How to use SEO SIMPLE PACK

A simple SEO plugin “SEO SIMPLE PACK” was created and released. In this post, we would like to show you how to use it.

We recommend this plugin to those who think “I use a plugin like ‘All in one seo pack’ but it has too many configuration items and is difficult to use.

From Ver. 1.1, more detailed settings for robots tag can be specified for individual pages, which will invalidate the settings for Ver. 1.0. We apologize for the inconvenience to those who have been using Ver. 1.0 or later, but we would appreciate your re-configuration.

How to install

Search for “SEO SIMPLE PACK” on the Add Plugins screen and install it.

SIMPLE SEO PACK in the plugin search screen — Looks like this

You can of course download it from the plugin page of the WordPress directory and upload it manually.

About default settings

This section describes the default settings when the “SEO SIMPLE PACK” is activated.

In addition, the contents shown in the following explanation as “text with background” are those registered as “snippet tags” as described below.

title tag

Home: Site title | Site catchphrase
Post, Page, Custom post, and media: Page title | Site title
Category, tag, taxonomy, post format archive: Category name | Site title
Tag name | Site title
Term name | Site title
Post format name | Site title
Author archive: Author name (Nickname) | Site title
Date archive: Date (Y M, D) | Site title
Post type archive: Post type name | Site title
Search result page: Searched: Search word | Site title
404 page: Page not found | Site title

description tag

Home: No setting (If nothing is set, “catchphrase” will be output)
Post, Page, Custom post, and media: Automatic output from the content of the page (the part within 300 characters after removing unnecessary tags)
Category, tag, taxonomy, post format archive: ~~“This is the archive page for category Category name.”~~
~~“This is the archive page for tag Tag name.”~~
~~“This is the archive page for taxonomy name Term name.”~~ From ver. 1.2.1, the default for new installations is “Term Description”.
~~“This is the archive page for post format Post format name.”~~
Author archive: “This is the archive page for Author name (Nickname).”
Date archive: “This is the archive page for Date (Y M, D).”
Post type archive: “This is the archive page for Post type name.”
Search result page: None
404 page: None

meta keyword tag

Keyword tags are now considered meaningless from an SEO perspective, but they can still be set.

However, the keyword tag does not output anything by default.

meta robots tag

If you select “Do not index XXXX” on the admin page, you can make the page noindex.

The following pages are set as noindex by default.

Archived Pages
Media page
Search results page
404 page

The actual output meta tag is "noindex,follow".
Currently, nofollow, noarchive, and other detailed settings are not available. (This will be made selectable in a future update.)
The reason why “follow” is used instead of “nofollow” is because it is better in most cases. For more information, please check with Google or other search engines.

canonical URL

This is automatically output according to the page.

OGP tag

og:image: Posts, pages, and custom posts will use “featured image” if available.
If there is no featured image or other pages, the “Basic Settings” image, which can be set in the “OGP Settings” page in the admin menu, will be used.
No OGP image is specified for basic settings, so nothing will be output by default.
og:locale: This is automatically output from WordPress language settings (wp_locale()).
og:type: "article" is output for posts, pages, and custom posts. "website" is output for other pages.
og:title: The same content as the title tag
og:description: The same content as the description tag
og:url: The contents of home_url()
og:site_name: The “Site Title” set in WordPress
Facebook setting: The settings related to article:publisher, fb:app_id, and fb:admins tags can be configured.
Nothing is output by default.
Twitter setting: The settings related to twitter:site, and twitter:card tags can be configured.
The default card type is “summary“.

Non-used pages

For pages that are rarely used or should not be used for security reasons, access can be denied through redirection.

The following three pages are disabled and redirected to secure pages by default.

Author archive (Redirect to Home)
Post format archive (Redirect to Home)
Media page (Redirect to the image URL)

Also, from ver. 2.4.0, feed pages are no longer indexed.

How to setup

After activating the “SEO SIMPLE PACK,” an item titled “SEO PACK” will be added to the left menu of the admin page.

There are three menus “General Settings”, “OGP Settings” and “HELP,” but only two pages “General Settings” and “OGP Settings” are used for settings.

