Hi @misty80 ,
Thanks for reaching out!
Both approaches are fine, and a lot of sites use a mix.
Letting AIOSEO fill things in: If you leave the Meta Description field empty for a post, All in One SEO falls back to your Search Appearance defaults for that content type (smart tags and templates), then the excerpt, and can also build a description from the post content when that behavior is enabled. So you are not leaving a “blank” site from an SEO hygiene perspective as long as something sensible ends up in the meta description tag.
Writing custom meta descriptions: Hand-written descriptions are most worth the time on pages that matter for traffic or conversions (homepage, key landing pages, money posts). That is where you care most about the snippet people see in search results and click-through. Google may still rewrite the snippet for a given query, but a clear, unique description you control is still the right default to aim for.
Practical approach: Use defaults and templates under Search Appearance for the long tail, then edit individual posts only where the auto text is weak (for example, long intros, listicles, or pages where the opening paragraph is not a good summary). That keeps cleanup manageable without doing hundreds of posts by hand unless you want to.
For how the fields work in the editor and with smart tags, see Setting the SEO Title and Description for Your Content.
For background on uniqueness, length, and how search engines use descriptions, see Meta Descriptions and What is SEO meta?.
Hope that helps.
