SEO Plugin or Genesis SEO Settings?

**Charles** · 01-16-2013, 05:57 PM

I know I haven't been posting here much recently. I still value the forum, just haven't had time to post as I've been working hard on my site. So if I'm starting more topics than I'm contributing to, then sorry about that, but...

Up until recently I had been using All in One SEO Pack as my SEO plugin, but after I switched to Genesis I deactivated it and started using the Genesis built-in SEO settings instead. What I found was that the Genesis settings could do just about everything the plugin could do, so I decided it wasn't worth having an extra plugin if it's all built into my theme.

But today, I just got Lisa's WP Starter Tip on SEO plugins where she recommends the Yoast plugin. Now I had known for some time that the plugin was very powerful (more so than the Genesis SEO) but for some reason I was under the impression that it was a paid plugin.

So today I discovered it's free, and now I'm wondering whether it's worth installing. Will it really make that much difference considering I'm already using the Genesis SEO settings to their full potential?

And the other thing I wanted to know is what happens to all my existing settings, meta descriptions, 301 redirects etc that I've all set within Genesis? Is there a way to migrate all of that into the Yoast plugin if I were to start using it? Thanks...

**lisa** · 01-16-2013, 06:41 PM

When I wrote that, I did not have a theme that had SEO settings and I'm glad you brought this up because I probably should add some content to that paragraph.

I honestly think SEO plugins are misunderstood and slightly overrated today. I think some people assume using one is going to have an immediate and gigantic impact on their rankings. As we now know, what matters more is your content and diversified backlink profile.

Nevertheless, there are still some benefits. What I do like about the Yoast plugin is the ability to noindex/nofollow certain pages. I just created a new contact page that I wanted to noindex/nofollow (to help with spambot attack issues) and it was nice to be able to do that just by checking a box in "Edit" mode - a feature offered by Yoast.

So even though SEO plugins aren't what I think a lot of people want them to be, there are still benefits of using them in spite of the fact some themes have SEO settings. To my knowledge I don't believe the Genesis theme has that noindex/nofollow option. I use that quite a bit.

**Charles** · 01-16-2013, 08:23 PM

I checked and yes Genesis does have the noindex/nofollow options, it also has noarchive.

Well then I guess I'll continue to use my Genesis SEO settings.

**lisa** · 01-16-2013, 08:26 PM

Awesome! Good to know.

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