Hello friends. Without undue modesty, I can say that the updated SEO plugin for wordpress All in One Seo Pack is the most necessary and useful among all other plugins. It allows you to optimize every nook and cranny of a website made on WordPress (especially in the latest versions). In addition to eliminating problems with canonical URLs, mega-useful features have been added.

Without competent internal website optimization, there is practically no chance of getting to high places in search results for good queries. Therefore, the first thing we need to do is prepare high-quality content, and the second step is to optimize the page on which this content is posted.

What is on-page optimization

Internal website optimization includes many elements and each of them is of considerable importance. Don't think that installing a plugin will solve all your problems. All in One Seo Pack will only handle the part that depends on it.

On-page optimization consists of the following elements:

1. The visible part is for people. This is the content and its design. This includes all the design, including unique pictures, subheadings, paragraph breakdown, etc. Here I wrote in detail about.
2. Service data – for search engines. Using htaccess and robots.txt files, Yandex and Google decide which sections should be included in the search and which should not. Using title, description and keywords metadata, the subject of the site as a whole and its individual articles is determined. The All in one SEO pack plugin is responsible for this invisible part.
3. Internal linking of pages to each other allows you to tell search engines which pages, for which queries, are of greater importance and, accordingly, should be higher in the results. Other plugins, in particular WordPress Related Posts, help with internal linking.

I will write separately about how to properly do internal linking.

Features of the SEO Tools plugin

As I said above, this plugin allows you to optimize everything that the average user cannot see, but which is extremely important for proper indexing and ranking of the resource.

All in One Seo Pack is constantly evolving, adding new features for WordPress SEO optimization, some of which only appeared in the latest versions. Currently the plugin can do the following:

1. Allows you to fill in title, description, keywords meta tags for the main page and individual posts. This gives search engines unambiguous information about the site’s niche and the compliance of each individual page with a specific key request.
2. Sets canonical addresses. During its operation, WordPress is capable of creating many pages that are identical to each other. For example, with a large number of comments, comment pages 1, 2, etc. appear, the main content for them is the same. The plugin adds a special tag that tells robots which URL to consider as the main one and show in search results.
3. Allows you to close certain sections, such as archives and categories, from indexing, which saves the resource from unnecessary duplicates. You can block a specific page from indexing.
4. Automatically generates a sitemap with sitemape.xml. Previously, I did this using the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, but since this function appeared in the All in one Seo Pack, the need for it has disappeared.
5. Allows you to create or edit an existing Robots.txt file directly from the WordPress admin panel, without logging into the hosting.
6. The .htaccess file is edited in the same way.

As you can see, some features simply make work easier, while some functions cannot be replaced.

Installing the All in One SEO Pack plugin

This SEO plugin for WordPress is very popular and is located in the common database of all add-ons for this engine, which makes its installation very simple. There is no need to download it to your computer and then upload it to your hosting, just log into the wordpress control panel and find “all in one seo pack” through the search for plugins.

I showed how to install plugins.

Find, install, activate, that’s all - you can get to work.

How to set up an SEO plugin for WordPress

There are several elements to the setup and I will be showing each of these elements individually.

1. General settings

After installing the All in One Seo Pack plugin, a “SEO tools” tab with a shield icon appears in the blog menu. You can click directly on this bookmark, or select “Basic” from the drop-down list that pops up when you hover over it.

Several sections will open, let's look at them separately.

Block "Basic"

Here, check the “canonical URLs” box so that search engines are informed about which link is the main one (the canonical tag will be added). Also check the box that prohibits pagination for canonical URLs. If it is not there, then for multi-page pages (sorry for the tautology) several canonical links will be created.

And one more thing, schema.org micro markup does not work correctly here (thanks to commentator Egor for the tip). It's better to turn it off and do everything manually.

I left the rest as default without changing anything.

By the way, before each item there is an icon with a question mark; when you click on it, a hint opens. The current version is in English, but you can use a translator to understand it.

Block “Setting up the main page”

Here you write the title of the main page (title), its description (description) and keywords (keywords).

If a static page will be used as the main page on your blog, then you will need to enable the use of its metadata (title, description and keywords) in the “Use static front page instead” item.

Block “Key Settings”

By default, the use of keys is enabled and the “translate labels into keys” checkbox is checked. There is no need to change anything.

If you wish, you can add automatic translation of category names to the keys, as well as automatic key generation. I didn’t do this, since it’s better to do optimization by hand - it’s more effective.

Block “Header Settings”

The “Enable” checkbox allows you to use a title tag that differs in content from the title written for people. If you disable it, the title will always match the title of the article.

Also in this section it is worth checking the boxes in front of the items about headings with capitalization, so that the plugin will automatically change the lowercase letter to a capital one, if you suddenly did not do this when writing.

Each type of page has its own individual title structure.

You can change the English text to Russian in “Format for page 404” and “Format for navigation”, since “Nothing found for...” looks better than “Nothing found for...”.

Block “Settings for custom post types”

This section sets the types of records for which individual writing of metadata will be possible.

We turn on “SEO for custom post types”, and in the next paragraph check the boxes next to posts and pages (media files are not needed). I didn't include additional options.

“Appearance Settings” block

In the “Show SEO settings for post types” item, select the same “Posts” and “Pages”.

The next two items enable or disable the display of links to SEO tools at the top of the admin panel on the left and in the top menu - all for quick access.

Block “Settings for webmaster”

This block serves to confirm ownership of your site when adding it to webmaster tools from Google, etc.

My blog was added there a long time ago and I confirmed my rights by entering data directly into the site template, so there was no need for this section. If you have not yet been added to these services, the corresponding field will help you confirm your rights.

Block “Google Services Settings”

This part is responsible for merging your site with Google+ and Google Analytics accounts.

I connected analytics using the Google Analyticator plugin, therefore, this function was not relevant for me here, and I did not check its operation, perhaps I will try to use it in the future.

To merge with Google+, you need social. network, enter the address of your website, and in this field add a link to your Google+ page. Previously, such a link would show a profile photo in Google Plus next to the site in the search results, but now it doesn’t work, so it’s not particularly useful.

Block “Indexing settings”

Here we close certain sections of the site from indexing, protecting it from the appearance of duplicates. You must check the box next to the excluded sections, after which they will be enclosed in a tag .

Whether or not to close the sections is up to you, I left them on my blog, but I chose the next 5 points. As a result, my daily archives, author archives, tag archives, search results pages, and 404 error pages are not indexed.

Also, to avoid accidental appearance of duplicates, you can noindex and nofollow pages with pagination.

This is not necessary, keep in mind that if you have categories open for indexing, then when you mark 3 and 4 points from the end, only the main pages of the categories will remain open, and the second and subsequent pages in the category, like this one, will no longer be indexed.

Block "Additional settings"

I left it unchanged - nothing was selected or specified in it.

After you fill out all the fields described in this paragraph, you must click the “Update settings” button at the bottom so that the changes are saved.

2. Setting up pages and posts

The All in one Seo pack plugin allows you to provide each page of the site with its own settings. We can optimize both new and existing posts.

For both, the data entry form is located at the bottom of the editor (you need to open the page for editing).

By analogy with the main settings, this form has 3 fields for metadata (title, description, keywords) - they should always be filled out.

The next field allows you to manually change the canonical address of a specific entry if you are not satisfied with the automatic one.

• Close the page from indexing – check noindex
• Add nofollow to all links in the article
• Noodp and Noydir I don’t know why
• Exclude this page from the sitemap
• Disable SEO for this page

In normal mode, all of the above boxes should be cleared.

3. Sitemap sitemap.xml using All in One Seo Pack

If you previously used another plugin that performs the same function, disable it so that there is no conflict.

By the way, the sitemap created by the All in one Seo pack plugin does not contain links to other sites, as was the case with Google XML Sitemaps.

To create a kite map using All in one Seo pack, you need to connect an additional module, which is inactive by default. Modules are connected in the plugin section of the same name.

Click the “Activate” button in the site map module, after which an XML site map link will appear in the drop-down list of the plugin menu. At the top of this page there will be an "Update Sitemap" button, but before you click that, scroll down and make some settings.

Check the “Notify Google” box - this function will notify the search engine about information updates and, possibly, allow.

From the types of records placed in the map, exclude “Media/Attachments” - you don’t need to index links to pictures.

