What plugins & tactics are you using for Wordpress meta SEO?

[flowsimple]

Currently I use All-In-One SEO and I quite like how simple it is to setup and it's stable. Is that still one of the best ones? What are you using these days?

Is it worth stripping out the superfluous meta tags that Wordpress now puts in?

Is there any value to adding meta descriptions to all my Tag pages and if so, is there a good plugin that will auto magically create unique descriptions for these pages? Same goes for my paginated archives. Thanks!

[flowsimple]

That would make it the TAGFEEC criteria. Or if you add the C, then my favorite would be GETFACE! criteria.

[AaronWheeler]

Noted! I added your feature request to our database. Did you know that the "C" in "TAGFEE" stands for "Crush Lameness Mercilessly"?

[getrightmusic]

It does replace the Google XML Sitemap Generator, which is nice to have just one plugin that handles that.

I haven't found it to be size and load time heavy on my site though. It does have a lot of options, but I've found that once you se it up properly for what you need it to do, you can let it be.

The original reason that I switched to Yoast, was that the All-In-One plugin was doing strange things with my categories, which I wanted to represent strongly in search. Specifically my getrightmusic.com/category/mixtapes/

Hope that helps. If you switch to Yoast and need any help setting it up, feel free to ask.

[flowsimple]

Can you tell me more about your experience with Yoast? What does it replace? I've heard it replaces the need for Google XML Sitemap Generator. What else?

And what about speed? Last I tried it I felt like it overwhelmed my page with tons of extra code and increase both the size and load time which i didn't like. Any opinion on that?

[flowsimple]

Sounds like I'll have to give Yoast a try. The last time I tried it I felt like it really affected my site speed negatively.

[flowsimple]

Yes, I agree. Some plugins have great functionality, but are just stupidly coded to where they add more technical issues, or have a terrible or annoying Admin UI, and so I cut them out. The efficiency and design of the plugins really matter too.

WP Super Cache or W3C Cache really helps to bring down the file size and load time regardless.

[SparkplugDigital]

I was listening to the Thesis webinar today on SEO and Chris Pearson gave at tip to limit use of plugins as much as possible. Apparently plugins often add additional code to your header which increases site loading time and loading time has become a more important SEO factor lately.

[KeriMorgret]

The Bruce Clay blog just had a discussion about WP SEO plugins last week as well. http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/05/wordpress-seo-plugins/.

[getrightmusic]

I switched to Yoast's SEO plugin a few months ago from the "All In One" plugin and I'm very happy with the results that I've had with it. I felt like the All In One was sort of dated compared to Yoast's, maybe they have updated it in the last couple months, but I'm still sticking with Yoast.

[steven88]

If you like All-In-One SEO you might like this "improved" version of it.

I have been using this for my sites and I've been happy.

It's basically All-In-One SEO stripped down to the essentials.

http://foliovision.com/seo-tools/wordpress/plugins/fv-all-in-one-seo-pack

[StefHeringhaus]

Either WpSeo or UltimateSeo. Both have a nice set of options and the latter is free.

Regarding tag pages: just as category pages you can transform them based on your blog topic/niche in very valuable pages within a silo structure, just by adding a comprehensive tag description and images - just as you would do for a main category page in any another cms, linking to subpages. The "allow html tags in category descriptions" will help you here. This is at least if you use wordpress as a cms, rather than a blog.

The Genesis wordpress supports it, too.

[flowsimple]

Already using noindex, follows for the tag & archive pages. Guess SEOMoz crawls them no matter what, and I have those lame yellow warnings about the lack of descriptions for those pages. Wish SEOMoz would also respecrt those tags and stop showing me those warnings.

[CraigAddyman]

Hey

It's best to get rid of 'tag' pages as this only creates duplicate content if you feel you must use them then add noindex, follow meta tags.

I personally use the thesis theme and with all styling etc aside it turns your CMS into something on steroids and there isn't a need for any SEO plugins