Add Custom Titles for Tags and Categories in WordPress

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 title tags
• Custom tag title tags
• Mass editing of page, post, tag and category title tags/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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