The WordPress SEO Tutorial All In One SEO Plugin Warnings article is part of a series of SEO tutorials to support the Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin and the Stallion Responsive WordPress SEO Theme.

This WordPress SEO tutorial covers the Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin – All In One SEO Plugin Warnings and the Stallion Responsive Theme – All In One SEO Plugin Warnings.

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Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin All In One SEO Plugin Warnings Tutorial

Under the Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin Options : SEO Plugin Warnings Tab : All In One SEO Warnings

There are two options.

  • ON
  • Off
WordPress All In One SEO Warnings

WordPress All In One SEO Warnings

When “All In One SEO Warnings” is set to “ON” and the “All In One SEO Plugin” is active (if the SEO plugin isn’t installed and active, the ON option does nothing) the Stallion SEO Plugin checks the All In One SEO Plugin Options for damaging SEO options related to Noindex and Nofollow robots meta tags.

If ALL the SEO damaging All In One SEO noindex and nofollow options are active (click the image below to see all bad All In One SEO Plugin options) Stallion outputs about a dozen warnings!

WordPress All In One SEO Plugin Bad Options

WordPress All In One SEO Plugin Bad Options

ALL Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin All In One SEO Warnings Screenshot

ALL Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin All In One SEO Warnings

ALL Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin All In One SEO Warnings

The above screenshot is an extreme case of the All In One SEO Plugin user ticking all the noindex and nofollow options: I hope no one does that!

Below is a breakdown of what each warning refers to.

All the damaging All In One SEO Plugin options are found under “All In One SEO” > “General Settings” : “Noindex Settings”, be very careful with these options.

All In One SEO Option : Default to NOINDEX

Default to NOINDEX: Posts, Pages or Media Enabled : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. Never use this option on Posts and Pages, that would be SEO suicide. On Media still damaging, but not a disaster. : Significant SEO Damage. Note: in version 2.3.10.2 ticking “Posts” also adds a noindex meta tag to paginated home page archives.

All In One SEO Option : Default to NOFOLLOW

Default to NOFOLLOW: Posts, Pages or Media Enabled : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. Never use this option on Posts and Pages, that would be SEO suicide. On Media still damaging, but not a disaster. : Significant SEO Damage. Note: in version 2.3.10.2 ticking “Posts” also adds a nofollow meta tag to paginated home page archives.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for Categories

Use noindex for Categories ON : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. Causes significant SEO damage, this would result in ALL your Categories NOT being indexed in Google etc… Note: The Stallion Plugin replicates the NOT INDEX part of this setting via the option “Block All Categories”, but recycles some of the wasted link benefit.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for Date Archives

Use noindex for Date Archives ON : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. With a site wide dated archive widget this can waste a LOT of link benefit! Ideally you would not use the monthly archive widget, wastes link benefit even without this dumb option.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for Author Archives

Use noindex for Author Archives ON : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. Causes significant SEO damage, this would result in ALL your Author Archives NOT being indexed in Google etc… Note: The Stallion Plugin replicates the NOT INDEX part of this setting via the option “Block All Author Archives**”, but recycles some of the wasted link benefit.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for Tag Archives

Use noindex for Tag Archives ON : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. Causes significant SEO damage, this would result in ALL your Tags NOT being indexed in Google etc… Note: The Stallion Plugin replicates the NOT INDEX part of this setting via the option “Block All Tags”, but recycles some of the wasted link benefit.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for Search Archives

Use noindex for Search Archives ON : Wastes link benefit, search results can be indexed by Google and rank, so you could be loosing traffic. : Minor SEO Damage.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for 404 Pages

Use noindex for 404 Pages ON : Wastes link benefit, 404 pages can pass link benefit : Minor SEO Damage.

All In One SEO Option : Use noindex for paginated pages/posts

Use noindex for paginated pages/posts ON : Wastes link benefit, WordPress by default adds canonical URLs to paginated pages, (in effect 301 redirects link benefit to the main post, page 1) this option is SEO dumb. : Potentially Significant SEO Damage.

All In One SEO Option : Use nofollow for paginated pages/posts

Use nofollow for paginated pages/posts ON : Wastes link benefit, WordPress by default adds canonical URLs to paginated pages, (in effect 301 redirects link benefit to the main post, page 1) this option is SEO dumb. : Potentially Significant SEO Damage.

All In One SEO Option : Tax Noindex

Tax Noindex ON : Wastes link benefit and makes indexing a site by search engines harder. Causes significant SEO damage, this would result in custom taxonomy archives NOT being indexed in Google etc…

Which is Worse, All In One SEO or Yoast WordPress SEO?

As of November 2016 the All In One SEO Plugin has more damaging SEO option than the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin. Yoast used to include the section wide nofollow option, but removed them recently.

David Law

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David Law : Technical SEO Expert with 20+ years Online Business, SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing experience... Creator of multiple WordPress SEO Themes and SEO Plugins. Interests: wildlife, walking, environmental issues, politics, economics, journalism, consumer rights.

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