In taxonomies, leave only those sections that are allowed to be indexed by search engines. In my case, these are categories.

Use a dynamic map to automatically include all new articles. In this case, the map will be generated every time a request is made to it - this guarantees the relevance of the data.

Block "Additional pages"

This block allows you to add those URLs that are not generated by WordPress. For example, on my blog there are landing pages created in an html editor, and the plugin itself cannot find them, and therefore cannot place them in the map.

Block "Excluded objects"

You can exclude individual pages and entire sections of the site from the map. To do this, check the boxes or enter addresses separated by commas.

Blocks "Priority" and "Frequency"

Priority sets the importance level for different categories of pages. In reality it has little effect. I set 1 (maximum) for main, 0.8 for taxonomies, 0.5 for posts.

Frequency indicates the frequency with which the corresponding pages are updated. For search engines, this information is only advisory, and they will still come to the site according to their schedule.

Indicate the approximate frequency with which your site data is updated.

Click on the “Update sitemap” button and it will be created. You can see what it looks like by following this link http://yoursite.ru/sitemap.xml

4. Editing Robots.txt and htaccess files

Working with these files is also an additional function of the All in One Seo Pack plugin and needs to be enabled - it is called “File Editor”.

After connecting, a bookmark of the same name will appear, and clicking on it will open the files we need for editing.

At the top there are two tabs – robots.txt and htaccess, each opening its own element. Read here what it should be like according to search engine recommendations, and I’ll write an article about htaccess later.

All changes are made as in a regular notepad - in text mode. After making amendments, everything is saved with a button under the editor.

If the Robots file did not exist on your resource before, then you need to create it using another module, it is called Robots.txt. Activate the module

create a file

and then edit it through the File Editor.

Now there is no need to log into your hosting; you can edit everything you need directly from the admin panel.

Today's lesson is over. If you have any questions, the comment form will help you, I will try to answer everything.

This article is about how to set up All in one seo pack correctly plugin for WordPress. This will allow you to influence the presentation of the site in searches and get more visitors to the site.

Installing the plugin

The Russian version of the All in one SEO plugin is installed directly from the WordPress console, in the “Plugins” menu. If the basic functionality is not enough for you, you can buy the official premium version. You can get into the top 10 search without it.

After installing the plugin, go to the “Modules” page and enable all the necessary ones. I recommend installing everything, and then disassembling and turning off those that are not needed.

Basic plugin settings

On the general settings panel, enable all functions. If you are not familiar with canonical URLs (canonical meta tag), I recommend that you look into it.

Schema.org's micro-markup helps search engine crawlers interpret the information on your pages, which they'll be grateful for. We have a separate article about micro markup.

Setting up custom post types

Here we select the post types for which the plugin settings will be shown. Since we will leave only Pages and Posts in the index, we will hide them for other types.

In “Google Settings” we add a link to the author’s profile (yours or a brand’s profile) in Google+. We also add the ID of the analytics counter, if you have one. We have a separate article about how to create and add an Analytics counter to a website.

Site page indexing settings

We allow Posts and Pages for indexing by search engines. When promoting an online store, you also include product categories and the Products themselves. The general principle: everything you mark will end up in search results - weak pages have nothing to do there.

In the advanced settings, select “Attachment redirection”. This way we will remove unnecessary pages of media files from the search results and increase the relevance of landing pages.

Meta Description Templates

We remove %blog-title% at the end, otherwise the site name separated by a hyphen will be added to all your Titles. If the title contains two or more words, the uniqueness and relevance of the pages will suffer.

If your site name is one word or domain, the template can be left unchanged.

Titles and meta descriptions of individual pages

Now let's move on to editing pages or posts. An additional module “All in One SEO Pack” has appeared at the bottom of the page. All Posts and Pages can be given their own Title and description. And at the same time see how the page will look in search engines:

The plugin will tell you the optimal length of the Title and meta description.

"Home page"

WordPress allows you to set one of the existing pages (pages) as the main page, or use the blog feed. In the first case, we set the Title and description in the editor of the page itself. To set metadata for a blog section, fill out the “Home Page Settings” block.

XML sitemap All in One SEO pack

You can configure sitemap.xml through the “Site Map” module. We mark the types of records we need. As I wrote earlier, we do not include media files. I also recommend excluding images. When taxonomy pages do not contain useful content, they should be disabled.

Robots.txt and .htaccess file editor

Through the “File Editor” module, you can make edits to robots and htaccess directly from the WordPress console. What’s extremely convenient is that you don’t need access to FTP or the hosting control panel.

Editing robots.txt and .htaccess from WordPress.

WooCommerce and All in One SEO Pack

WooCommerce Products (as well as their categories) are types of Posts. Their behavior is customizable in the same way as regular pages. Title and description are indicated directly on product pages. If you have a lot of products in your store, meta data templates will help a lot.

Instead of a conclusion

Setting up the All in One SEO Pack plugin

Greetings, dear readers! This article will talk about the most important and most popular WordPress plugin called All in One Seo Pack. If you came to this article from a search engine, then you probably already know what kind of beast this is and therefore you can click and go directly to setting up the All in One Seo Pack plugin. And just in case, I’ll tell you in more detail, for those who don’t know what this miracle plugin is for, what to do with it, and just for the general scope of the article :-).

P.S. The volume of the article is very large. I would like to ask you to immediately take setting up this plugin seriously. Do it once and forget it.

All in One Seo Pack plugin and what is it for?

I, like many webmasters who have WordPress sites, believe that too many plugins is bad. However, All in One Seo Pack is the very plugin that should be in the arsenal of every webmaster. Maybe, of course, not this particular plugin, perhaps its analogues, such as Platinum Seo Pack and WordPress SEO.

What functions does this miracle supplement perform? The most important thing for which this plugin is intended is to compile and write code with internal optimization meta tags: title, description, keywords.

This code is not displayed on the site in any way and is created only for search engines. With the help of meta tags, your pages are ranked better by search engines, it is easier for them to understand what is being said on this page, and also, using these meta tags, search engines can form a snippet in their results. Please pay your attention to the word “can”. This means that it is not necessary that when you write a description, search engines will take this particular text into the description. But title is used constantly by search engines.

If you are a novice webmaster and don’t understand anything, don’t be alarmed. Next, I will explain everything to you in detail step by step with photos. Now I put myself in your place, my head is spinning. It's only the beginning:-). What I wrote above is not all the capabilities of this plugin; later, when setting it up, you will see for yourself and understand everything that it is capable of. As they say, it’s better to do it once than to hear it a hundred times. Go!

How to properly configure the All in One SEO Pack plugin?

And so, first of all, you will, of course, need to install this plugin. You can easily find the latest version in your wordpress console. You can find out how to find and install plugins. After you have installed and activated it, the name of the plugin will appear in the menu on the left side, where there are various settings for it.

To begin, go to the “General Settings” tab. These are the main settings of All in One Seo Pack.

And oh horror, everything is in English. I don't know about you, but for me this was a problem. Let's look at everything point by point. At the time you read this article, you may already have a different version of the plugin and some new items may appear, while others, on the contrary, will disappear. So if you have something extra, leave these settings as default.

basic settings

1. I enjoy this plugin and have made a donation - “Thank you for the plugin, I made a donation”

Here, it seems to me, there is no need to explain anything. The plugin is free and we, if desired, can make donations and, by checking the box, inform the creators about it.

1. Canonical URLs - “Canonical URLs”

This setting adds the rel="cononical" tag to the page. Thanks to it, search engines remove pages with the same content and duplicate pages from searches. This item should be checked.

1. No Pagination for Canonical URLs – “Prohibit pagination for canonical URLs”»

This setting will block the indexing of pages with numbers, which again will save the site from duplication. But to be honest, I didn’t check the box on one site, I checked it on another. So see for yourself.

1. Enable Custom Canonical URLs – “Enable custom canonical URLs”»

I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand what this function is, it’s disabled by default. Let's leave it that way.

1. Set Protocol For Canonical URLs – “Set the protocol for canonical URLs”

Install on "Auto". I won’t explain to you what protocols are, it’s very long.

1. Use Original Title – “Use default title”

Since headings need to be written independently, with feeling, sense and arrangement, we disable this function "Disabled"

1. Use Schema.org Markup – “Using Schema.org markup”

If you ordered markup or you had it right away in the template, then you do not need to check the box, but if you don’t have markup, then check the box, and if you don’t even know what markup is and what it is needed for, then it’s better Do not check the box to avoid mistakes.

