Comment posted to Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Review by Mike Johnson.
As we talked about in our Private email exchange, I found that my robots.txt file is highly accurate minus 2 references to trackbacks that Google will not recognize. I am constantly tuning and I am finding that minus a few quirks in the WordPress SEO plugin here that even my members are reporting faster indexing and changes with this plugin compared to Platinum SEO, All in One SEO, and SEO Ultimate. That cannot be a coincidence. My own tests have shown the same and even one of my test blogs that I was not intending to show to the world yet ended up indexed within an hour of the first post with every base page and the single post all indexed and on the first page already (very weak niche). The new update at version 1.8 and Version 1.9 of this plugin will take care of 99% of the issues that have been identified as I am curiously watching Joost’s updates on WordPress.org.
I am impressed and will continue to use the plugin since I use numerous themes. One SEO theme, while very solid in SEO is a great thing, users look for more on the sites they visit. Profitability comes from a mix of great SEO and a Value added site created with the user in mind and not primarily SEO.
You can have a perfect site SEO wise, but if a visitor thinks it looks like a junk or plain looking site, a lot of the time they will click away. Aesthetics are as important as SEO in determining how visitors react when they get to your sites. To look past this from a Marketing standpoint is as wrong as it gets. A solid SEO base with a user friendly site is the combination that breeds success rather than just enables it.
Mike
