Many Wordpress bloggers will be familiar with using the All in One SEO plugin to specify title, description and keywords meta tags in the header of posts.
Since Thesis version 1.4 we’ve had SEO friendly capabilities built in directly to Thesis. When you create the post you can enter the all important SEO title, description and keywords tags. (although ‘keywords’ are somewhat less important right now)
If you have been blogging and using All In One SEO Pack for some time you may have hundreds of blog posts with titles, descriptions and keywords. And you certainly don’t want to lose them or have to type them in again.
No problem. You can move your titles, descriptions and keywords from All In One SEO Pack to Thesis in a single step. Click here for the solution below without the preamble.
All in One SEO Pack
The following diagram shows a sample post set up with a title, description and keywords using All in One SEO Pack.
[I have put 'All In One' in the values purely to identify the source as this is a test. Of course normally this text would not be included.]
The next image is representation of this in the database. This comprises a number of records in the wp_postmeta table where the meta_key is either title, description or keywords.
Using Thesis for SEO
I entered a second post. The following diagram shows a sample post set up with a title, description and keywords using Thesis.
[I have put 'Thesis' in the values purely to identify the source as this is a test. Of course normally this text would not be included.]
The next image is the representation of this in the database. This comprises a number of records in the wp_postmeta table where the meta_key is either thesis_title, thesis_description or thesis_keywords.
Say Goodbye (with fond thanks) to All In One SEO Pack
If All in One SEO Pack remains activated then the tags entered in Thesis are ignored and All In One SEO Tags are used.
To use these Thesis facilities you need to Deactivate the All in One SEO Pack however doing this switches off the title tag for earlier posts.
Copy title, description and keywords
I ran the following SQL against the Wordpress database to copy All In One SEO Pack title, description and keywords values to make them usable by Thesis.
insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, concat(‘thesis_’,meta_key),meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in (‘title’,'description’,'keywords’);
Now when accessing historic posts the title, description and keywords are preserved. We have title, descriptions and keywords originally entered using All In One SEO Pack now being used by Thesis.
This is what the details look like if you edit the post
This is an extract of the page html.
Note that with Thesis you can append the site name to the title and also include a tagline too.
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I just moved hundreds of All In One SEO pack meta stuff out and into Thesis with your SQL. Easy. Thanks.
I am surprised this has not become a part of Thesis. It would seem to me this could easily be added to the admin page to facilitate the migration from the plugin to Thesis entirely.
Careful with the cut & paste – I got a mysql error until I replaced the smart-quotes around thesis_, title, description & keywords with apostrophes. Those funny characters will kill the query dead (I tried it in IE 8). After replacing them it worked like a charm. Thanks!
The How-to Guy´s last blog ..Exfoliation Articles and Information
I’ve done the query above and here’s what I’ve got:
Inserted rows: 0 (Query took 0.0011 sec)
Any ideas?
I’m using Thesis 1.5.1 and MySQL 5.0 if that would help.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
All In One SEO Pack now stores comments slightly differently.
Please change your SQL as follows
insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, concat('thesis_', substring(meta_key,10)), meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in ('_aioseop_title','_aioseop_description','_aioseop_keywords');
Please let me know how you get on.
NOTE: Please make sure that your SQL statement should only contain apostrophes; in my previous comments Wordpress seems to have replaced the apostrophes with opening and closing quotation marks and this causes the SQL to fail to copy any rows.
I will now update the main post to reflect the changes
When I run this query, I get “No Data Returned.” I don’t know what else to do.
Brett McKay´s last blog ..Every Man Should Be Able to Save His Own Life: 5 Fitness Benchmarks a Man Must Master
Brett, what version of the All In One SEO Pack are you running? The SQL is slightly different depending on the version.
You can run this SQL to see what meta data you have: select meta_key,count(*) from wp_postmeta where meta_key like ‘%title’ or meta_key like ‘%description’ or meta_key like ‘%keywords’ group by meta_key;
Please make sure the above SQL has apostrophes when you try and run it and not fancy quotes (sometimes wordpress is a bit too clever in rendering punctuation)
Hi Russell,
I think it worked now. Here’s the result:
Inserted rows: 419
Inserted row id: 9750 (Query took 0.1083 sec)
Let me know if it’s okay now to remove All in one SEO plugin.
By the way, it’s a good thing that I was able to bookmark your site. I wish I could have done this earlier but it seems that you don’t use “subscribe to comments” plugin that’s why I wasn’t able to get your response. You might want to consider installing it.
Thanks again and please do email back to admin [at] softwarecritics [dot] info. I’d
appreciate it.
Mathdelane´s last blog ..WordCamp Philippines 2009 Highlights
when do you run this query? before of after you update the theme to thesis. and when do you deactivate all in one seo pack?
select meta_key,count(*) from wp_postmeta where meta_key like ‘%title’ or meta_key like ‘%description’ or meta_key like ‘%keywords’ group by meta_key;
meta_key count(*)
I am getting following result for the above query,
thesis_description 18
thesis_keywords 18
thesis_title 18
I have also done the query above and here’s what I’ve got:
Inserted rows: 0 (Query took 0.0012 sec)
Any ideas?
