WordPress SEO plugin: Smart options for Smart SEO benefits
WordPress SEO plugin – Platinum SEO has some of the smartest options to optimze your wordpress blog for search engines.Once set, these would provide smart onsite wordpress SEO (search engine optimization) benefits to your invaluable wordpress site.
The following are the smarter options in this wordpress SEO plugin, that would provide smart onsite wordpress SEO benefits to your wordpress blog/site.
Home Title:
As the option name suggests, this will be the title of your homepage. This is independent of any other option. If not set, the default blog title will get used.
Home Description:
This option lets you specify the META description tag for your homepage. The default is, however, no META description for your home page, if this option is not set.
Autogenerate Descriptions:
By checking this option, your META descriptions will get autogenerated, if there’s no excerpt. i.e. the first 160 characters of your post/page content will be automatically assigned to the meta description tag.
Home keywords:
This option lets you specify a comma separated list of META keywords for your homepage. The default is, however, no META keywords for your home page, if this option is not set.Use optimal number of keywords for your home page and don’t overdo it.
Rewrite Titles and Title formats:
These options are all about the title tags. The title is what you see in your browser’s window title bar. This is NOT visible on a page, but visible only on the window title bar and of course in the source code. If “Rewrite Titles” is checked, all page, post, category, search and archive page titles get rewritten. Make sure that “Rewrite Titles” is checked.You can specify the format for most of them. For example: The default wordpress templates puts the title tag of posts like this: Blog Archive >> Blog Name >> Post Title. But this is far from optimal. With Platinum SEO plugin’s default post title format, Rewrite Title rewrites this to Post Title | Blog Name. If you have manually defined a Post title (in the text field labelled Title under Platinum SEO Pack options in your post/page Write panel), this will become the title of your post in the format string.
Click on option titles, in the “Platinum SEO” settings page, for help on all supported title formats!!!
Note that if you have enabled caching plugins (like wp super cache), then the rewrites would not be visible on your cached posts/pages.You will have to wait until expiry for rewrites to take effect.However, you can delete the cache (through Settings –> WP Super Cache, in the case of wp super cache plugin) for the rewrites to be visible immediately.
Additional Post Headers:
This option lets you automatically add any additional meta tags, that are common for all posts, to all your posts.For eg: This may include seach engine site verification meta keys like those for Google webmaster central, yahoo site verification key etc.
Just copy paste any additional post level meta keys, that are common for all posts, here.These will then be automatically added to the head section of all your posts.
Additional Page Headers:
This option lets you automatically add any additional meta tags, that are common for all pages, to all pages.For eg: This may include seach engine site verification meta keys like those for Google webmaster central, yahoo site verification key etc.
Just copy paste any additional page level meta keys, that are common for all pages, here.These will then be automatically added to the head section of all your pages.
Additional Home Headers:
This option lets you automatically add any additional meta tags, to you home page.For eg: This may include seach engine site verification meta keys like those for Google webmaster central, yahoo site verification key etc.
Just copy paste any additional meta keys, that you would like to add to your home page, here.These will then be automatically added to the head section of your home page.
Use Categories for META keywords:
This option lets you automatically add the categories, against which you have categorized a post, as meta keywords for that post.Note that these will be added in addition to any keywords and tags you specify for the post/page.Hence do not duplicate, by specifying the category names as keywords, if this option is turned on.
Log important events:
Check this and Platinum SEO pack will create a log of all important events (platinum_seo_pack.log) in its plugin directory.This might help debugging Platinum SEO wordpress plugin. However, the plugin directory should be writable, for this to work.This option is turned off by default and you can leave it like that.
Use NoIndex for categories:
This option lets you prevent categories from being indexed by the search engines.
How does it benefit your wordpress blog?
Sometimes your home page and category page may contain duplicate content.for eg: when you make five continuous posts under the same category, and you display five posts on your home and category pages, then your home and the category page might become duplicates for the search engines.Thus, you can avoid such duplicate content issues, by checking this option.