1. Log important events – “Event log”

Well, it’s already clear what this function does. However, we don’t need the extra load from the plugin, and this magazine will be difficult for the uninitiated to read. We don't tick the box.

Home page settings

This point relates to the semantic core of your site. How to compose it and work with it you

1. Home Title – “Home page title”

The main page is also the main one in Africa. Write the name of your site here and most importantly make sure that it does not exceed more than 60 characters.

1. Home Description – “Description of the main page”

Write here a short description of your site, a couple of sentences about what your site is about, using the main keywords in them. Also try not to exceed the 160 character limit. As you can see in the picture above, I exceeded it by 6 characters, but this is not critical.

1. Home Keywords (comma separated) – “Site Keywords”

This meta tag is going into the sunset. I think that there are a couple of other search engines that take into account the Keywords tag, but Google and Yandex have already forgotten this, like a bad dream. And we are advanced webmasters and therefore we will focus only on the giants of the search industry, and we are not interested in others.

1. Use Static Front Page Instead

If you are using the main page as a stats page, then go to the left "Enabled" if the main one is in the form of a news feed, as is often the case on blogs, then you should go to the right "Disabled"

Setting up keys

I already talked about keys above. It's better not to use them at all. But there are still the old guard and adherents of the old canons who use them. If you are one of these conservatives, then simply check the boxes as shown in the picture below. You just need to enable the use of keys "Enabled" or disable "Disabled".

Header Settings

At this point, format the headers of all your pages. There are sections and pages and posts and the main page and what not. I won’t go into depth, I’ll show you a simple example. If my category “Canning” appears in search results, it will look like this.

And if there is a page with an article in the search results, the title will look like this.

In the first case, with a category in the header there is the name of the category and through the horizontal stick there is the name of my site, and in the second version with an article there is simply the name of the article. Now let's see what we have in the plugin settings.

Well, I think you get the point. But if you don’t want to bother, then do everything as in the picture and live in peace.

I would like to draw your attention to the last two points “404 Title Format” and “Paged Format”. There, from the default settings, you can and should translate into Russian.

Setting up custom post types

In this paragraph, we indicate where additional fields should be displayed to fill in the title, description and keywords. This means that when you create an article or page, there will be fields under the text editor that you and I will fill out in the future.

1. SEO for Custom Post Types – “SEO for custom post types”

Turn on " Enabled»

1. SEO on only these post types – “SEO only for these post types”

Here we choose what we will optimize: posts and pages. Media files, I think, should not be specified. There is already plenty of work on the site, but optimizing every single image is not worth the effort.

1. Enable Advanced Options – “Enable additional options”

Disable "Disabled"

Customizing the appearance

There’s not even anything to talk about here, so we put everything as shown in the picture. These points mean where to display the link to the settings of the All in One Seo Pack plugin. Just where we are now making settings

Settings for webmasters

When you have registered or will still register your site in the webmaster panel of search engines, then to confirm the rights to the site you are required to insert a code into your site. This can be done in different ways. And now the creators of the All in One Seo Pack plugin provide us with this opportunity to do this using their plugin. But since I did this a long time ago, these fields are all empty.

Google services settings

In this section we can use various Google services.

Here, in fact, you only need to configure two lines, the first and the last.

1. Google Plus Default Profile – “Profile on the Google+ network”

In this line you need to insert a link to your Google+ profile. This action will help improve the appearance of the snippet in Google. You've probably seen how the author's photo appears in Google results near some sites. If you insert a link to your profile, then your photo will appear, which accordingly increases the click-through rate. Although, as I heard, Google has now decided to stop adding photos to the snippet.

1. Google Analytics ID – “Google statistics ID”

This is a setting for those who decide to use Google Analytics.

Indexing settings (noindex)

From the name it is clear what needs to be configured here. I won't tell you everything in detail. There should be only five checkmarks as in the picture below.

BUT! I would like to draw your attention to two points “Use noindex for Categories” and “Use noindex for Tag Archives”. With these checkboxes, we prohibit indexing of category pages and tag pages. Here, of course, it’s up to you to decide for yourself, but personally, on one of my websites dedicated to cooking, I decided to remove these checkboxes. Due to the fact that I have a description for each category in the form of text on the page, and my tag pages look like full-fledged pages in the form of a gallery, I felt sorry for them not to be indexed by search engines.

Additional settings

Here we leave everything empty. This section is not worth paying attention to at all. Mostly pointless functions.

Well, at the very end of our long journey, don’t forget to click on the “Update Options” button, which means updating the settings.

Using the All in One SEO Pack plugin

Now, when you write a new article or if you already have articles and you need to optimize it, a new block will appear under the text editor.

Here we only need two fields: “Title” and “Description”. How to fill them out correctly is a completely different story.

In custody

This completes the main settings of the All in One Seo Pack plugin. But this plugin also has additional modules, which you can read about in the next article. If you don’t understand something or have any questions, write them in the comments. Also don't forget to subscribe to blog updates. Thanks everyone, bye everyone!

Hello friends.

In this article, we will analyze the All in one seo pack plugin (SEO tools) for search engine optimization of a blog, and also configure it correctly.

This plugin is constantly updated, developers add new settings and new functions. Therefore, it is often necessary to update information about this plugin, which is what I am doing now.

At the moment, information about all settings is more relevant than ever. In addition, from the article you will learn how this plugin can harm the development of your blog. The article is long, since setting up All in one seo pack is not the easiest procedure for a beginner. The information is worth exploring.

As can be seen from the content, the material turned out to be very extensive. I hope it answers all your questions. If any ambiguities remain, I’m always happy to see you in the comments. I will answer all questions and make new materials. Now let's start mastering the plugin.

Important point. There began to be an opinion that there was a bug in the plugin. This or that, I wrote at the very end of the article. I strongly recommend that you read this material.

You can download the current version of the plugin by clicking on the button below.

On the official website, click on the orange button to download the plugin archive to your computer.

After downloading the plugin, install it. Perform the installation in any way convenient for you (I wrote about the methods).

Now let's look at the importance of this addition to the WordPress engine.

Why do you need the All in one SEO pack plugin?

WordPress in its pure form does not have the ability to add meta tags to articles (title - title, description - description, keywords - keywords). If we look at the editor of any post or page without using such SEO plugins, then there is nothing there except entering the standard title and content of the post.

We are not very happy with this option, because we need to let search engines understand what our material is about. In this case, the meta tags mentioned earlier solve this problem.

After installing the All in one seo pack plugin or similar ones, a new plugin block appears in the editor, which allows you to enter data for articles.

This is what a complete plugin block looks like, which is added to the editor after it is installed.

In the image, I have highlighted areas for entering a title and description. There should also be a field for entering keywords. But since I don't use them, I turned them off.

An interesting setting in this block is the “Custom canonical URL” field, in which we can enter the main address for the page, if necessary. Thus, indicate to search engines which address for this page will be the main one and it is this that needs to be indexed, and all other addresses at which this page is available do not need to be planed.

I thought for a long time about where to find a use for this function and here it is. It happens that you want to place an article in 2 categories at once, after which it will be available at 2 addresses and this is an obvious duplication of content within the site. To prevent this from happening, we indicate in this field the address of the article of only one category, and then the second address should not be included in the index, which will protect against duplicate pages.

But it would still be better if the article was included in only one category, so as not to create unnecessary headaches for search engines when indexing the site.

In addition, the plugin has very important parameters for setting up proper indexing of a WordPress site. There are also settings for integrating popular and necessary services with the site.

We begin to talk in more detail about all the settings below.

Step by step setting up All in one seo pack

After installing the plugin, a new item called “SEO Tools” appears in the WordPress admin panel. Let's go to the main plugin settings.

We will be taken to a page with all the settings. Let's go through each block of settings.

First I will list all the settings, and then give an image of how everything is done for me.

basic settings

• Thanks for the plugin, I made a donation - we don’t put a checkbox. But you can actually donate some amount for the development of the plugin;
• Canonical URLs - we must enable this setting. It adds a tag to the created pages rel="canonical", which shows search engines that this particular page is the main one and only it should be taken into the index, and other pages should not be taken into account. This item prevents the appearance of duplicate content;

• No Pagination for Canonical URLs - this setting disables pagination of pages with the tag rel="canonical". It is better to enable the setting. To understand this parameter in more detail, I recommend that you read the last paragraph of the article and study the entire instructions for this plugin from A to Z;

Pagination is the division of information into pages. On blogs, this phenomenon is clearly expressed in the form of page navigation.

