The most important WordPress plugin for SEO
As you know, title tags are the most important on-page factor. They are given the most weight out of anything on the page as far as the search engines are concerned. So it is a huge weakness in WordPress (and most other blog platforms for that matter) that the post title is used as the title tag, usually with some other extraneous bits added on like the name of the blog. That is far from optimal SEO! Instead, you should be able to handcraft your own title tags independently of the post title -- interject synonyms, rearrange the word order, and so forth.
My SEO Title Tag plugin, which has been out since middle of last year, allows you to do just that. But wait, there's more...!
I am happy to tell you that I, along with some of my talented programmers here at Netconcepts, have made a major update to the plugin. Indeed, we have really made some magic, as you shall soon see!
I'm pleased to announce the SEO Title Tag WordPress plugin... Version 2.0 beta!
The plugin now allows you to mass edit title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages, archive by month pages, indeed any URL, all in one go.
It also now has a title tag input box on the Edit and Write forms for pages and posts, so no more having to use the custom field box.
It allows you to set a title tag for your 404 error pages and for internal search results pages too.
Not only can you now view all your title tags across all of your posts/pages at once. You can also revise your titles right there within that report! This mass editing functionality is available under the Manage > Title Tags tab in the WordPress admin.
Here's what the mass editing admin looks like:
Maybe I am tooting my own horn a bit too much here, but I think this plugin is the best thing to have ever happened to WordPress -- as far as SEO is concerned! :-D
The plugin also plays nicely with the plethora of meta tag plugins out there, such as Add Meta Tags and Another WordPress Meta Plugin. You can choose to use category descriptions as title tags on category pages, or you can choose not to. The latter is the preferred option if you are using a meta tag plugin, because most of those use the category's description field for the meta description tag on the category page. Don't worry though! You can still set custom titles for your category pages -- even if you are using the description field for your meta descriptions.
The plugin is WordPress 2.1 compatible. If upgrading from the previous version of SEO Title Tag, be sure to deactivate the old version before installing the new version. When you activate the new version, it will create some new database tables.
I welcome any and all feedback to that plugin and I hope it is of value to all you bloggers using WordPress.
I'd love to hear of any success stories using this plugin and the rankings and traffic benefits that ensue. Please report back and regale me with your stories of hockey stick graphs! :-)
Now go get the plugin! Enjoy!
21 comments, 2 pingbacks
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Wordpress Title Tag Plugin...
I told you they were on the ball. Stephan has just announced the new version of the Wordpress SEO Title Tag Plugin developed by himself and the developers at Netconcepts. Very sweet…installing right now.
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Pingback by Surfarama [Visitor] — 03/18/07 @ 01:26
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What versions of WordPress is it compatible with ?
Comment by Mike [Visitor]
· http://www.simplenomics.com —
03/18/07 @ 11:58
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Sweet plugin, I've been using it and although I don't know what hockey stick graphs are I've definitely noticed improvements in rankings for terms I can now focus on in the title tag. Just wondering if I will lose my existing title tags if I upgrade to 2.0 beta?
Comment by Frank [Visitor]
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03/18/07 @ 14:50
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This is pretty cool! One of my friends was just recently complaining about lack of options for this very thing...
Comment by Chris Smith [Visitor]
· http://www.superpages.com —
03/19/07 @ 12:38
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[...] duplicate enough to trigger content filters? So I followed Jill’s advice and installed the title tag plugin from Stephan Spencer at Netconcepts (which has had a recent release). This alone had significant [...]
Pingback by Using More... to Treat Duplicate Content Issues on Wordpress: SEO New Zealand [Visitor] — 03/21/07 @ 05:20
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Indeed, an excellent plugin! Just such a damn shame that I had to get rid of it almost as soon as I finished configuring it!
The problem was that 'as well as uploading and installing the "SEO Title Tag" yesterday, I also uploaded another great plugin known as "WPOMATIC", and unfortunately the two unrelated plugins conflicted with each other (and locked me out of my blog's admin area for several hours until I realised what was causing the problem).
If there is any known bug-fix that would allow me to run BOTH these plugins I would dearly love to hear about them!
Cheers,
BruceComment by Bruce Smeaton [Visitor]
· http://www.homeloangripes.com —
03/31/07 @ 07:02
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My question, Bruce, would be why would you want the other plugin ( the RSS feed scraper ) on your blog ?
How could there be a choice between the two ?
One will definitely improve the rankings of all the unique content you write and the other will show people what other people write, which you should only be doing thru links and Trackbacks.