General settings

“General Settings” menu has tabs for each setting type.

“Basic setting” tab

The following five points can be set:

Check “Site Title” and “Tagline” which are set in “Settings”->”General” of WordPress.
Select “delimiter”
title, description, and keyword tag settings for “front page”
Keyword setting for each post when keyword setting is empty
title tag setting for “404 pages” and “search result page”

Screenshot of the SSP settings screen: Basic setting — Screenshot of the “Basic setting” setting screen

“Post page” tab

The following points can be set:

Posts
Pages
Custom posts (only if registered)
Media page

Screenshot of the “Post page” setting screen

Screenshot of the SSP settings screen: Post page — Screenshot of the “Post page” setting screen

“Taxonomy archive” tab

Category archive page
Tag archive page
Custom Taxonomy archive page (only if registered)
Post format archive page (from ver. 3.0.0, this will only appear if post format support is enabled)

Screenshot of the “Taxonomy archive” setting screen

Screenshot of the SSP settings screen: Taxonomy archive — Screenshot of the “Taxonomy archive” setting screen

“Other archives” tab

The following points can be set:

Author archive page
Date archive page
Custom post type archive page

Screenshot of the “Other archives” setting screen

Screenshot of the SSP settings screen: Other archives — Screenshot of the “Other archives” setting screen

Google Analytics and Webmaster tools

The “General Settings” screen also allows for settings related to “Google Analytics” code and various “Webmaster tools“.

Google Analytics

Simply enter your Google Analytics tracking ID to automatically insert the tracking code.

We recommend using gtag.js if there is no particular reason, but you can also use the previous analytics.js tracking code.

Screenshot of the SSP settings screen: Goolge Analytics — Screenshot of the “Google Analytics” setting screen

Webmaster tools

Enter each webmaster tools ID to insert authentication code into the home.

The following four webmaster tools are currently supported.

Google Search Console
Bing
Baidu
Yandex

Screenshot of the SSP settings screen: Webmaster tools — Screenshot of the “Webmaster tools” setting screen

OGP settings

The “OGP Settings” menu allows you to configure various settings related to OGP.

The “Basic Settings” tab is for basic OGP tag settings. (Currently there are only settings for OGP images, but we plan to add more in the future.)

Other settings related to Facebook and Twitter tags are also available.

OGP image

Select the OGP image you want to use in the home.

Screen if the image has been successfully selected — Screenshot when the image is selected correctly

Individually configurable settings

Settings for post, page, and custom post

The meta box (custom field) is displayed on the edit page for posts, pages, and custom posts. This allows you to set individual settings for each article.

Meta box on the editor — Meta box on the edit page

Currently, the following settings are available individually (if nothing is entered, the settings in the settings page will be applied):

~~noindex setting (Whether to reverse for general settings)~~
robots setting (You can now specify robots in more detail.)
title tag setting (ver 1.1 ~)
description tag setting
og:image setting (ver 2.0.0 ~)
canonical URL setting (ver 2.2.0 ~)
keyword setting

As for the OGP image, if the post has “featured image”, it will take precedence over the OGP image.

Category, tag, and taxonomy settings by term

From ver 1.2.1, individual settings are available for each term archive in addition to the post page.

The following settings are now available on each term edit page including categories and tags.

robots setting
title tag setting
description tag setting
canonical URL setting (ver 2.2.0 ~)
og:imageのsetting (ver 2.0.0 ~)

About snippet tags

In “SEO SIMPLE PACK,” dynamic contents such as “site title” and “delimiters” can be handled as “snippet tags“.

The following is a list of snippet tags that are currently available.

From ver 3.0.0, some snippet tag names have changed, but previous snippet names will still work.

Snipet Tag	Snippet tag (old)	Contents to be replaced
`%_site_title_%`		Site title
`%_tagline_%`	`%_phrase_%`	Site catchphrase
`%_front_description_%`	`%_description_%`	Front description
`%_sep_%`		Delimiter
`%_page_title_%`		Post title
`%_page_contents_%`		Page content
`%_term_name_%`	`%_cat_name_%` `%_tag_name_%` `%_format_name_%`	Term name
`%_term_description_%`		Term description
`%_tax_name_%`		Taxonomy name
`%_post_type_%`		Post type name
`%_date_%`		The date that is searching in the date archive
`%_author_name_%`		Author name
`%_search_phrase_%`		Search word

Use these snippet tags for the text input area in the settings screen.

