March 05 2010
All In One SEO Plug-in hurting Websites
UPDATE: Please review the comments. It appears I was confusing behavior from Thesis and other themes with at least one SEO plugin. I don’t have time to revise this article sensibly to reflect my error.
The All In One SEO Plug-in for Wordpress and similar add-ons for blogs are some of the most popular tools people rely upon when optimizing their blog-based sites.
Over the past year I have found more and more Websites suffering from lost search visibility that I have traced back to or suspected could be traced back to use of the “All In One” SEO Plug-in or other so-called “SEO-friendly” plug-ins.
And there are a lot of them.
These tools are proving to be a real disaster for the general Web population because most people don’t know enough about administering a Website or blog to understand how to control the stupid assumptions that the SEO plug-ins make.
The people who write these plug-ins may think they know SEO but you can tell them I’m on the record as saying they don’t know nearly enough to justify what they are doing. These guys have absolutely no business writing SEO plug-ins for blogs.
The basic SEO plug-in mentality has become almost ubiquitous. I see people refer to these plug-ins frequently and liberally as “must have” options. When I ask why they think the plug-ins are so important, they almost universally give me three reasons:
- The (SEO) plug-in lets you change your page title
- The (SEO) plug-in lets you write a meta description
- The (SEO) plug-in lets you create a custom page URL
When these plug-ins first hit the market a few years ago the SEO community jumped on them because Wordpress and other blog platforms did not let you customize your page structures.
That’s no longer the case. Wordpress, for sure, lets you set custom titles, meta descriptions, and page URLs. It’s very easy to do this. Just look at the form where you type in your blog post.
Of course, fans devoted to these plug-ins will be quick to point out that they provide other features. Sure they do. Some of those features may actually even provide some value.
But the real problem with “All-In-One” and other SEO plug-ins is that they are attempting to hide pages, hide links, and otherwise sculpt PageRank.
And in case you didn’t get the memo, GOOGLE SAYS THIS IS A STUPID THING TO ATTEMPT. They don’t use those words — those are my words, but the message is the same.
Google told people they changed how PageRank was flowing on pages that include nofollowed links about two years ago because people were screwing up their search results trying to sculpt PageRank.
That’s right, all the genius PageRank sculptors didn’t know what they were doing.
So here we are in 2010 and people are coming out of the woodwork claiming their copy is not being indexed by Google for as much as 7 days. I’ve been following these complaints in volume since January. I have responded to very few of them.
In every case where I have examined a Website in question I found one of two (or two of two) problems: the sites were either using “rel=’nofollow’” on their internal links and/or they were using “noindex,nofollow” on their tag and category pages.
These HTML directives were all embedded by SEO plug-ins like “All-In-One” (and there are more out there — they are all guilty).
People are flabbergasted when I suggest to them that they turn off or remove these plug-ins. Why? Because they want to be able to change their page titles, meta descriptions, and page URLs. Not because they want to sculpt PageRank, but because they want to perform very basic functions that Wordpress now lets you perform (not that these bloggers have enough knowledge of SEO to be doing this anyway — but that’s beside the point).
On the rare occasion where I’ve persuaded people to disable the plug-ins and they’ve gotten back to me, they’ve told me their sites were suddenly being indexed.
Frankly, too many people are trying to optimize for search through plug-ins. Technically, there is no technical reason to use any of these plug-ins. I would fire any SEO technician working for me who insisted on using a plug-in — I don’t need that kind of incompetence on my team.
It’s okay to experiment with plug-ins. We do it all the time. We’ve tried “All-In-One” and trust me, I was NOT happy in any way with the way it impeded our search optimization efforts. This plug-in couldn’t optimize a 1-page Website that only had one word, a word that occurred nowhere else on the Web.
In case I haven’t made myself clear, you’re not helping yourself in any way by installing an SEO plug-in on your Wordpress blog. If you don’t know enough about SEO to do it yourself, you don’t know enough about SEO to disable the stupid features these plug-ins turn on by default.
I even found a site where an SEO firm blogged last year about how it stopped monitoring the SEO plug-in through upgrades and they learned to their chagrin how an automated upgrade of all plug-ins turned on a feature they didn’t want activated. Even experienced SEOs are being undermined by the incredibly stupid default choices that are made by “All In One” and other SEO plug-ins.
Now, people might think I’m being a little harsh here. Perhaps I am. I am sure the Web design firms behind these plug-ins feel they have a lot of good feedback from their users (more than 1 million people have apparently installed “All In One” to date). To that I say: Feedback from the ignorant masses isn’t going to help you fix the royal screwups you’re tossing around the Web.
Many sites manage to rank in search results in spite of bad optimization. Many people in the SEO field have to work with stubborn customers who refuse to change their immaculate works of art on the Interwebs — so we find other ways (links) to optimize.
Some Websites manage to stumble through the basic reverse optimization process by churning out enough content that they just get a lot of links pointing at their deep content.
If you think your site is doing fine with your SEO plug-in, don’t get upset because I’m telling you it’s hurting you. Just continue enjoying the limited search visibility you’ve subjected yourself too but please stop telling your friends to use these stupid plug-ins.
If search engine optimization were really so easy that all you had to do was install a damn plug-in, no one would do it faster or more often than me.
It’s NOT that easy. Any professional SEO who believes in and/or trusts these plug-ins enough to recommend them to anyone is, in my opinion, a complete moron who needs to get out of the industry.
You don’t hand a gun to someone and tell them to look down the barrel and pull the trigger, do you? So why would you hand a plug-in whose SEO shortcomings have been well-documented to someone who doesn’t understand SEO and tell them to use it?
If people start listening to me now, it will take about 2 years for the SEO industry to rally to the cause and advise everyone to NOT use these stupid SEO plug-ins. Maybe — it would be wonderful if they did — the plug-in writers will update their offerings to NOT do anything by default and to remove the stupid PageRank sculpting nonsense.
