Advanced Settings for All in One SEO Pack

Autogenerate Descriptions

The Autogenerate Descriptions setting will automatically generate a Meta Description for any Post Type using the Post Excerpt, or the first 160 characters of the post content if there is no Post Excerpt.

By default, WordPress will automatically generate a post excerpt from the first 55 words of your post content, or you can simply write one in the Excerpt field of the Edit Post screen. All in One SEO will use your post excerpt for the auto generated meta description. If there is no post excerpt then it will use the first 160 characters of your post content. This can be especially useful if you have a lot of content and don't want to input a meta description for every page/post. You can overwrite any auto-generated Meta Description by editing the post or page.

Important Note: Search engines encourage and prefer you to write a meta description for each page or post on your site. They prefer this to a meta description that has been automatically generated for you from your content.  This is an important part of good on-site SEO. Read our Meta Description documentation for additional information.

Use Content For Autogenerated Descriptions

By default, All in One SEO will use the Post Excerpt from a post as the autogenerated meta description and then fall back to using the content if an excerpt is not present. Some users may want to change this behavior. This setting will always use the post content for autogenerated meta descriptions and ignore the post excerpt.

WooCommerce users should note that this setting was added so that the autogenerated meta descriptions would be generated from the product content instead of the Product Short Description. Enable this setting if you don't want to use Product Short Description for your meta description.

Run Shortcodes in Autogenerated Descriptions

This setting will ensure that any shortcodes contained in your post content are executed before we autogenerate the meta descriptions. This option was added because some page builders wrap content inside shortcodes. This setting means that those shortcodes are executed before a meta description is autogenerated so that the meta description more closely resembles your content as it appears on the site.

Remove Descriptions for Paginated Pages

Remove Descriptions for Paginated Pages is an option that will help you avoid getting duplicate Meta Description warnings in Google Search Console. It is unchecked by default because this is not a major source of penalization. When you check this box, your Meta Description will only show on the first page of your paginated content and will be removed from all following paginated content pages. Read this documentation on WordPress.com about paginating content.

Never Shorten Long Descriptions

By default, All in One SEO will truncate Meta Descriptions to 160 characters. This means that any text you enter in the SEO Descriptions fields in All in One SEO will be shortened. If you wish to have All in One SEO output your description intact without truncating it then check this box.

Redirect Attachments to Post Parent

This setting will redirect media attachment URLs back to their parent post. If you embed an image into a post/page and link it to the Attachment Page then this will redirect to the parent post when a visitor clicks on the image.

Exclude Pages

If you enter a comma separated list of Post or Page slugs in this field then All in One SEO will not output any meta information whatsoever for that Page or Post. The All in One SEO box will still appear on the Edit Post/Page screen but whatever you enter will not be output to the source code of that Page or Post. The Page or Post will still appear in the XML Sitemap if you are using All in One SEO Pro to generate your XML Sitemap.

You can find the slug for any post or page by clicking on Quick Edit in the All Posts or All Pages screen. See the WordPress documentation here.