You can see how the snippet tags in the current setting will be replaced in the “Preview” field.

About filter hooks

From ver. 1.1.0, the code has been updated a little more significantly, and apply_filters() has been added before the output of major tags.

This allows you to override the output with whatever you like by add_filter() in your theme’s functins.php.

ssp_output_title: Override the output content of the title tag

function overwrite_ssp_title($ssp_title) { 
    if ( is_page('book') ) {
        // If you want to rewrite only certain pages with special settings
        return "Your title";
    }
    // Other pages are output as is
    return $ssp_title;
}
add_filter('ssp_output_title', 'overwrite_ssp_title');

ssp_output_robots: Override the output content of the robots tag

function overwrite_ssp_robots($ssp_robots) { 
    if ( is_page('book') ) {
        return "Your robots";
    }
    return $ssp_robots;
}
add_filter('ssp_output_robots', 'overwrite_ssp_robots');

ssp_output_description: Override the output content of the description tag

function overwrite_ssp_description($ssp_description) { 
    if ( is_page('book') ) {
        return "Your description";
    }
    return $ssp_description;
}
add_filter('ssp_output_description', 'overwrite_ssp_description');

ssp_output_keyword: Override the output content of the keyword tag

function overwrite_ssp_keyword($ssp_keyword) { 
    if ( is_page('book') ) {
        return "Your keyword";
    }
    return $ssp_keyword;
}
add_filter('ssp_output_keyword', 'overwrite_ssp_keyword');

ssp_output_canonical: Override the output content of the canonical tag

function overwrite_ssp_canonical($ssp_canonical) { 
    if ( is_page('book') ) {
        return "https://your-canonical.com";
    }
    return $ssp_canonical;
}
add_filter('ssp_output_canonical', 'overwrite_ssp_canonical');

ssp_description_word_count: Change the number of characters in the description

function overwrite_ssp_description_word_count($length) {
    if ( is_page('book') ) {
        return 30;
    }
    return $ssp_canonical;
}
add_filter('ssp_description_word_count', 'overwrite_ssp_description_word_count');

List of other available filter hook names

Filter Target	Filter Hook Name
og:title	`ssp_output_og_title`
og:description	`ssp_output_og_description`
og:url	`ssp_output_og_url`
og:locale	`ssp_output_og_locale`
og:type	`ssp_output_og_type`
og:site_name	`ssp_output_og_site_name`（Ver. 2.0.0 以降）
og:image	`ssp_output_og_image` （Ver. 2.0.0 以降）
twitter:site	`ssp_output_tw_site`
twitter:card	`ssp_output_tw_card`
fb:app_id	`ssp_output_fb_appid`
fb:admins	`ssp_output_fb_admins`
article:publisher	`ssp_output_fb_publisher`

About Filter Hooks for Custom Snippets

In ver. 3.0.0, ssp_replace_snippet_{snippet_name} hook was added. This allows you to replace your own defined custom snippets using the filter hook.

Replace the special snippet “%_custom_%“

function overwrite_ssp_replace_snippet_custom($replace, $context) {
    if ( $context === 'title' ) {
        return 'カスタム';
    }
    return $replace;
}
add_filter('ssp_replace_snippet_custom', 'overwrite_ssp_replace_snippet_custom', 10, 2);

Conclusion: Update Log

This is the first time we have published our own plugin.

We have implemented only the minimum functions that we need, so there may be some points that are still difficult to use.

We plan to improve the flexibility of the settings in the future, but if you have any requests, please let us know in the comments section of this article.

Postscript (10/22/2018)

Although we struggled with the unfamiliar updating process, we think it is a little better than in the early days.
The SNS settings are still not very flexible, but we have enabled add_filter, so if you are familiar with WordPress, you can set it as you like.