So I’m going to make a historical analogy. Recall what the early days of newspaper journalism were like? Gutenberg’s printing press was a relatively new contraption. Newspapers were sprouting up like sugarcane in Hawaii. The country was in a media boom… a print media boom, that is.

Why is today like the Gilded Age once again? We’re beginning to see the maturation of online media. In the late 1880s, the heated battle between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal was at its apogee. The battle is best depicted in Citizen Kane. How does this compare with Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of MySpace and Google’s buy of YouTube? Quite well. And it could forebode the future of these young, immature media.

Print media, back then, was more “yellow” than “yellow” will ever be again in history - and thank God for that. The haphazard speed at which things happened in the Gilded Age encouraged bombast, inaccuracy, and sheer irresponsible journalism. It was the PT Barnum of reportage - always out for the sucker.

Online media, today? Much like print journalism in its yellow, gonzo era. But we’re coming out - and I’m not the only one to think this. Forbes had a report today posing the somewhat-rhetorical question: Is Content King Once More?

So is content really king now? Haven’t we been saying that for years of web media - and yet, each day is another video of a drunk David Hasselhoff, or a college girl taking a bath in macaroni and cheese. Each day provides yet more evidence that our culture doesn’t care about carefully constructed content any longer, and all they look for is a quick and dirty diversion?

Of course, these questions, too, may remain rhetorical for some time. And Forbes is merely posing the question as one of the few old media conglomerates that has managed to succeed online.

One of the most popular plugins for Wordpress is the All in One SEO pack by Semper Fi Web Design. Appropriate to its name, this plugin handles all of the nitty gritty details of SEO for those of you who don’t have the time - or the money - to improve the crawlability and ranking of your site.

Remember, despite its moniker, the All in One SEO pack still requires a bit of strategic thinking on your own part. You’ll still need to input a custom title and meta description for the home page (which is essential), and you should also exert control over the plugin options, when necessary (for example, some posts will require you to input a custom permalink that’s separate from the default permalink; this is vital for proper indexing in some cases).

The All in One SEO pack works flawlessly, and you’ll find that it’s quite intuitive.

In addition to its full range of options for title formats (for tags, archives, search titles, and more - even), you’ll find that the plugin gives you the ability to auto-generate meta descriptions, use NOINDEX for sections that pose a duplicate content issue, and provide custom titles, descriptions, and meta information for individual posts - if you so desire.

This is, by far, the best plugin for SEO I’ve seen out there, and I highly recommend adding it to your Wordpress install.