The Best WordPress SEO Plugin? A combination of two.
All in One SEO Pack (AIOSEO) is the leader in WordPress SEO plugins. It offers great functionality and simple integration into the process of writing a post. AIOSEO is not a perfect plugin, however, because it lacks some very important functionality:
- Custom category
titletags - Custom tag
titletags - Mass editing of page, post, tag and category
titletags/slugs
The plugin that has all of the features above (but lacks AIOSEO features) is SEO Title Tag, an imperfect but elegant solution to the list above. This article shows how to use both plugins and have them combine forces to create a powerful solution for getting custom titles on all your site’s pages.
Getting All in One SEO Pack and SEO Title Tag to play well together
The goal is this: when displaying a tag page, category page, or a post with SEO Title Tag title, use SEO Title Tag’s generated title. Otherwise, let All in One SEO Pack generate titles.
Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file, or your Thesis Theme’s custom_functions.php file:
function kws_check_title_conflict() {
function kws_get_seo_title() { // Find out whether the title should be rewritten
if(is_singular()) { // For some reason, get_seo_title_tag() kills WP if it's singular and not active on post/page, so this function looks janky
global $post;
$custom_title_key = get_option("custom_title_key");
$post_custom = get_post_custom($post->ID);
$custom_title_value = trim($post_custom["$custom_title_key"][0]);
if(!empty($custom_title_value)) { return get_seo_title_tag(); }
}
else {
// Don't return a custom title if it's just the category name (SEO Title Tags default)
if(function_exists(get_seo_title_tag) && get_seo_title_tag() && (is_category() && get_seo_title_tag() != single_cat_title("", false)) || (is_tag() && get_seo_title_tag() != single_tag_title("", false))) {
return get_seo_title_tag();
}
}
return false;
}
if(kws_get_seo_title()) { // If there's a SEO Title Tags title,
global $aioseop_options;
$aioseop_options['aiosp_rewrite_titles'] = false; // turn off AIOSEO Pack title rewriting
add_action('wp_title', 'kws_get_seo_title', 1, 1); // and update the page's title
} else {
return false;
}
}
add_action('wp', 'kws_check_title_conflict', 1);
Customize every title tag on your site
Break free from the %category_title% | %blog_title% SEO doldrums!
Now, using a combination of All in One SEO and SEO Title Tags, you can have custom page titles, tag titles, and category titles for every page on your website. This means that you can optimize every page title.
In addition, use the Katz Web Services Rich Text Tags plugin so that you will have high-SEO value tag descriptions as well…making your site super-optimized!
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Zack,
Thanks for this interesting post. SEO Title indeed seems to be a great plugin and I would like to use it exactly as you suggest it, ie. in combination with AIOSEO. However, there are many posts on the SEO Title plugin’s page claiming that SEO Title Tag caused that their custom fields became completely broken.
I’m using pretty many custom fields on my webpage too and the very last thing I want to experience is that they would get broken (as many people complain about SEO Title).
I was wondering if you have any idea about this or if there is any other (safer) way of complete customization of title tags – especially for categories. I need special title tag for each category, but again, I’m afraid to turn on SEO title plugin.
At the moment, I’m using other plugin which puts content of category description to the title tag and it works well, but apparently, category description is useful for other things and it’s a kind of waste to use it just for title tags… My website is running on WP 2.8.6. It has many different plugins, as well as custom fields. Quite complex installation.
Many thanks for your help or any ideas in advance!
I really wish I could get SEO Title Tag to work, but no dice. Apparently, from what I’ve read and experience, it doesn’t work with WP 2.9.1 just yet. I really need to customize the category titles for my, uhhh, categories.
On another note, I’m in Fort Collins and I’m a total WordPress head, really focused on real estate web design using WP. So yeah, not too far from you on many accounts.
Peace.