No real choice here.Comment by Mike [Visitor]
· http://www.simplenomics.com —
03/31/07 @ 10:14
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Wow! Really nice plugin! Cool, thanx!
Comment by Mike Johansen | AdWordsexpert [Visitor]
· http://adwordsspecialist.wordpress.com —
03/31/07 @ 19:56
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THANK YOUUUUUUU !!!
Comment by jd [Visitor]
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04/01/07 @ 14:00
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Sir, this is a fantastic plugin. The interface is very easy to use and I have no doubt that the improved title tags will help me get my articles into search engines faster. You should be proud; you have created something really fantastic.
Comment by Brandon [Visitor]
· http://www.bthomson.com —
06/29/07 @ 17:56
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thanks for this, Stephan - this is one of those rare gems amongst plugins: A simple, powerful idea - executed perfectly!
danielComment by daniel [Visitor]
· http://www.omstrategy.com —
07/02/07 @ 11:27
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This is a GREAT plug in! I love the interface b/c it makes it so easy to use and implement. Amazing job!
Comment by Monique [Visitor]
· http://alotaboutnothing.com/ —
07/05/07 @ 20:53
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Amazing tool thank you. I dread digging into the code and you've saved me a lot of time and future headaches.
Comment by Someones-Ex-Gf.com [Visitor]
· http://someones-ex-gf.com/ —
08/21/07 @ 23:04
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What a fantastic plug in you are right the title tag is very important. People need to remember to only use 65 words (including spaces) and include your main keyword(s)
Comment by Pete [Visitor]
· http://www.businessservicesuk.com —
09/22/07 @ 07:56
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Title tags are a lot more important than people give them credit for, so much so that Matt Cutts recently devoted a podcast to the subject.
Comment by Brad [Visitor] · http://www.4networking.biz — 01/04/08 @ 05:07
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Can't do much on blogger,
Can't even completely remove nofollow on it. But blogger allow user to target ads on their blog. Wish Wordpress do the same for free member in future. Will they do that?
Comment by mriza [Visitor] · http://infodotnet.blogspot.com — 01/11/08 @ 05:39
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At last focus is moving away from the keyword tag, although it is said that there are uses as far as Yahoo is concerned for using it to target mis-spelt keywords
Comment by Peter [Visitor]
· http://www.britisholympics2012.co.uk —
01/12/08 @ 03:20
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Stephan you are right, it is a small thing that goes missing on most people.
By changing the title tag, h1, alt tags and a few words in the content, the whole structure of a website changesComment by Jim [Visitor]
· http://www.bulgariasfinest.com —
01/25/08 @ 07:07
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I heard you on Dishy Mix, liked what you had to say and am stopping by. I have a question concerning this plug-in.
I notice that it has been out for over a year. Is it still effective a year later? I know it may be a semi-stupid question BUT search engines are always tweaking things.
Thanks!
Comment by ckoehler [Visitor] · http://musicgoat.com — 10/08/08 @ 09:52
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Thanks for stopping by @ckoehler! Yes, title tags are still super-important for SEO, and this plugin does stuff with title tags that no other WordPress plugin does. For example, you can assign a unique custom title to ANY URL and you can mass-edit hundreds of title tags in one go.
Comment by Stephan Spencer [Member]
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10/15/08 @ 14:14
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I think that this is a very useful plug-in. As we all know little tags are the most important to get better SERPS standing for a given keywords. And it is good that there are certain features like this where you can mass edit tittle tags and perform other enhancements on you on-page optimization.
Comment by Twitter@Million [Visitor]
· http://twitter.com/scottmillion —
04/16/09 @ 19:36
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Dear Stephan, thank you for a brilliant plugin and much attention and support to your work. I have been reading about and using the plugin with one frustration. First, I use Wordpress version 2.7. I installed and activated without a problem. I am using 100 lines display per post to add my title tags. I am updating some title tags for 6-8 posts before roughly, before I press "Submit" and twice now, my webpage has updated and cleared the entries. I am going to assume it is my fat-fingering that caused it but it happened twice, so I decided to just inform you. Is there a better practice? Shall I save after every 2-3 post entries? It takes it a while to update so I wanted to save some time :)
All the best,
FarnooshComment by Farnoosh Brock [Visitor]
· http://www.prolificliving.com/blog —
06/10/09 @ 11:14
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I am trying to add a title tag to post pages that is more dynamic. Basically I want [title] - [tag name] | site name. I can't get the name of the tag that I use to display in the posts title tag. Any suggestions?
Comment by will [Visitor] — 03/04/10 @ 16:46
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