Beginner’s Guide To SEO Ultimate WordPress Plugin

This is a beginner’s guide and a tutorial to change settings in SEO Ultimate WordPress plugin. By using this plugin you can change title tags and meta description for content types, monitor 404 errors in your blog, add codes in header, before content, after content and in footer, to add deep links in posts and pages in your blog, to create custom robots.txt file and edit .htaccess file, to create link alias, apply noindex and nofollow for different content types, for integrating Twitter cards, Facebook App and other apps in your blog, for adding author information for posts and pages, to check if SEO settings in your blog are applied correctly, to change canonical URL settings for your blog, to add HTML links at the end of posts and pages, to edit “Read more” links, for tweaking permalink settings, for adding social sharing buttons, and to verify Google webmaster tools and Bing webmaster center.

After you have installed and activated the plugin, click on the SEO menu on the left side in the WordPress dashboard.

1) Modules: Here, you can enable or disable modules for SEO Ultimate WordPress plugin. This plugin comes with the following modules: Meta description editor, Meta keywords editor, Meta robot tags editor, Permalink tweaker, Rich snippet creator, Sharing facilitator, Slug optimizer, Title tag rewriter, Webmaster verification, More link customizer, Nofollow manager, Open graph integrator, Whitepapers, 404 monitor, Author highlighter, Canonicalizer, Code inserter, Deeplink juggernaut, File editor, Link mask generator, and Linkbox inserter.

You can enable a module by clicking on the “Enabled” button and you can disable a module by clicking on the “Disabled” button.

2) 404 monitor: This plugin adds a 404 monitor tool in your blog. By using this tool you can track the 404 errors in your blog. Click on “Settings” tab. Here, you can set up log restrictions. You can monitor 404 errors when it is generated by search engines and you can monitor 404 errors when it is generated by referring sites. You can set up the maximum number of log entries and ignore URLs.

Click on “Save Changes”.

3) Code inserter: You can use this section to add codes in header, before content, after content and in footer.

4) Deeplink Juggernaut: This module can be used for adding deep links in posts and pages in your blog for a specific anchor text. In “Content Links” tab, to add deep link to pages and posts, under “Add a New Link”, enter: Anchor text, Destination, and Title attribute. Also you can make this link nofollow and set the target to open it in a new window.

In Content Link Settings tab,

i) Add autolinks to: Here, you can select if the deep links will be added to posts, pages or media.

ii) Self Linking: You can check this option: “Allow posts to link to themselves” to enable self linking in posts or pages and you can check this option: “Allow posts to link to the URL by which the visitor is accessing the post” to override the behavior of auto links.

iii) Quantity restrictions: Here, you can specify the number of auto links per post and page, frequency of anchor text for a post or a page, and frequency of destination URL for a post or page.

iv) Additional dampening effect: This setting is useful when you have many posts in your blog. From option “Globally decrease auto linking frequency by” you can select the percentage of auto linking frequency for posts. Check option “Add a Dampener column to the Content Links editor to let me customize frequency dampening on a per-link basis” to add a column in Content links section to change dampening effect percentage for individual links.

v) Tag restrictions: Here, you can add the content restrictions where auto links will not be added. For example, code block or in headers.

vi) Siloing: This feature is helpful for creating restrictions to internal auto link based on category or tag. This will make sure that auto links are enabled for the internal content only when they are relevant.

vii) CSS class for autolinks: Here you can change the CSS styles for auto links.

Similarly, you can add Footer links from the Footer links tab. You have the option to customize HTML for the footer links and add a separator for links.

5) File editor: In this section you can create custom robots.txt file and edit .htaccess file of your blog.

6) Link mask generator: You can use this module to create a link mask and aliases in your blog. Enter the actual URL and the alias URL. Click on Save Changes. You can also use this tool for masking affiliate links and other external links. You also have the option to add link aliases only for specific posts and to change the alias directory.

7) Meta descriptions: In this section, you can change the meta description for the homepage of your blog. Go to Blog Homepage tab, and enter Blog homepage meta description. Also, you can check option “Use this blog’s tagline as the default homepage description” to use tagline of your blog as Blog homepage meta description.