• We display the default title - select “Disable”, since we will write our own titles;
• Enable Custom Canonical URLs - as written in the description for this setting, if you enable it, a field will be added for assigning the main address (adding the canonical attribute) to posts. A similar field is available in the plugin block, which is added to the post and page editor. Since this field is available in the editor even if this setting is disabled, it appears that this parameter is responsible for enabling this function in custom post types (media files and other pages that can be added by third-party plugins, such as WPpage);
• Set Protocol For Canonical URLs - select the protocol for pages with the Canonical attribute, that is, for the main page addresses. I chose the HTTPS protocol option. I recommend that you set the "Auto" parameter, since for the https option to work, you need to install the appropriate certificate for the domain. We will consider how to do this later;
• Use Schema.org Markup - adds page markup and structures the data on it. This setting can be enabled, but conflicts may arise if your site already has built-in markup from Schema.org. I have markup, so I don’t enable this setting;
• Keep an event log - if we want to monitor the operation of the plugin, we can enable this setting. Then the entire process of the plugin will be recorded in a separate file all_in_one_seo_pack.log.

Home page settings

At this point, we just need to write down the title, description and keywords that describe the site.

• Home page title - write the name of the site. I wrote this: "Personal blog of Konstantin Khmelev about creating websites (blogs), setting them up and promoting them on the Internet";
• Description of the main page - write a short description of the site. Write what your site is about or what a visitor will find on it. Here's my option: "On this blog you will find a lot of useful information about creating, setting up and promoting websites (blogs) on the Internet";
• Keywords of the main page - I did not fill out this line, so for frequent use of keys you can get sanctions from search engines;

And it has long been said that this meta tag (keywords) is no longer taken into account by search engines. I prefer to let search engines make their own choice and figure out the whole situation. In addition, everything will be natural and you won’t have to correct the situation later if any problems arise or fall under filters.

Key settings

This setting is responsible for keywords for posts and pages.

I wrote above that I don’t use keywords. I made this decision for several reasons:

1. For illiterate use of key phrases, you can be subject to sanctions from search engines, since this can be taken into account as manipulation on the part of the site owner;
2. You need to let search engines figure out the whole situation themselves. To do this, search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, which are becoming smarter and will only leave SDL (sites for people) in high positions;
3. Well, as I mentioned above, there is an opinion that keywords have not been taken into account by search engines for a long time, and sometimes their use worsens the situation when promoting a resource.

Therefore, I disabled the ability to enter keywords.

After disabling this function, in the reactor for adding pages and posts, the field for adding keywords will not be present.

Setting up headers

This item configures the display of headers:

• records;
• pages;
• rubrics;
• archives;
• marks;
• 404 pages;
• search pages.

All settings will not be touched. And here's what needs to be done.

• Rewrite headers - enable;
• Headings with capital letters - check the box;
• Headings of sections with capital letters - check the box;
• Format for pages - you need to remove the part of the code that displays the blog name. This information in the title is completely unnecessary and does not carry any semantic meaning. You need to remove the part of the code that comes after the vertical bar (%blog_title%). We also remove the line;
• The format for posts is similar to the format for pages.

You can also touch the title for the 404 page. Replace the English phrase "Nothing found for" into Russian "No results found for".

Similarly, change the word in the “Format for navigation” item "Part" on word "Part".

See the screenshot below for more details.

Settings for custom post types

If you use any content formats on your blog other than regular posts and pages, then you can enable this setting. These could be subscription pages from the WPPage plugin, as an option. Then you can write meta data for such pages (subscription, selling).

I don't use anything like that. Therefore, the setting for custom post types is disabled.

Appearance Settings

In this block we configure where fields for entering title, description and keywords will be displayed. By default, they are displayed in the post and page editor. I believe that this is how it should be, so we leave the settings in the “Show SEO settings for post types” item.

• The first item is responsible for displaying the "SEO Tools" menu in the top admin bar on each blog page;

• The second item is responsible for displaying the “SEO Tools” item at the top of the WordPress admin panel. If enabled, this item will be displayed at the top, if disabled - at the bottom;

Here, of course, we choose what you like. I prefer the option below.

Webmaster Settings

When adding your site to the Google and Yandex webmaster panel, you must confirm site ownership rights. This is usually done by uploading a special file to the root of the site or adding a special tag to all pages of the site.

All these procedures require technical skills.

This point greatly simplifies the confirmation of rights to own the site. You just need to enter a special verification code in the appropriate fields, after which your rights will be confirmed.

The only thing I really don’t like is the lack of the ability to confirm rights for Yandex. Let's hope that this defect will be corrected soon.

Google services settings

Also a very useful point. But, perhaps, one of the most difficult in this plugin. Requires some knowledge of Google search engine services.

Despite this, it simplifies the work and saves us from the same work as in the previous paragraph “Settings for webmasters”. Now there is no need to include links to your profile on the Google+ social network in the template files, which is necessary to confirm authorship in the Google search engine.

It is also possible to connect the site with the Google Analytics statistics tracking system. Now you don't need to place code in site files.

Below I give a screenshot of my settings.

I will return to this point soon when I write a detailed article on the Google Analytics statistics tracking service. I recommend not to miss this material.

Indexing settings (noindex)

There are a lot of pages on WordPress sites that create duplicate content. Such pages need to be hidden from indexing and this item helps with this perfectly.

I will not describe these settings in detail. Let me just say that the last 2 settings should not be active. See the image below.

Recently I disabled the "Use nofollow for paginated pages/posts." setting. This was done so that on pagination pages, search engine robots could go to the articles themselves. In this way, we make it easier for PS robots to access content. In addition, I analyzed popular resources, these settings are not used anywhere on pagination pages. From this I drew the following conclusions.

Additional settings

At this point, the only thing you need to pay attention to is generated description.

We write all the data for our materials manually. Therefore, this setting should be disabled.

This completes the All in one seo pack plugin settings.

After all the changes made, be sure to save the settings by clicking on the “Update settings” button.

If something is not clear to you from the text version of the article up to this point, then I provide you with my video tutorial on setting up this plugin. But there may be some differences between the text version and the video. In the text I described and showed everything in more detail and clearly. Watch the video below.

After making the settings that apply to the entire site, I’ll say a few words about the settings of the “SEO Tools” block that appears in the post and page editor after installing the plugin.

Setting up the "SEO Tools" block in the editor

I showed what this block looks like at the very beginning of the article. But, just in case, I’ll show it here too.

Let's go through each setting briefly.

• Preview - at this point we can view the type of snippet that is generated depending on the data entered in the “Title” and “Description” fields. In the search results, the snippet may differ, since search engines can select any most suitable piece of text for the most accurate description of the article (page);
• Post title - enter the title of the post, which will be displayed in search engine results, as well as in the browser tab;
• Post description - displayed only for search engines. Should be displayed in the snippet, but not always (see above);
• Keywords - this field is not visible in the screenshot above, since I disabled it. But by default it is present and it is necessary to enter the keywords (phrases) by which the page is promoted. The plugin says that it is necessary to write it separated by commas, but the option “separated by a space” also works;
• Custom Canonical URL - if you need to specify the main address of the page being created (if it differs from the one being created), then enter it in this field. At the beginning of the material, I already wrote why this is necessary. Alternatively, it may be useful in a situation where the article falls into 2 categories. Then it is imperative to indicate the main address of an article from one category so that the second address does not end up in the index and duplicate content does not appear at different addresses;
• Add the NOINDEX argument - if the page has external links, you can enable this setting and they will all be closed with the noindex tag. Thus, we will block links from indexing;
• Add the NOFOLLOW argument - signals search engine robots not to follow external links;
• Robots Meta NOODP - enable the option so that search engines do not use page descriptions from the Open Directory Project (This is an open directory of sites, also known as dmoz);
• Robots Meta NOYDIR - the same as the previous one only for the Yahoo! dir;
• Disable SEO - activate this checkbox so that all settings from the "SEO Tools" block for this post are disabled.

