is to only select only the features you want from plugins and leave the other fields blank, but that can cause messy code, and too many queries on your wordpress installation.
Another solution, if you know how to code, is to scrap the unwanted overlapping features on the plugins, but that might make updating a nightmare, unless your doing the updates yourself.
An even better solution is to either find more directed plugins that don’t offer so many features, like ASK APACHE for submitting sitemaps to Google and Yahoo. Many SEO experts have already published great articles on plugin combinations that you can follow.
You certainly don’t need Headspace 2 if your running the All-in-One plugin, because ALT inputs, titles and description meta is all taken care of. But Headspace 2 does a little more if you have it running.
A wordpress expert like Joost De Valk (who ranks first for the keyword “wordpress seo” will give you great tips and plugins for wordpress, he has an awesome tutorial that incorporates his custom plugins that can get your wordpress site up to snuff and kicking butt for SEO, but I’ve seen sites where the user has implemented Joost De Valk’s tips, and then added more plugins that really just mess the site up.
The great thing about wordpress as a blog or wp as a CMS is the massive community that exists to answer questions. If your thinking of this plugin, and you are going to be using other plugins for your SEO solution, I recommend you look at overlapping fields, and try to keep your uses of SEO Plugins as minimal as possible to keep your site running smoothly.
The All-In-One plugin is very good, recommended, but it’s uses should be considered, especially when more advanced SEO savvy options and plugins are going to be employed.
If you are in Toronto or the GTA, and are looking for some help with your Wordpress SEO, or wp-ecommerce setup don’t hesitate to contact me for help. If it’s simple I’ll just link you to a good answer, or you can always hire me to a look at your site and fix the problem for you.
SEO with fries = Search Engine Optimization Services | Wordpress Expert Services | Viral Marketing and Digital Content Distribution | Social Media Management | Web 2.0 Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Film & Video Production | Video Post Production | Blogging + Blog Creation |
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