While out of the box WordPress is pretty good for SEO, it needs some tweaks here and there. This WordPress SEO plugin guides you through some of the settings needed, for instance by reminding you to enable pretty permalinks. But it also goes beyond that, by automatically optimizing and inserting the meta tags and link elements that Google and other search engines like so much:
Meta & Link Elements
With the WordPress SEO plugin you can control which pages Google shows in its search results and which pages it doesn't show. By default, it will tell search engines to index all of your pages, including category and tag archives, but only show the first pages in the search results. It's not very useful for a user to end up on the third page of your "personal" category, right?
WordPress itself only shows canonical link elements on single pages, WordPress SEO makes it output canonical link elements everywhere. Google has recently announced they would also use
rel="next" and rel="prev" link elements in the head section of your paginated archives, this plugin adds those automatically, see [this post](http://yoast.com/rel-next-prev-paginated-archives/ title="rel=next & rel=prev for paginated archives") for more info.XML Sitemaps
WordPress SEO has the most advanced XML Sitemaps functionality in any WordPress plugin. Once you check the box, it automatically creates XML sitemaps and notifies Google & Bing of the sitemaps existence. These XML sitemaps include the images in your posts & pages too, so that your images may be found better in the search engines too.
These XML Sitemaps will even work on large sites, because of how they're created, using one index sitemap that links to sub-sitemaps for each 1,000 posts. They will also work with custom post types and custom taxonomies automatically, while giving you the option to remove those from the XML sitemap should you wish to.
Because of using XSL stylesheets for these XML Sitemaps, the XML sitemaps are easily readable for the human eye too, so you can spot things that shouldn't be in there.
RSS Optimization
Are you being outranked by scrapers? Instead of cursing at them, use them to your advantage! By automatically adding a link to your RSS feed pointing back to the original article, you're telling the search engine where they should be looking for the original. This way, the WordPress SEO plugin increases your own chance of ranking for your chosen keywords and gets rid of scrapers in one go!
Breadcrumbs
If your theme is compatible, and themes based on Genesis or by WooThemes for instance often are, you can use the built-in Breadcrumbs functionality. This allows you to create an easy navigation that is great for both users and search engines and will support the search engines in understanding the structure of your site.
Making your theme compatible isn't hard either, check these instructions.
Edit your .htaccess and robots.txt file
Using the built-in file editor you can edit your WordPress blogs .htaccess and robots.txt file, giving you direct access to the two most powerful files, from an SEO perspective, in your WordPress install.
Social Integration
SEO and Social Media are heavily intertwined, that's why this plugin also comes with a Facebook OpenGraph implementation and will soon also support Google+ sharing tags.
Multi-Site Compatible
This WordPress SEO plugin, unlike some others, is fully Multi-Site compatible. The XML Sitemaps work fine in all setups and you even have the option, in the Network settings, to copy the settings from one blog to another, or make blogs default to the settings for a specific blog.
Import & Export functionality
If you have multiple blogs, setting up plugins like this one on all of them might seem like a daunting task. Except that it's not, because what you can do is simple: you set up the plugin once. You then export your settings and simply import them on all your other sites. It's that simple!
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