WordPress SEO

When it comes to SEOing, some important on-page factors you want to keep in mind include:

• title tag
• meta keyword tag
• meta description tag

There are a bunch of others but these three are good starting points.  If you are using WordPress and wishing to SEO your website that you probably know that

1. the default WordPress installation does NOT have meta keyword and description tags
2. All in One SEO Pack is a kick-ass plugin for WordPress that enables meta keyword and description tags (thereby fixing #1)

What you may NOT know is that if you have a theme that’s “SEO friendly”, there’s a good chance that it adds in its own meta keyword/description mechanism.  And odds are, it’s not as flexible as the All in One SEO Pack plugin.

So what do you do?  You keep All in One SEO Pack to cover your bases…

Here’s the kicker, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with DUPLICATE meta tags (depending on the theme/options, it could mean duplicate meta keywords AND description).

For example, in my ChatToText review post, with the Flexx Theme installed along with All in One SEO Pack, I see TWO meta keywords and description tags:

Meta Tags #1 (From the Theme)

Meta Tags #2 (From All in One SEO Pack)

Well That’s No Good!  Duplicate Tags Just End Up Confusing the Search Engines!

So given the fact that I like All in One SEO Pack’s SEO capability a lot better than the theme’s default SEO option, I wanted to find out how I can disable the theme’s SEO feature.

Unfortunately, there was no “easy-non-technical” solution.

What I ended up having to do is do some quick research on Google to find out how to disable the theme’s SEO feature.  This involved tweaking the header.php file of that theme.  You might end up having to do the same depending on your theme.

So take a minute and check out your blog’s source code to see if you are having duplicate meta tag issues – then fix it! 

Raymond Fong

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