Those of you who know me, know I wouldn't recommend a WordPress plugin that isn't worth using. HeadSpace is not only worth using, it's worth using immediately.
What exactly is HeadSpace?
From the plugin page: HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.
I've been working with this plugin for the last hour or so. It does everything John (the author) says it does. It's an incredible plugin! Previously, I was using the Add-Meta-Tags WordPress Plugin, but it was limited to meta tags and descriptions and didn't offer per post or per page customizations. I'm very happy I found HeadSpace.
Why use HeadSpace?
The primary reason is so that you don't have to edit your theme files all the time. Another reason is that you have all of the information you need to change everything in two places: The "Settings/HeadSpace" and the "Manage/Meta-data" administration panels. The "Settings/HeadSpace" panel is for the initial setup and additional modules. The "Manage/Meta-data" panel is the override for the defaults, and it's pretty sweet.
Courtney Tuttle, of Court's Internet Marketing School wrote a guest post over at ProBlogger called 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less. One of the 10 ways is optimizing the HTML title ("<title>your post title</title>"). The "Manage/Meta-data" panel lets you do it easily.
Features I especially like.
- Global Settings. You can use the special tags shown to customize the page titles, descriptions and tags/keywords. These can be overridden independently with the "Manage/Meta-tags" panel. If you're properly categorizing and tagging your posts, %%category%%,%%tag%% will use them all as meta keywords.
- Site Modules. I wish there were even more! I'm using the "Google Section Targeting" already and exploring others. Perhaps I'll create some new modules for myself.
- Manage/Meta-data panel. It's a very easy interface to work with.
I'm sure I'll find more features that I like as I go through every option.
The final verdict.
I know for a fact that my search engine traffic has been abysmal considering how many posts I've written (around 1200). I attribute part of that due to poor SEO optimization of post titles, meta descriptions, and meta tags. It's going to take me a while, but I'm going to change all that and this plugin will help me do it easier than several other plugins combined.
So… I have only one question for you and it's a two-parter. Are you using HeadSpace? If not, why not?
