HeadSpace: Ultimate SEO Plugin for WordPress Blogs

WordPress

I do not use "Ultimate" much! In fact, I have not used that word in any of my posts on Blogging With Success before. But HeadSpace has made me say this!

HeadSpace is a complete package for SEO and much more. Want to see (long........) list of features?

1. Meta tags: HeadSpace lets you add meta information (Title, Description, Keywords) to posts or can automatically generate it.
2. Analytics and 10+ Other Tracking Services: HeadSpace automatically inserts Google Analytics and other tracking scripts to your blog. Icing on the cake is that you can disable the tracking for logged in users. This makes data more precise as your activity is not tracked!
3. Frame Breaking: Remember recent Digg Toolbar controversy? Digg used an iFrame to load websites and many site owners protested against this. iFrames can cause much harm to you. Content Scrapers can use iFrames to display sections of your blog(content) and place ads alongside. Your content will be displayed with their ads! You will lose revenue this way. HeadSpace can insert Frame Breaking code in your blog's pages so that iFrames iFrames ">can not be used!
4. Page Specific Themes: HeadSpace will let you choose theme for any post or page regardless of which theme is active. This way, you can easily set multiple themes for different pages while retaining your theme on other pages.
5. Custom Read More Text: Usually, themes have different variations for "Read More...". You can not edit this easily and if you want different text for just one post, you will need to dig into lots and lots of lines of code! HeadSpace makes it easy. So, next time, you can have "See All Pictures" for a picture post while "Read Full Article" for a different post!
6. Importing Settings: HeadSpace can automatically import data from other SEO plugins. 'All in One SEO' and many other plugins are supported.

This is just a small set of features. There are many more.

Introduction to HeadSpace

HeadSpace is not as popular as many other plugins mainly because it takes some time to set up and you can not use set and forget approach with it! However, as I said, it is very feature rich and has the key functionality of  a lot of plugins!

Setting Up HeadSpace

Do I need to explain how to install WordPress plugin? Just install via plugins directory!

The next step you have to take is disable your previous SEO plugin. Now, its time to Import Your Settings.

1. Go to Setting > HeadSpace.
2. Click "Import" in the list below title.
3. Select Your plugin, click Import.

Importing Plugin Data To HeadSpace

As with anything else that modifies your database you should backup your data before running an import. No responsibility is accepted for any kittens that may be killed in the process. -Warning on Import Page!

After this, we will adjust Page Modules.

What Are Page Modules: Page Modules are settings that apply to individual pages. They appear with WordPress TinyMCE Editor when you edit posts/pages.

HeadSpace lets you enable and disable the modules according to needs. To change Module Settings, go to Page Modules in HeadSpace navigation. The modules will be divided into Simple, Advanced and Disabled. Simple Modules are shown below the post editor while Advanced Modules are hidden behind a link. Disabled Modules, as the name tells, are disabled!

To change status of a module, all you have to do is drag and drop.

HeadSpace Page Modules

By default, keywords module is disabled. If you want to set keywords for SEO purpose, just drag the Keywords module from Disabled to Simple area. To see what a module does, just click the help button. Here's a quick look at which modules do what:

1. Page Title: Sets the title of current page/post. Title appears in the title bar of your browser. For example, we have set our home page title to "Learn How To Be A Successful Blogger" which shows up in browser title bar.
2. Page Description: Short description that Search Engines use in results. By default, search engines display a small snippet which may or may not be helpful. If you set a description, then it will show in place of snippet. Set it to something helpful(e.g. explain what the post is about and what it does) and it will appear there.
3. Keywords: Keywords are separate from tags. They are visible only to search engine.
   Do some Keyword Research Before Setting Up Keywords as wrong Keywords might result in penalties!

These were the main modules you would use most. To see what other modules do, just click the Help button in front of module name in HeadSpace.

Next, we have to set up the Page Settings. This will make HeadSpace automatically generate meta data the way you want.

Go to Page Settings in HeadSpace menu.

Before you set anything, take a look at Special Tags. HeadSpace can use special tags to determine meta data for posts automatically. They are self explanatory.

The first option is Global Settings. I recommend leaving it blank because if you do not specify settings for some pages that have multiple posts(categories, search etc.), HeadSpace will assign the meta content of first post to whole page. Something you do not want!

Set the next options to appropriate values. Use Special Tags wherever possible. For example, if you do not set description for a post, you can use %%excerpt%% in description field so that HeadSpace automatically uses first few sentences as description. Similarly, for keywords, you can use %%tag%% or %%category%% so that the tags/categories of current post are used as keywords.

By now, most of meta data is set and your blog is SEO optimized.

Next, you can add Google Analytics and other tracking codes to whole site. Go to Site Modules in HeadSpace navigation and click the edit button in front of module. Options will differ according to service chosen. One common setting across all services is "Who to Track". Set this to Contributor/Guest and HeadSpace will stop tracking users with more privileges than the given role. For example, here on Blogging With Success, we do not need to track admins (especially me, because I keep breaking things and reloading pages! ), so we have set it to track users below Contributor status. This helps keep traffic data precise.

There are other modules like "First Time Visitor" module that lets you display some message only to first time visitors, "Google Webmaster" module that lets you verify you blog for Google Webmaster Tools, "Google Section Targeting" that encloses content in Section Targeting Tags so that Adsense ads are more targeted etc.

It takes some time to set up HeadSpace and some more time to get used to it. But it is a complete solution for SEO for WordPress blogs + much more. I will recommend it to anyone using WordPress.

Have you used HeadSpace before? Do tell us about your experience.