Important note: the settings for adding the noindex and nofollow arguments do not completely prevent links from being indexed. Even with these settings, links are harmful to your site. Therefore, it is necessary to close links in other ways. This will be discussed in one of the next blog articles. Wait!

At this point, I have completely completed the process of setting up and describing the plugin, with the exception of the additional modules that it contains. These modules can also be useful for beginners.

I don't use them, but they are still quite interesting, since they allow you to do some functions without directly interfering with the site files on the hosting. Everything can be done through these modules.

In the near future I will definitely add all the necessary information in detail.

I saved the sweetest for last. As promised, I will briefly describe the hole in this plugin that can harm your blog.

There's a bug in the plugin, true or not?

I decided to supplement this article with my observations and thoughts about a bug that allegedly appeared in the plugin after the release of version 2.0.

It wasn't me who discovered the "jamb". I am only now expressing my opinion and my practical observations. Alexander Borisov started all this. Here is his article about this “jamb”.

It concerns the not entirely correct operation of the previously discussed rel="canonical" tag.

This tag in new versions of the plugin does not fully develop its function. The tag is well written on all pages of the blog, but a situation may arise when, due to incorrect operation of this tag in conjunction with incorrect configuration of the plugin, completely unnecessary pages may appear in the search engine results.

Let's figure out what's the matter. As an example, I will take this page on which you are now reading this article. Let's look at its source code (ctrl+u) and find the rel="canonical" tag. We should see a link to our article after this tag. That's what it shows.

Everything is fine here. Now let’s add an addition like “/111” or any other numbers to the link to this article. That is, at the end of the link we put “/111” and go to the same address, only with the added part in the form of a line with numbers. At the end we will remain on the same page with absolutely the same content. But look at the page address. You will see that at the end of the link there is our added part in the form of numbers.

It seemed like nothing. The rel="canonical" tag should indicate on this page that the main page is the one without numbers and that it is this one that should be taken into the index, and not this one with numbers. But let's look at the situation as it is.

We look at the source code of the page with the new address and see what our tag responsible for the canonical URLs has written. In theory, we should see the same thing as before. But in fact, we can see the following picture.

See what our tag does? It indicates that this page is the main page, despite the fact that it is not. Moreover, it shows the address of the previous page with the numbers “/110”. If somehow such a page gets into the index, then all the others with similar addresses will be picked up. And this is already a very large number of pages with duplicate content.

The plugin will add a tag to such a “non-main” page if the “No Pagination for Canonical URLs” setting is not active in the main settings.

But even if this setting is turned off, the pages themselves will not be included in the index. I write about this a little below.

If we put a checkbox next to this setting, then on each such page the plugin will always indicate the main page with the main address, which is what we need. Therefore, I will set this setting.

If we now look at the source code of the page with /111, we will see that rel="canonical" points to the main page without any numbers.

I hope this has been sorted out.

You can ask: “How can such a page (c/111, etc.) get into the index if it doesn’t actually exist, and we just added some numbers?”.

Honestly, if everything is done carefully and correctly, then such pages will not be included in the index. Such pages are essentially pagination pages, as far as I was able to find out through experimentation. If you configured the plugin as I described above, then it should add a robots meta tag to such pagination pages, which gives a strict instruction to search engines not to index the page.

The last 2 active checkboxes in the plugin’s indexing settings are responsible for this.

This tag can be seen in the source code of the page.

Therefore, if you have these 2 settings, then you can be calm. Such pages themselves will not be included in the index. This tag gives a strict ban to search engines.

Even if you don’t enable the “No Pagination for Canonical URLs” setting, nothing bad will happen. They will have the robots tag.

How else can such pages get into the index?

Here I see 2 options for events:

1. Your competitors will want to annoy you and will add your pages with such addresses to the index using the Yandex and Google URL adding tool. But here's a dubious question: “Will search engines index such a page after adding it through URL adding tools if they have a robots meta tag?”. So far I find it difficult to answer this question. But it seems to me that the PS will not index the page, since there is a strict prohibition on it in the form of a robots tag;
2. Perhaps some kind of glitch in the WordPress engine or plugin.

So is it worth worrying about this problem and is it a problem?

What did we learn earlier? It turned out that the canonical tag does not work quite correctly, if you can call it that. But it also turned out that on pages that can harm us and end up in the index in the form of duplicate content, you can put a robots meta tag, which is a strict ban on indexing for search engines.

Based on this, we can conclude that such pages are not scary for us. Unless our competitors, through URL adding tools, can help such pages get into the index. There is only one question: “Will strictly prohibiting the robots meta tag in videos play a role in this case?".

I will look for the answer to this question and tell you everything!

Now let’s answer one of the main questions in the discussion of this issue: “So should we leave the All in one seo pack plugin?”

I won't change it for now. And that's why.

Firstly, I don’t see anything dangerous in his work yet. I can't call it a joint. I can only justify this as a peculiar work of the plugin. There are such pages, but they will not be included in the index themselves (see above). Maybe I'm wrong and time will tell. Maybe someone knows something? Write in the comments.

Secondly, by enabling the “No Pagination for Canonical URLs” setting, the plugin perfectly indicates the main address of the page.

Thirdly, I just analyzed one well-visited resource (4000 visitors per day) on which the All in one seo pack plugin is installed. It works exactly the same. There are no such pages in the index. And setting up canonical addresses is completely disabled on it. And the resource is developing steadily.

Take a look at the blog ktonanovenkogo.ru. It also has All in one seo pack. A resource with good traffic and indexing is fine.

Based on these reasons, I will not remove this SEO plugin for now. But, the plugin’s rather large “stuffing” of various things I don’t need gives me reason to think about moving to another lighter analogue, which works great.

If you want to be completely on the safe side, you can install a plugin on your blog. All data for articles can be transferred from All in one seo pack with the click of one button and can also be easily configured. The next article will be about him. Wait.

These are my thoughts and practical observations about this “jamb”. What is your opinion?

And this is where I end this article. It turned out to be very extensive. I hope you have figured it out. If something is unclear, then I’m waiting for you in the comments.

By the way, write your search engine optimization plugin that you use on your website. After all, there are a sufficient number of them. I would like to know your choice.

Thank you. See you soon in other materials.

Best regards, Konstantin Khmelev.

All in one SEO pack is probably the most popular SEO plugin for Wordpress, and perhaps the oldest. According to the publishers, the All in one SEO pack plugin has been downloaded more than 30,000,000 times since 2007. I, like most WordPress users, once started SEO of my website with the All in one SEO pack. It has a huge number of different functions and settings. To be honest, there are so many of them that some begin to repeat themselves, some have no clear purpose, and some have nothing to do with SEO at all. In this article we will try to understand all these functions and settings, and for one thing we will find out whether it is really as good as it is written everywhere.

All in one SEO pack plugin settings

At the time of writing, plugin version 2.3.12 is available. You can download the plugin from wordpress.org/plugins. After installing the All in one SEO pack plugin, a section called “All in one SEO” will appear in the administrative panel menu and there are only 4 subsections in it: “Basic settings”, “Performance”, “Blocker of harmful bots” and “Manage modules”. All SEO settings are located in the "Basic Settings" subsection. "Productivity" and "Blocker of harmful bots" are already included additional extension modules. They are not directly related to SEO, but are designed to speed up site loading, which in turn should improve rankings in search results.

1. Canonical URLs: - enabled by default and this is correct, since the URL created for an article/page should be the main one, and all other duplicates (such as archives, etc.) should be secondary. If the search engine does not know which address is the main one, it will not know how to rank them and not the article, but, for example, its archived copy may appear in the search results.

2. Disable pagination for canonical URLs: - disabled by default. Strange point. The URL includes the page number into which the entire list of addresses is divided. It looks something like this: http://domennoe_imja.ru/2/nazvanie_posta.html. The two in the URL is precisely the result of pagination. In my opinion, not only does it not add to the understanding of where the final object is located, it also lengthens the URL unnecessarily. I think this point is unnecessary and useless. We disable this function, that is, check the box.

3. Enable custom canonical URLs: - also not a clear point, but maybe someone will need it. When enabled, an additional field appears in which you can enter a custom URL for a specific post.

4. Use default title: - by default the function is disabled. May need to be enabled if your theme or other active plugins on your site are preventing All in one SEO pack from updating title tag entries. According to the logic of events, the title of the article should be used in the snippet. But the All in one SEO pack plugin allows you to replace the title in the snippet with another, perhaps more attractive or relevant one. Here you will be able to navigate the situation with your set of plugins.