This option also helps you give your more important content greater PageRank, by cutting out redundant pages like the category pages. Thus you control the page rank to flow to more important pages on your site (individual posts), than the category pages.
Use noindex for Date based Archives:
This option lets you prevent archives from being indexed by the search engines.
How does it benefit your wordpress blog?
The benefits explained for “Use NoIndex for categories” holds good for this as well.
Use noindex for Tag Archives:
This option lets you prevent Tag pages from being indexed by the search engines.
How does it benefit your wordpress blog?
The benefits explained for “Use NoIndex for categories” holds good for this as well.
Use noindex for author archives:
This option lets you prevent author archives from being indexed by the search engines.
How does it benefit your wordpress blog?
The benefits explained for “Use NoIndex for categories” holds good for this as well.
Use noindex for sub pages of home:
This option lets you prevent sub pages of home from being indexed by the search engines.
How does it benefit your wordpress blog?
The benefits explained for “Use NoIndex for categories” holds good for this as well.
Use noindex for Search result pages on the site, Use noindex for comments RSS feeds, Use noindex for all RSS feeds:
These options lets you prevent your Search result pages, comments RSS feeds and all other RSS feeds from being indexed by the search engines.
How does it benefit your blog?
Helps you give your more important content greater PageRank by cutting out redundant pages like the search result pages, comments RSS feeds and all RSS feeds. Thus you control the page rank to flow to more important pages on your site (i.e. individual posts), than the category pages.
nofollow category listings on posts and nofollow category listings on pages:
These options lets you tell the search engines, not to follow category listings on your posts and pages.Thus you preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your posts.
nofollow links to tag pages:
This option lets you tell the search engines, not to follow tag links on your posts and pages.Thus you preserve and push more PageRank down to your individual posts.
nofollow login and registration links:
This option lets you tell the search engines not to follow login and registration links on your posts or pages.Thus you preserve and push more PageRank down to your individual posts.Also you may not want seach engines to follow your login and registration links.Do you?
Check out post or page level options to set meta robots tags and also the post or page level options to set post/page title, keywords and description.
Also check out the plugin to remove Broken links and further improve your blog’s wordpress SEO with no broken links.
Yes, you can change the permalink structure and the plugin will take care of doing the 301 redirect.
Hi, I see options for search and author pages to NOINDEX but the pages still FOLLOW. Is there a way to do this or am I missing it?
The use of “Use noindex for sub pages” is interesting, assuming it indexes the first page and not the rest of the pages, correct??? I wouldn’t mind turning this option on for the home and search but would not want it on for categories, or date archives. So I guess I’m suggesting individual options would be nice.
Thanks for a great plug-in!!!
It does add noindex to search result pages. Check that on my blog.And it also adds noindex to author archives (post archives of any author).
you are right in your understanding of sub pages. I think, I need to do this as many have their own preferences.
I’m having a problem i have installed it but if I enable rewrite titles the homepage goes blank! The post pages are correct but the entire home page goes white!
Anyone have this problem before? or know a fix?
@Rajesh – I know it adds noindex “but the pages still say FOLLOW” (not NOFOLLOW) is the question part.
that is perfectly fine.You still want to folow the links on the page.Though SERPS won’t index the page, it will pass on the link juice to pages linked from this page. This is what Noindex, Follow means.
If you do not want either you can always choose Noindex, NoFollow. But it can be chosen only for Posts and Pages and not for category archives or any other archives.
Hello I’m using the WordPress plugin SEO Platinum. But my external links are falling. I picked all the options of Platinum SEO. Some of them would prevent that other sites put a link to my site?
You should pick them on your own, only if you understand the options fully.Otherwise leave the default selected options.
I don’t fully understand your question but my guess is, you have multiple sites and are interlinking them.But then you chose nofollow for all external links and Google is not considering the links from one site of yours to another.
The automatic 301 doesn’t work, unless I am using it wrong. Basically I had it set to /%postname%/ and switched it to /%category%/%postname%/
Instead of forwarding to the new location, it gives a 404 error
You need to check automatic redirect.It is turned off by default.