You can also change meta descriptions for individual posts, pages, media, categories, tags and post format archives.

8) Meta robot tags: In Sitewide Values tab,

i) Don’t use this site’s Open Directory description in search results: You can check this option so that DMOZ listing description is not taken as the default meta description for your blog.

ii) Don’t use this site’s Yahoo Directory description in search results: You can check this option so that Yahoo directory description is not taken as the default meta description for your blog.

iii) Don’t cache or archive this site: You should leave this option unchecked. If you check this option then your blog will not be cached or archived by search engines.

For Default values tab, you can prevent indexing of Administration back-end pages, Author archives, Blog search pages, Category archives, Comment feeds, Comment sub pages, Date-based archives, Sub pages of the homepage, Tag archives, and User login / registration pages. This feature is helpful to avoid duplicate content issues.

Then, you can apply noindex and nofollow for individual posts, pages, media, categories, tags and post format archives from the other tabs.

9) Open graph: This module can be used for integrating Twitter cards, Facebook App and other apps in your blog. You can enter the details in the Site wide Values tab, select default values in Default Values tab and change settings in Settings tab. You can include author data for posts and set up HTML validation. You can add blog homepage title, blog homepage description, blog homepage image and change title, description and image for individual posts, pages and media.

10) Settings monitor: This section can be used to see if the settings in your blog are done correctly. It shows plugin errors.

11) Title tag rewriter: Here, you can set up title tags for your blog.

In Default Formats tab, you can set up title formats for Blog homepage title, Post title format, Page title format, Category title format, Tag title format, Day archive title format, Month archive title format, Year archive title format, Author archive title format, Search title format, 404 title format, and Pagination title format.

Here are the variables which you can use with title and their meaning:

a) {blog} variable: Name of blog.

b) {tagline} variable: Blog tagline.

c) {post} variable: The post’s title.

d) {category} variable: Title of the post category.

e) {categories} variable: List of categories.

f) {tags} variable: List of tags.

g) {author} variable: Post author.

h) {author_username} variable: Username of author.

i) {author_firstname} variable: First name of author.

j) {author_lastname} variable: Last name of author.

k) {author_nickname} variable: Nick name of author.

l) {page} variable: Page title.

m) {page_parent} variable: Title of parent page.

n) {day} variable: Day number with ordinal suffix. For Example, 12th.

o) {daynum} variable: Day number, For Example, 12.

p) {month} variable: Name of month. For Example, June.

q) {monthnum} variable: Number of month. For Example, 06.

r) {year} variable: Year. For Example, 2014.

s) {query} variable: Search query.

t) {ucwords} variable: Search query with first letter of every word in caps.

u) {url_words} variable: Words in error URL with first letter of every word in caps.

v) {title} variable: Title.

w) {num} variable: Page number.

x) {max} variable: Total number of available sub pages.

In Settings tab,

i) Check option “Convert lowercase category / tag names to title case when used in title tags” to make first letter of every word in caps for category and tag names in title variable.

ii) Rewrite method: You can use option “Use output buffering: no configuration required, but slower (default)” as this option does not involves theme editing. If you select option “Use filtering: faster, but configuration required (see the “Settings Tab” section of the “Help” drop down for details)”, then you have to modify your theme.

Also, you can edit title tags for individual posts, pages, media, categories, tags and post format archives from other tabs.

12) Miscellaneous:

i) Author highlighter: Here, you can select author of blog homepage and author of archive pages.

ii) Canonicalizer: Here you can change the canonical URL settings for your blog. You can generate <link rel=”canonical” /> meta tags, send rel=”canonical” HTTP headers, choose a canonical URL format, and enable automatic 301 redirects.

iii) Linkbox inserter: You can use this tool to add HTML links at the end of posts and pages.

iv) More link customizer: You can use this tool to edit “Read more” links.

v) Permalink tweaker: You can use this tool to remove URL base of categories, tags and post format archives and enable URL conflict resolution based on term archive and page.

vi) Sharing facilitator: You can use this tool to add ShareThis or AddThis social sharing buttons.

vii) Webmaster verification assistant: You can use this tool to verify Google webmaster tools and Bing webmaster center.