I’m using Thesis 1.5.1 and MySQL 5.0 if that would help.
Dear Pooja Arora, from your results it looks like you have no titles, descriptions and keywords that have been set up with All IN One SEO Pack.
If you don’t explicitly set up titles and descriptions, AIOSP uses the Post Title + the site name as the page title and the first 150 characters of post content (minus any links) as the meta description.
Thesis does a very similar thing to AIOSP if you don’t add an explicit title and description.
a) Thesis sets the title to the Post Title (and adds the site name if you specify you want to add it in Thesis options).
b) Thesis uses the first 160 characters of the post for the meta description.
So I believe you’re move to Thesis is successful. Go ahead and disable AIOSP and then take a sample post, do a view page source and check the title, meta description are populated correctly. If it is not correct you can revert back to AIOSP simply by reactivating the plugin.
Let me know how you get on.
Paul,
Update the theme to Thesis, then run the query, then deactivate AIOSP, then check the page source on a number of posts to make sure than titles and descriptions are preserved. If it fails you can reactivate AIOSP
Hi Russell,
I have checked page source of the sample post on my blog,It’s showing title,Meta Description and Meta keywords for that post, what will be next step to activate the AIOSP ?, because how can i configure the AIOSP for my existing posts on my blog?
Pooja Arora´s last blog ..What is Money Management?
Hi Pooja, I am a bit confused about your question. This post is for users who want want to switch off AIOSP and move all their title tags, meta descriptions to Thesis. Are you a using the Thesis theme right now or planning to use the Thesis theme? Regards, Russell
Hi Russell,
I installed Thesis few months ago and forgot to deactivate my All in One SEO plugin. I think my blog was ranked #1 in Google for the popular search terms in my niche. After I installed Thesis, I started populating the Thesis SEO feature and stopped filling out all the information needed in my blog All in One SEO section. Since then, my blog is nowhere to be found in Google for the same term! I’m so bummed!
I read in your article here that if All in One SEO Pack remains activated then the tags entered in Thesis are ignored and All In One SEO Tags are used.
I’m not that wordpress tech savvy. I don’t know how to run SQL against my Wordpress DB. I can do some reading about this but I would like to get a fast intermediate solution to my SEO problem before I do the SQL database thing. Therefore, can you recommend to me which option is better to do:
1) Use both the Thesis SEO feature and All in One SEO by putting the same title, description and keywords for both the Thesis SEO and All in One SEO for my new posts (post Thesis) and old posts (pre Thesis).
If I choose this one, will it hurt my blog SEO?
2) Ignore the titles, descriptions and keywords for the old posts I did with the All in One SEO and move on with filling out the titles, descriptions and keywords for my new posts with the Thesis SEO?
Thank you so much!
Mutiara
Mutiara´s last blog ..Is That All There Is? What’s Next?
Hi Mutiara,
I suggest you take the following approach
1) Keep AIOSP active for now and keep using AIOSP to add titles, descriptions and keywords
2) Learn how to run SQL on your database, your host should provide phpMyAdmin with which you can run queries
3) Then run the following SQL to see what you have and then report back.
select m.meta_key, count(*) as vals from wp_postmeta m join wp_posts p on p.ID = m.post_id where p.post_type = ‘post’ and m.meta_key like ‘%title’ or m.meta_key like ‘%description’ or m.meta_key like ‘%keywords’ group by m.meta_key;
4) Backup your database
5) Use the appropriate SQL given in the main post to copy titles, descriptions and keywords from AIOSP to Thesis
6) Deactivate AIOSP
7) View source of some posts to check the title tags and descriptions are as expected.
Regards
Russell
Does the DIYTheme generate meta data automatically as “All in one SEO” does?
Stephen D.´s last blog ..St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Kurt Greenbaum Learn The Hard Way
Stephen, Yes, the Thesis does generate meta data almost identically to All in One SEO – it uses the post title as the ‘title’ and the first 160 characters of the post as the meta description. So you lose or gain nothing as far as default behaviour is concerned.
Of course, it is recommend to tweak the title and meta description to make sure they include your keywords. Also please ensure the meta description is constructed to encourage click through when it appears in the search engine results listing. Or write your article so that that the first 160 characters grip the reader to keep them reading
thanks, i have move my custom key from all in one so pack to thesis. no i don’t need this plugin
Great info!
Thanks for sharing man!
Kim Hartley Leading skin care specialist Everything you need to know about your skin and hair says… This sounds interesting. I currently use All In One SEo and going to give this is try by following your instructions. Thanks for the info, I’ll let you know what happens.
Regards
Kim (Have Younger Skin) Hartley´s last blog ..Combining a Natural Acne Scar Treatment with Anti Aging Creams Gets the Best Results