Step 2) HeadSpace

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The HeadSpace 2.0 plugin is another wonderful plugin from John Godley at UrbanGiraffe.

So what does it do that makes it so wonderful you might ask?

By itself, this plugin can help us configure just about every remaining search engine optimization tweak we need to do on WordPress. Yes, it is THAT good. So let’s get started!

After installation you will need to go to “Settings” within the WordPress menu where you will find “HeadSpace” listed.

When you bring up HeadSpace you are confronted with a fairly significant list of page settings. Now, this is not a complete HeadSpace tutorial. If you want detail on the vast number of possible tweaks within HeadSpace please visit this site.

No, this tutorial will be brief and will just focus on the most critical optimizations for your site’s search engine friendliness. Just the same, you will get a LOT out of what I am about to show you.

1) Customizing All Page Titles & Descriptions Throughout Your Site

When you create a new page or post this global setting will be the default content for your Title Tag and Description Meta Tag.

So, let’s format a good Title Tag to start:

%%title%% :: How to SEO WordPress :: WordPressSEO.ca

In the example above the %%title%% is where the title of your page or post will appear followed by the rest of the pre-constructed title.

Now, in the same vein, let’s create a default Description Meta Tag:

%%title%% – Learn how to optimize your WordPress web site using techniques hat professional SEO’s use.

There you are, now you have a VERY generic Title Tag and Meta Description Tags that will be implemented whenever a custom one is not created for a particular post or page. Now keep in mind that THIS IS FAR FROM IDEAL. You do not want to have your system utilize these formats often – if at all. The idea is not to automate the process of optimizing your website because that is bound to backfire; search engines are far too savvy now for that to work.

Now we need to move onto the Archives Title, Pages Title and Posts Title:

Once you have completed these fields save them all and view your titles.

Uh oh!

As you can see the Global Settings have been applied to the home page but it looks VERY spammy because of the last phrase:  “WordPress SEO” which we had not counted on being there.  The only way to fix this is by making a quick change to your header.php template. We will do that on the next page of this HeadSpace SEO tutorial:

Step 2a) Modifying the Default Title Tag in Header.php