There is absolutely no reason for any SEO plug-in to use “rel=’nofollow’” on post-embedded links, to embed “nofollow,noindex” on any public-facing page, or to allow the user to override the page title, meta description, or URL.
If you want to experiment with other functions, do so. But understand that they might in the end turn out to be bad ideas, too.
A lot of people in the SEO community — including some pretty darned good SEOs (in my opinion) — still fuss over duplicate content. My position has for a very, very long time been: leave it alone. Let the blog do what blogs are designed to do.
If you don’t like how blog software organizes content on your site, then the best thing you can do for SEO is find another platform that organizes content the way you like.
You should be using category and tag pages to enhance your SEO, not hiding them out of some misguided fear that search engines will forget you exist because they find tag and category pages.
There are other options that Wordpress and other modern blogging platforms give you for handling how often and where content appears on your site. Learn to use the blog platform first before you start plugging in crap that knows even less about SEO than you.
Written by Michael Martinez
I saw this when i logged into my profile — All in One SEO Pack must be configured. Go to the admin page to enable and configure the plugin.
Do you have the plugin installed but modified it?
If noindex isnt applied to tag and category pages, will there be the issue of duplicate content?
We have the plug-in installed but not activated. We’re just being lazy about not uninstalling it because we have other priorities.
The SEO community has way overblown the duplicate content issue. This is another area where search engineers have told people, “Don’t worry about it. Let us figure out what is most important.”
Generally speaking, when it comes to organizing content for search engines, the SEO community really sucks. They just don’t listen to the people who really know what the score is.
All-In-One-SEO allows you to change the structure of your titles sitewide, as well as choose different title formats for different categories and types of pages. That’s something that can’t be done with a default install of Wordpress.
Also, All-In-One-SEO uses noindex+follow, not nofollow. So it’s not going to keep your site from getting indexed, just help avoid duplicate content issues. Even Matt Cutts himself has said that the All-In-One-SEO plug-in can help. Get your facts straight.
Takeshi, thank you for the correction on the “noindex,follow” issue. However, let’s get ALL the facts straight, okay?
Takeshi: “… Even Matt Cutts himself has said that the All-In-One-SEO plug-in can help.”
Michael: Matt once suggested several years ago that people could add several plugins to their Wordpress sites. In May 2009 Matt wrote a post on his blog titled SEO For Bloggers. When someone asked why he didn’t use “All In One” Matt replied:
Can it help with SEO? Highly doubtful.
To help me respond to your comment I reactivated the plugin on SEO Theory so I can take a look at an older version (we have not upgraded to the most current version).
Here are my comments on the specific options:
I notice the latest version of the plugin offers URL canonicalization. That won’t help with people stealing your content unless the headers are included in the RSS feeds. And if you’re not replicating full posts in the archives then you don’t have a duplicate content issue to begin with — and if you ARE replicating full posts in the archives you only get a canonical benefit if you have exactly one post per archive.
Now, keep in mind that this article was written not just about “All In One” but all SEO plugins. I picked on “All In One” because it does seem to be a common factor in many sites that are having problems (and I have used it myself so I am not changing my mind about its issues).
Some people may be using Thesis or other themes to embed “rel=’nofollow’” on internal links. They should disable that option.
I do thank you for correcting me on an important point. I’ll be more careful in the future.
But my position concerning “All In One” and other SEO plugins remains unchanged: they are completely useless and don’t help with search optimization.
So it seems like Thesis offers a lot of the same features as All In One SEO, but for those of us who don’t want to fork over money for a premium Wordpress theme, All In One offers a lot of benefits, and certainly isn’t “hurting” our websites.
You don’t need any of the add-ons from Thesis, All In One, Universal SEO, or anything else to get a basic Wordpress blog to succeed in search.
The original need no longer exists. And yet people are constantly adding these useless things to their sites. Does it hurt your SEO? Absolutely. Anything that leads you down the garden path of wasted time and effort hurts your SEO.
Thesis, at least, is a theme. It gave our Web team an opportunity to make our sites look less ugly than before.
I’ve yet to see any benefits from All In One or other SEO plugins that are actually beneficial.
But let us agree to disagree. I’ve expressed an opinion that is most likely going to be unseen by the 1.5 million (and growing) users of All In One.
It’s unfortunate so many people are wasting their time but all I can do is say what I’ve said.
I’ve personally heard, in person, at 2 different web conferences, Matt Cutts (head of Search Quality at Google) and Topher Kohan (SEO manager for CNN) recommend All in One SEO. I have personally seen it improve rankings on sites. I do believe that with any SEO tool you have to know how to use it to make it work.
Forcing commenters to register? Really?
However, I felt the need to clarify what you’ve said over and over in this post: it’s the user that’s the problem and not the plugin.
I’ve been using this plugin for years on dozens of sites with great success when configured properly. I’ve also tested several of the settings and it can cause huge problems with certain settings. But wiping out the plugin doesn’t solve the problem; better knowledge does.
Having had to retract one of my principle gripes about “All In One” (my mistaken notion that it was responsible for the numerous nofollow issues I’ve seen), I feel a little disinclined to press the issue.
Can it improve SEO for a Website? I suppose that’s equivalent to asking how do you drive from Los Angeles to New York City.
The user needs to understand the tool — absolutely. So that does seem to be an argument against advising everyone willy-nilly to install SEO plugins.
I’ll leave it at that, but welcome further comments if more people want to express their support for this or other SEO plugins (self-promotional schmucks will not see the light of day).
Sorry about the forced registration — I’m sure you can imagine how many self-promotional schmucks try to add noise to the signal.
Thanks to you all for commenting.