5. Use Schema.org markup - enabled by default. New feature designed to improve SEO for foreign search engines. May create errors in the formation of the page's html code. If your site is not aimed at a foreign audience, then it is better to disable the function to keep the code clean.

6. Keep an event log: - creates a log file of events that occur inside the All in one SEO pack when the plugin is updated. Mainly used for debugging.

7. Main page title: - This field sets the title for the main page of the site (title tag). The maximum name length selected is only 57 characters. Although, as far as I know, many search engines understand 70 characters well. The number of characters used is calculated by the plugin and displayed in the window below.

8. Description of the main page: - In this field, set the Description of the main page of the site (description tag). Like the previous field, the characters used are counted and displayed in a small window. The recommended number of description characters is no more than 160.

9. Use (instead of) a static home page - the function only works if you enable the item in the WordPress settings/reading/On the main page display/static page. When you set the checkbox to enable in this section, points 7 and 8 for the dynamic page will disappear. And when editing a Static page, you will be able to enter a title, description and keywords for a specific static page. It seems to me that the implementation of this function is somewhat complex and confusing.

The Heading Settings section initially consists of two items: “Rewrite headers” and “Capitalize tags and search headers”. But everything changes when you turn on point 10.

10. Rewrite headers: - This item is intended for setting up templates for displaying headers on the main page, other pages, posts, categories, archives, etc. together with the name of the blog, as well as setting the types of separators. If you set the value to include, then the site name specified in the template or in WordPress itself will be added to the given names of articles, posts, categories,.... In principle, the settings have already been set correctly and points 12-24 do not need to be touched, but if you want to change something, you need to know the WordPress directives well.

11. Capitalize tags and search titles: - enabled by default. Checks for the presence of capital letters in the names of tags, archives, sections,... In my opinion, a strange item, since I have not yet seen templates where the names of archives, sections,... begin with a small letter. They usually either start with a capital letter or are written entirely in capital letters.

25. SEO for Custom Post Types: - In this section you can enable or disable SEO settings for custom post types. When switched off, items 26 - 28 are not visible.

26. SEO only for these types of posts: - in this section you can set the types of posts that will be subject to SEO actions.

27. Enable advanced options: - enables or disables advanced settings.

28. Show SEO settings for custom post types: - allows you to enable user post types for which you want to display the SEO status directly in the post lists.

In paragraphs 29 - 31, your rights to the site are checked for Google, Bing, Pinterest webmasters by entering a rights verification code. To do this, you need to register in each system and receive a code. Enter the received codes each in its own field and click the "Update settings" button. After this, a message should appear in the webmaster of each system that the rights to the site have been confirmed.

Google+ account settings consist of the following items:

32. Google+ Profile: - Allows you to enter the URL of your Google+ account.

33. Disable Google+ profile: - Disables the Google+ field located in your profile in the Users section.

34. Display site links in the search window: - according to the documentation, this item should make searching for content easier for users. But to implement it, you need to install and configure a working search engine on your site. Which in general is not as simple as intended.

35. Set Preferred Site Title: - Allows you to change the site name right here. Duplicates the function available in WordPress itself in the general settings section.

"Display publisher tag on home page" - this parameter allows you to specify whether the "publisher" tag should be present on the site's home page. When enabled, the following field appears.

“Indicate Publisher URL” - the specified account URL, preferably a Google+ profile for your business, will be displayed as attributes of the “publisher” tag.

37. Google Analytics ID: - Google Analytics ID is entered here.

38. By default NOINDEX - do not show in search results.

39. By default NOFOLLOW - do not index links.

40. Default NOODP - Tells search engines like Google not to use the Open Directory Project as a source for creating titles and descriptions in search results.

41. Default NOYDIR - tells search engines such as Google not to use Yahoo! Directory as the source for creating titles and descriptions in search results.

31 - 41 are the default settings to not index posts, pages, media files and they are not marked. You can prevent any type of content from being indexed if necessary.

42. Use noindex for categories: - already enabled

43. Use noindex for date archives: - already enabled

45. Use noindex for tag archives: - must be enabled

46. ​​Use noindex for the search page: - leave as is

47. Use noindex for 404 pages: - leave as is

48. Use noindex for pages/posts with pagination: - it’s better to enable

49. Use nofollow for pages/posts with pagination: - it’s better to enable

50. Exclude the site from the Open Directory Project: - almost a repeat of point 40

51. Exclude a site from Yahoo! Directory: - repeat point 41

52. Avoid using excerpts in descriptions: - disables random passages of text in the snippet.

53. Auto-generated descriptions: - enables the generation of descriptions in a snippet from the first lines of any paragraph. Essentially this is the opposite of the previous point. When you enable it, another item appears: “Use shortcodes in auto-generated descriptions.” Which allow you to identify sections of text that most closely match the description of a given topic, and guarantee their display in the snippet.

54. Remove descriptions from pages with pagination: - if your huge article is divided into pages, then it leaves the article description only on the first page of the article, and deletes it on all the rest.

55. Never shorten long descriptions: - to make the description easier for search engines to understand, descriptions are shortened to 160 characters. Enabling this item allows you to set a description of any length, which will not be limited.

56. Unprotected META fields: - From the description it is not at all clear what this item allows you to do. But the help for this item clearly states that if you don’t understand why this is, then leave it unchecked.

57. Redirect attachments to parent post: - redirects the URL of an attachment (for example an image) to the URL of the parent post.

58. Exclude pages: - do not display pages or articles. The list is entered separated by commas. Articles and pages remain editable.

59. Add. post header: - an additional header will be displayed on all posts.

60. Add. page header: - an additional header will be displayed on all pages.

61. Add. main page title (static): - an additional title will be displayed on the first static page of the site.

62. Add. title of the main page of the blog: - essentially a repetition of paragraph 61.

Next comes the keyword settings section and it’s kind of anomalous. If you include point 63, then three more points 64 - 66 appear. Which, in my opinion, do not add to the quality of the keys, but can only be misleading.

63. Use keywords: - enables keyword support for all posts and pages on the site.

64. Use categories as keys: - silently disabled and that’s correct. Enabling this option causes the category name for an entry to be used as keywords for that entry (in addition to any keywords specified on the entry edit screen). As you understand, the name of a category or heading may differ significantly from the name of the topic of the article, which may not only not give a positive search result, but also worsen the behavioral factor for the site.

65. Use tags as keys: - this item is enabled by default. But I also don’t find it useful, just like the previous one. It allows tags for a given post to be used as keywords for that post (in addition to any keywords specified in the post edit screen). Tags are designed to make it easier to find information on a specific site where the topic and number of articles is limited. Therefore, using tags as keys to search throughout the Internet is not entirely appropriate, which again can negatively affect the behavioral factor. Needs to be turned off.

66. Dynamically generate keywords for a page with publications/archives: - allows you to display keywords on a page with publications (set in WordPress settings, in the Reading, page display section) and archive pages to dynamically generate from keywords shown on that page. If unchecked, the keywords specified in the post editing screen will be used. It should be disabled, as the result is unpredictable and not very useful.

This concludes the SEO settings of the All in one SEO pack plugin. Now it's time to see what we've added to the article editor. This SEO needs to be connected somewhere. Below the text in the editor there is a section called All in one SEO pack.

The first step is to preview the snippet. The snippet is already partially formed. It already includes your article title and URL. There is no description yet, but it will appear when you fill out the “Description” item. Here you will need to enter a clear, relevant description of your article. It won’t actually be shown in the snippet, but it will show how your article will look in search results. And this same description will go into the meta description of your article and will play a significant role in its indexing and ranking. So the description must be very thoughtful and the description must include the main search key for which the article is optimized.

The "Title" item allows you to completely change the title of the snippet, but in fact it is better not to do this. And use the title length indicator and try to add something useful to it, perhaps add a keyword or call to action and then transfer the resulting structure to the title of the article. The “Title” field itself must be filled in, since its contents will go into the title parameter. If the field is left empty, then All in one SEO pack will substitute the title of the article, which is generally correct.

If you have the "Use Keywords" item enabled in your settings, then after the description the item "

" " - ask search robots not to index this page;

" " - ask search robots not to follow links on the page;

" " - ask search engines not to use descriptions from the Open Directory Project for your site;

" " - ask Yahoo! do not use descriptions from Yahoo! catalog for your website.

