Comment on SEO Silo Theme by SEO Dave.

SEO Silo Structure I see you’ve been reading some SEO HTML Layout info :-)

In principal yes, having a left sidebar would mean your important code loads after your main content, most sites with a left sidebar would have an HTML code output (what you see when viewing HTML source) like this:

Header
Navigation Menu
Left Sidebar
Main Content
Right Sidebar
Footer

Looking at my site in a browser that’s what it looks like.

The general SEO consensus is having your most important content high in the HTML code is preferred.

View source of this site (you will find it hard to read as I have the HTML code minified for SEO performance reasons), the HTML code layout is:

Header
Main Content
Sidebar(s) (there’s a left and a right sidebar in the code)
Footer
Navigation Menu
Search Form
Social Media Profile links (in an iFrame for SEO reasons)
Top/Bottom Scroll Links

I’m using a customized version of a 3 column CSS holy grail layout, the customized bit is the navigation menu and other code loaded near the footer and the ability to use the same HTML code for multiple layouts: probably one of the best SEO layouts possible. Only way to improve this would be load the header below main content and the amount of content in the header is minimal, the search form code for example isn’t loaded in the header all that is, is a link back to home and the site tagline (which can be moved to the footer).

Before you hit main content on this site all you have to go through is

One link to home with anchor text: WordPress SEO Packages

And this tagline: Best Google Hummingbird SEO Package for WordPress

After that it’s main content. That’s as close to SEO perfect as possible.

If you look under “Stallion Theme” >> “Layout Options” you can select from 12 layouts that load the sidebars in different ways. Doesn’t matter which of those layouts you choose the HTML output is the same, the output is always:

Header
Main Content
Sidebar(s)
Footer
Navigation Menu
Search Form
Social Media Profile links (in an iFrame for SEO reasons)
Top/Bottom Scroll Links

The Stallion layouts all use the same HTML code, it’s different CSS rules that generate what you see in the browser.

You’ll note my navigation menu that in a browser loads just below the header is code wise loaded right at the bottom of the code.

There’s an SEO consensus links that are higher in the code are given more value than those lower in the code. So with Stallion Responsive the hoe page link you see in the header is found first followed by pretty much the main content links, followed by sidebars, footer and navigation menu..

I don’t brag it’s the best WordPress SEO Package for fun :-)

To get your site acting a lot like this one go to the main Stallion Options page, tick

“Use My Default Settings File SEO Version : stallion_defaults_seo.php”

“Save Settings”

This loads the sort of settings I use on most of my sites, it’s added so I can quickly set a site up with minimal hassle.

Doing the above changes any options you already set, so it’s all the main options pages are changed in one click.

Read the section “New To Stallion, Fast Setup Instructions” on the main options page for more details what to change to customize AdSense and Chitika options.

On this site specific changes are:

Main Options page
AdSense OFF – not running AdSense here
Privacy Policy Footer Link = Show Footer Link Referrer Version
Privacy Policy URL – https://stallion-theme.co.uk/privacy-policy/ : you need to create a static Page and set the page template to the Privacy Policy template and link to it here.

Child Theme Options
Thumbnail Set – Business

AdSense Options – if I had AdSense turned on, which I don’t
Ad Unit 1 – Main Ad Float = Float Right (floated right because I’m using the left sidebar layout and looks better)

I’d create three AdSense responsive beta ad units (under my AdSense account rather than use the Stallion built in code for performance reasons). Read the instructions on the first box on the page called “Full AdSense Ad Unit Code : stradunit1”

Layour Options
Sidebar Layout = 3 (left sidebar rather than right)
Author Archives Link OFF – Show Author Name
Page Dates OFF
Author Biography ON – Build the content for the author bio on your WordPress profile page.
Comment Button Clickable Link ON – clickbable (which is SEO damaging) because this is a well commented site, if it had few comments I wouldn’t bother.

Colour Options
White n Blue Rounded Corners
Alternative Stallion Header Area Header Image ON
Alternative Stallion Header Area Header Image = Custom 1 jpg – I’ve created a custom header image (the horse and responsive image behind the header) named c1.jpg https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/headers/c1.jpg

I used an FTP program to upload c1.jpg to the relevant folder above.

Promotion Options
Turn Buttons ON Bottom of Content
Your Twitter Name – change it to yours
Linkedin Button ON
Social Network Profile Links ON – set your social media profile UTLs on your WordPress profile page.
Full Google Analytics Code – the tracking code from Google Analytics for this domain
Google Authorship = https://plus.google.com/+DavidLaw/ this requires linking your Google+ account to your site, there’s a tutorial link on the options page.

Performance Options
All of the default WP widgets ticked other than:
Default WP Widget Tagcloud
Default WP Widget Text

Similar with the Stallion widgets, ones left on (not ticked) are:
Stallion RSS Feeds Widget
Stallion YouTube RSS Widget
Stallion Custom Ad Widget
Stallion Single Posts Widget
Stallion Spacer Widget
Stallion Padding Widget
Stallion Row End Widget
Stallion Search Comments Widget
Stallion SEO Recent Comments Widget
Stallion SEO Posts Widget

Disabled all but two default widgets because not using them. I’ve used the tagcloud for categories and text widgets are useful. What you disable here depends on what you don’t use, basically create your widgets and what you haven’t used turn off to conserve resources.

So on this site I’m not using the remaining 11 Stallion widgets, so turned them off.

SEO Advanced Options
301 Redirect Attachment Page URLs OFF – I have a few images I want to load as attachments.
Image Link To None OFF – option related to the attachment links
Auto Alt Text OFF – I ALWAYS set a relevant alt text attribute for all images so no need for Stallion to check for missing alt attributes, if you haven’t been vigilant when adding images set to on
Nofollow Comment Links = Nofollow OFF – I regularly post links within my comments so don’t want nofollow (SEO damage) added, I always manually delete links added by other commenter’s. If you never add clickable links to your comments set to Nofollow On and when a commenter posts a clickable links delete it.

The rest of the site layout is suing the right widgets the right way and creating posts/pages using the different Stallion page templates. Like the sitemap (link in the footer) uses a Stallion sitemap page template.

David