Next comes the item " " - which means completely disable SEO for this page. I don’t know why this might be necessary, but there is such a point. And what’s interesting is that when you turn it on, another strange item is added "

That's all. No automation, no hints or recommendations, no assessments. There is nothing. But I want to know what is being done and why, and how well the optimization was done. There is none of this.

Performance Settings

67. Increase memory limit - this option allows you to increase the memory limit for PHP execution. I think this point is superfluous, since the WordPress core can also change the value of the memory limit. Additionally, this option may not work on some servers where memory modification is disabled.

68. Increase execution time - this option allows you to increase the execution time of PHP. May be useful if you receive a timeout error when trying to perform functions in your WordPress admin panel or site.

69. Forced rewrite: - allows you to use output buffering to write a meta title. Some themes and plugins will overwrite other meta names because they are executed after the All in one SEO pack has run.

Next comes the most amazing “System Status” section, which has nothing to do with SEO in general, but collects information in great detail about everything that is installed on your server. His window looks like this:

Definitely some useful information there. For example, the points we talked about just above. I underlined them. It is worth paying attention to the type of server and the versions of MYSQL and PHP. Well, this is so that we know what exactly we are dealing with. Maybe they need to be replaced with others or even change the hoster if he is not capable.

Next, if you scroll down the contents of the window, a list will open with active and unused but installed plugins, as well as their versions. Well, I don’t know why all this is being done if we have a plugin management section. There are their names and versions, descriptions and management, and the ability to edit files. Probably the inventors had nothing to do. So they decided to create such a masterpiece, borrowing it from another plugin.

Next module 81 "Blocker of harmful bots". For the life of me, I don’t understand what bots and their blocking have to do with SEO. Normally, this is the security of the site. Well, let's see what we have in this area.

Harmful Bot Blocker settings

70. Blocking harmful bots using HTTP - blocking requests from user agents who are known to mess with 503.

71. Block referral spam using HTTP - blocking referral spam using HTTP.

72. Track blocked bots - display records of recent requests from blocked bots. When enabled, item 75 appears, which is a log of requests from blocked bots.

73. Use your own blacklist - allows you to edit the list of prohibited user agents to block harmful bots. When turned on, item 74 appears, which already contains 137 entries. You can also add famous bots there.

74. Blacklist of user agents - directly a blacklist of bots that can be edited.

75. Logging blocked bots - a log of records of recent requests from blocked bots.

Now let's move on to the last subsection of the plugin's main menu, "Manage Modules". Our free version has 7 modules that you can enable and get additional features. In fact, these are 7 additional plugins.

The following module manages the settings for the sitemap xml sitemap.

Setting up Sitemap xml for WordPress

76. XML Site Map - allows you to create an XML site map. When you click on the “Activate” button, in the main menu of the plugin, between the second and third subsections, another one appears with the name “XML Site Map”. By clicking on it, we go to the XML Sitemap settings.

84. Sitemap status - by clicking on the inscription “view sitemap” we will get a sitemap in xml format. Which displays all posts, pages, priorities, frequencies and last updated dates.

85. File prefix - preset file name. The default is "sitemap". I don’t even understand why you need to press this parameter to change, if this is exactly what all search engines are looking for. There is no need to change anything.

86. Update on a schedule - Probably a translation error. This is not an update, but a notification to Google and Bing about changes on the site. Depending on the intensity of work carried out on the site, you can set the following values: “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly”.

87. Enable sitemap indexing - Due to incorrect translation, you might think that indexing of the map by search engines is disabled here, which you will agree is very stupid. In fact, this item allows you to create sitemap indexes, that is, additional maps, after the number of URLs in the main file reaches 50,000 or its size is 10 MB. After enabling this item, another item will appear called “Page Map Navigation”, which allows you to create new site map pages. And after turning it on, another item will appear called “Maximum number of publications on the site map”, where by default 50,000 URLs are already set. But this number can be reduced.

88. Post Types and 89. Taxonomies - These two items allow you to create a sitemap URL for each post type and category. The “All Post Types” and “All Taxonomies” items enable or disable all types at once. I would understand the need for such buttons if there were more than 20 types. But in my opinion, turning three buttons on or off is no problem.

When you enable the remaining items, addresses will be created in the site map for each type of post. And if the “Page-by-page map navigation” item is enabled, separate maps will be created with the name for “Posts” - “sitemap_post”, “Pages” - “sitemap_page”, “Media/Attachments” - “sitemap_attachment”, Categories - “sitemap_category”, “Tags” - “sitemap_post_tag”, which will include new addresses of all duplicates of all content.

It is difficult to understand the need to create additional addresses for existing articles. But this innovation is relatively well supported by Google. In any case, he does not perceive it critically. But Yandex doesn’t want to understand this. The situation is like this. For example, we create a main map where the addresses of articles look like this: “http://site_domain_name/article_name/” - this is normal, as it should be. And we allow you to create a tag map in which the same articles have a different address “http://site_domain_name/tag/article_name”.

We immediately have duplicate articles with different addresses, but absolutely the same content. Yandex naturally doesn’t like this. And this is understandable, it does not comply with the rules on the quality of content. The ratings of articles and the site as a whole are going down. If there are many articles, then there are just as many duplicates. How do you like the situation? How much do you think the site's ranking will drop? The situation with rubrics is no better. Duplicates of announcements and pages with announcements are created. Any duplicates are very bad for Yandex.

Now another problem is perhaps even more terrible. Permission to include “Media/Attachments” in the site map results in all your pictures being formatted not as files, but as a separate article with a separate address, named after the file name, but with absolutely no content, just a picture. It looks like this:

Now think about how many pictures you have on your website. This means that the Yandex index on your site contains thousands of articles with zero content and one picture. How do you think Yandex will react? Of course AGS. And this is not an assumption. This stage has already been passed. My site has already experienced this. I was under AGS for almost two years and I couldn’t even imagine that the site map was to blame. So I recommend turning everything off to avoid problems with Yandex. And leave only Posts and Pages.

90. Include daily archives and 91. Include author pages - add records of archive dates and article authors, which also leads to the creation of duplicates. It's off by default, which is good.

92. Create a compressed version of the sitemap - the sitemap is immediately archived in .gz format.

94. Dynamic site map - A new site map is generated each time it is requested. The function is good because the content of the map is always fresh and relevant. But for a normal plugin, the map should be updated automatically after each content update. It turns out that the function is also unnecessary.

The following picture shows that you can add additional pages to the map:

In the window under the page URL, you can add the address of a page that does not belong to your site but is connected to it from another resource. These could be contact forms, help services, etc.

The following figure suggests categories to exclude from the site map. The list you see is a list of categories from my test bench. Yours will be completely different.

In this section, you can exclude categories by title or list, separated by commas, the addresses of pages that you want to exclude from the site map.

The following figure provides the ability to set map data update priorities for the following objects:

Priorities are usually set for the Home page 1 is the maximum, for Posts in the range of 0.7-0.9, for Taxonomies (Categories, Tags, Archives) 0.1-0.3 is the minimum since they change least often and do not have much importance.

The following figure provides the opportunity to set the frequency of updating data in the card.

The frequency of updates is set depending on the frequency of changes. If you write one article every day, then you can set the frequency for articles to “daily”. If you post more articles and often correct old articles, then you can set the frequency to “hourly”. For taxonomies, an update frequency of “monthly” is appropriate.

The next module manages settings for social networks.

77. Social Meta - allows you to manage social meta data for better interaction of your site with Facebook, Twitter and Google+. When this module is activated, an additional subsection “Social Meta” appears in the “All in one SEO” menu. After turning it on, the settings open.

Social Network Settings

95. Enable Shortcodes in Title - Enabling this option will ensure that shortcodes in the title of posts or pages will be triggered.

96. Use shortcodes in the description - enabling this option ensures that shortcodes in the description of posts or pages will be launched, provided that the following 97 item “Auto-generate OG description” is enabled.

97. Auto-generation of OG descriptions - enabling this item will allow you to automatically generate descriptions for each page or message from any passage.

98. Use AIOSEO title and description - enabling this option will allow you to use the Title and Description for the Home page, which are set on the General settings screen of the All in one SEO pack. Enabling this item will block access to items 100 and 101.

99. The site name is the name used to identify your website.

100. Heading house. pages - if you add anything here, it will be displayed on social networks as the title of your home page.

101. Description of the house. pages - if you add something here, it will be displayed on social networks as a description of your home page.

102. Image of a house. pages - here you can add an image that will be displayed in a social media post about your website home page. Instead of an image, you can enter the URL of a picture located on another site.

103. Select Source OG:Image - Use the drop-down list to select the default image to be used as the OG: image for the post or page:

• Default image - the image specified by the default OG image on the Social Meta settings page will be used;
• Recommended image - use the image from the post;
• Attached Image - use the first attached image to the message (media attachment);
• First image in content - use the first image found in the post content;
• Image from a custom field - use the image specified in the custom field (the field name is specified in the settings);
• Post Author's Image - the avatar of the post/page author will be used;
• Available image - selected automatically automatically;

104. Use default image if no other is found - this parameter means that if an image is not found using the option in item 103, then the image defined in item 105 will be used by default.

105. Default OG:Image - Allows you to select an image from the media library or upload an image or URL for an image to be used as the default OG.

106. Default Image Width - This option allows you to set a default width for images where it is not specified, which will be used for social media. Each social media network has its own preferred image size. For example, Facebook wants images that are 1200 pixels wide. Enter only numbers here, for example: 1200.

107. Default Image Height - This option allows you to set a default height for images where it is not defined, which will be used for social media. Each social media network has its own preferred image size. For example, Facebook wants to receive images with a height of 630 pixels. Enter only numbers here, for example: 630.

108. Use Custom Fields for Image - Allows you to use this field to select a custom OG field: image. Enter a name for the custom field in this window.

111. Associated Name - You can add the name of the person or organization that owns these profiles to this field.

Points 110 and 111 are related to markup, which is designed to improve the appearance of your site and ranking in Google search results, naturally by pre-configuring it in Google.

112. Facebook Admin ID - enter your Facebook Admin ID here. You can find your Facebook ID using this service: https://findmyfbid.com/.

113. Facebook App ID - enter the developer ID here. Information on how to get your Facebook App ID can be found at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/register/. It will probably be useful for those who develop applications for Facebook. The average user does not need this.

114. Facebook Data Type - Open Graph determines what type of site you have - website, blog or articles. Set this option to match what you specified in Settings/Reading, Home Page Latest Posts (Blog) or Static Page (Website).

115. Automatically generate tags for articles - allows you to automatically generate tags for Facebook articles when they are not specified. Article tags will be generated from Post Tags, Categories or Keywords based on the three options that appear when this option is enabled: "Use Keywords in Article Tags", "Use Categories in Article Tags", "Use Post Tags in Tags" articles".

116. Enable Facebook Meta for - Here you can select which post types you want to use the All in One SEO Pack to set Open Graph meta values.

117. Show publisher's Facebook in articles - here enter a link to the Facebook page associated with your site.

119. Entries Data type (post) and 120. Pages Data type (page) - you must select the default value that better describes the content of the entry. The list is quite long and if you select the wrong type, an error message may be generated.

Finally, the All in one SEO pack settings for Facebook are over. There were so many of them that it seems as if Facebook is not being used to promote the site, but the site is becoming an additional tool for working on Facebook.

121. Twitter Card Default - With Twitter cards, you can attach large photos, videos and media so that your tweets help drive more traffic to your site.

122. Site Twitter - Here you need to enter the Twitter username associated with the site. The name is entered with the @ symbol at the beginning.

123. Show author's Twitter - after enabling this item in the Users menu, the "Twitter" item will appear where you can enter the name of your Twitter account. Which will allow authors to be identified by their Twitter accounts as content creators on Twitter cards for their posts.

124. Twitter domain - enter here the domain name for your website without HTTP: //.

The last item in the social network settings is “Scanning social meta”. It is designed to detect problems caused by re-generating the Open Graph meta tag. The thing is that some plugins and themes can also output Open Graph meta tags. The scanner itself does not fix the problem, but only detects its presence. If there is a problem, you will need to find those plugins or themes yourself that intersect with the social network settings in the All in one SEO pack and determine what you need, leave it, and disable the rest.

After completing all the settings for social networks, it’s worth looking at what we get and where we can use it. In the article editor, below the text in the All in one SEO pack section, next to the main settings, an additional tab called “Social Settings” appears.

Paragraphs Article title and description of Open Graph. The image item allows you to select an Open Graph image for the article, from those that are in the article itself. The "Custom Image" item allows you to upload any other image. " " - Enter the width of the Open Graph image in pixels, for example 800. " All in one SEO pack - Create Robots.txt

Here is a window for creating the Robots.txt file. In fact, this is a constructor, but only a curve one. In a normal constructor, I took an object and installed it. Did not like. Removed the object. Here, firstly, you still need to write, and secondly, you cannot make mistakes, since it is impossible to delete anything, only the entire file. Records are formed as follows: in the " " field, select the "Allow" or "Disallow" directive from the drop-down menu. Only “Disallow” is named “Block” for some reason, which is already misleading.

Next, in the " " field we write the name of the agent, i.e. what comes after the User-agent directive, for example * or Yandex. In the " " field, enter the path, but not the entire path, but only a part starting from the WordPress root folder, for example /wp-admin/. And click the “Add Rule” button. A new entry will appear at the end of the file contents field. It looks like this:

The file turns out to be very long and stupid. No, it works, but it’s not optimized at all, it’s very long, and it’s full of repetitive directives. So this invention is completely useless, if not harmful. It’s simpler and easier to do all this with a regular file editor, which is located in the next module 79 of the All in one SEO pack plugin.

The next item is called “Optimize Robots.txt”, but there is no smell of optimization there. The module, as written, when you click the “Optimize” button, analyzes the Robots.txt file for compliance with the standards for Robots.txt. The results are displayed in a separate window, but in such a stretched form that it is not possible to take a screenshot of the entire screen. In its most reduced form it looks like this:

The left column contains what actually exists. The right column contains a suggestion for optimization. The green color indicates what is beyond doubt and these are all Disallow directives. The so-called non-standard extension is marked in yellow; it is recognized, but not all scanners can recognize or interpret it in the same way. A surprising fact, but according to this module, all Allow directives are considered a non-standard solution, as well as the Sitemap directive.

The red color indicates what is considered an invalid syntax error for robots.txt. Indeed, the Host directive is intended only for Yandex; it is not needed for foreign search engines. But it is applied last, so it does no harm. Now a little about the optimization proposal. According to the rules arising from the logic of the algorithm, the following practice has developed: By default, absolutely everything is allowed for indexing. To ban something, we ban entire folders.

If it later turns out that there is something in the prohibited folders that must be indexed, then we make specific permissions. In the case proposed for optimization, a violation of logic and rules is immediately visible. First, it is proposed to register specific permissions, and then ban everything. Naturally, everything will be prohibited, and permits will be useless in this case. That is, the Robots.txt configuration module can be considered completely unconstructive and useless. Strictly disable it and do not use it until things change for the better.

Next module 79 File editor. Everything here is surprisingly simple and good. I won’t make screenshots and everything is clear. You can edit Robots.txt and .htacess by choice. In the editor field, write the contents of the file and click on the "Update file" button. The changes are saved.

Module 80 - Import and export of All in one SEO pack settings.

125. Import - Select a valid All in One SEO Pack ini file and click the "Import" button to import the previous state settings or All in One SEO Pack installation.

126. Export Settings - You can choose to export settings from active modules (General Settings) and content from entries. If General Settings is checked, then General Settings, Module Control block settings, and settings for currently active modules will be exported.

127. Exported Post Types: - Select which post types you want to export All in One SEO Pack metadata for.

There are two more modules: “Blocker of harmful bots” and “Performance”. But they were enabled by default and we reviewed them together with the general settings of the All in one SEO pack plugin earlier.

So we looked at all the great variety of features and settings of the SEO plugin All in One SEO Pack. It is clear that the developers of this SEO plugin wanted to collect in one place the maximum number of functions of SEO optimization, SEO promotion, speeding up the site, protecting the site from bots, indexing tools, and closing tools from indexing. I must say they succeeded in a lot, so this plugin will definitely be useful.

But there are also mistakes that we noticed. And most importantly, there is no automation and there is no assessment of the correctness of the settings. This is where it loses to another Yoast SEO plugin.