I wrote an SEO Tutorial some years ago (before using WP), the older search engine optimization tutorial is still very relevant, but like the rest of the world I moved on and now use WordPress as an SEO CMS. Hence this free WordPress SEO guide. WordPress SEO WordPress out the box (vanilla WordPress with no WordPress SEO plugins or WordPress SEO theme) is pretty good from an SEO perspective, WordPress is a really good base SEO CMS for building optimized websites. However, it is far from search engine optimized and it’s very easy to make on-page SEO mistakes within WordPress especially when using popular WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast WordPress SEO and All In One SEO Pack. All the popular […]
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Wordpress SEO Newsletter
A very good post. Do you use to send newsletters as well ?
How to Debug WordPress Plugins
David
I am an ID10T when it comes to fault finding and debugging plugins. I have installed a few plugins based upon the recommendations made by a few brilliant people like yourself. (I bought a WordPress SEO theme from you!)
I am experiencing something strange: My Categories are not working correctly – when I click on the category that is the “default”, no problem. When I click on any of the other links it reports that no content can be found.
WordPress Plugins installed:
———————
Massive Passive Profits Plugin
Platinum SEO Pack
SEO Super Comments for Talian 05
WP Auto Tagger
WPEasyContent, Platinum Edition (Deactivated)
To see what I mean, go to and click the categories (Top left).
Also, my site looks BAD! What do I have to change to make it look like your site? I also want to include the “LINKS” widget as on your page.
Please help and any suggestions would be most welcome.
This is my first site – when I am happy with this one, I will create many more provided I can get this one to work correctly and look more pleasing.
Thank you in advance!
Barry
How to Debug WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugin Platinum SEO Pack Review
Review your WordPress Permalinks Settings and the .htaccess file that’s crated by those settings. Looks like you’ve either made a mistake on the Permalinks settings page and/or on the .htaccess file.
SEO Friendly WordPress Permalinks might help.
I would strongly advise not using the “Platinum SEO Pack” WordPress plugin, you’ve made some awful SEO settings (you’ve nofollowed Categories and Tags, BIG mistake) that’s going to seriously damage your sites SEO by deleting link benefit and making it harder for search engines to spider your site! Never use nofollow or a so called WordPress SEO Plugin that uses nofollow as an ‘SEO feature’.
You’ve gone a bit overboard on the ads. In my experience AdSense tends to perform better than anything else so prioritise the AdSense ads near the top on your sidebar. The AdSense link ad units however perform poorly so if you are running more than one ad system don’t add the link ad unit to the sidebar. In the next update will be easier to disable ads within the content, has to be as you’ll have Chitika ads as well as an option. Also added Kontera and Infolinks for the intext ads as well.
For the Link widget go to the widgets page and drag and drop a links widget on one of the sidebars.
Take a look at the WordPress SEO Plugins page for plugins like the Post Teaser Plugin that can make your site more attractive.
In the theme update there’s some built in features like using featured images/other images on the archive pages so there are images even without using the Post Teaser plugin. If you add YouTube videos to posts the archive links to them will use the YouTube screenshot like a featured image for that post.
David
WordPress Plugin Platinum SEO Pack Review
WordPress SEO Plugins
David
THANK YOU for this reply and all the awesome advice! Like I said, I am still an ID10T but that will hopefully change as I learn more.
I have de-activated and deleted the Platinum SEO Pack. It stands to reason that Talian is ALREADY OPTIMISED for SEO and in addition I am also using SEO Super Comments? (Nothing else really required)
I will also install the Post Teaser Plugin as suggested.
Something for you to look at in Talian: (Bug?)
1. Using FireFox: The “Read more” link at the bottom of the post is clickable – but when I click it, I am taken right back to where I was – I still cannot see the full post. (Might be my own self induced problem)
2.Using IE 8: The “Read more” link is NOT clickable.(Bug?)
For both FireFox and IE 8 above: When I hover my mouse on the TAGS displayed at the bottom of the post (Auto-Tagger) – For example: “Buy Ipad” the IE 8 and FireFox toolbar on the bottom of the page also shows iPad/ but when I hover my mouse over the Read more link in IE 8 nothing is shown (That is why it is not clickable!), in FireFox is shows the path as:
I went over my settings many times and cannot find where I could have made this mistake. The only place where I could find this is on my WordPress PermaLinks settings: Custom: /%PostName%/ . Category Base and Tags are still blank.
As to the nofollow, I cannot find any settings. Must have been removed when I removed Platinum SEO Plugin.
Just to check, I visited your son’s site. The same “Read more” link on the bottom of the post is clickable in FireFox and IE8 AND the full post is shown.
Now I can only think that my website is FUBAR! Maybe I must just wipe everything and start over? Unless you could detect my stupidity from everything I said above?
WordPress SEO Plugins
WordPress SEO Permalinks Tutorial
The Platinum SEO Pack Plugin would have been responsible for the nofollow links, as you’ve disabled it they have been removed.
The messed up URLs for posts etc… that have a URL ending %PostName% will be related to the Permalinks settings and/or the .htaccess file.
Under
Settings >> Permalinks
The Custom Structure box should contain something like:
/%postname%
Looks like you are using
/%PostName%
The uppercase P and N is the problem, it’s not recognised by WordPress as postname. Change it to
/%postname%
And the problem should be fixed.
David
WordPress SEO Permalinks Tutorial
WordPress SEO Permalinks Tutorial
David
I nearly wiped my website! BUT thanks to you, the PROBLEM is now fixed! Everything is working as it is supposed to!
It is people like you that make ID10Ts like me continue and not give up hope! THANK YOU!
At least I know I can now continue with my other micro niche sites without further problems. You really don’t know how much this means to me.
Please put me on your “early notifier list for “Stallion Updates”.
Take care
Barry
WordPress SEO Permalinks Tutorial
Best WordPress SEO Theme
Hi Dave,
I got the theme going great now. Looks like the seo is the best yet. I was using an seo optimizer software that ranks pages from A to D.I got my main page an A+. Oh also found a plugin that was messing up the theme also.
Alexa Site Speed
Hi Dave,
When I check my site in Alexa, I notice this note:
“Slow (1.989 Seconds), 67% of sites are faster.
Note: Slow sites may be penalized by search engines.”
I started addressing this and my first stop is at the Markup Validation Service, when I check it out, the report suggests there are 7 errors. I checked your site too (yeah, trying to copy the master from time to time)… and I noticed some errors are also reported at the same spot (Facebook Social Plugin). I was wondering whether you could give me some ideas on how to troubleshoot it (beyond disabling the plugin, which I do not want to).
Thanks
Héctor
P.S: If you have any comments on how to improve the speed of the site, it will be very welcome.
Alexa Site Speed
Website Speed
I have the same problem Hector.
Website Speed Optimization
There’s a lot going on with most WordPress sites which means they can be slowed by a variety of plugins (some are poorly made), theme features, images, embedded content, javascript etc… then there’s how good/bad the host/server you are using (is it oversold, poorly configured).
The W3C validation errors related to the Facebook Widget are because Facebook uses proprietary code for it’s javascript, there’s no way I know of to get it validating. Don’t you just hate it when big companies like Facebook and Microsoft use non standard code! Fortunately a validation error does not mean the code is broken, most errors are non damaging, the real value in tools like the W3C validator is tracking down errors that break something not removing validator errors for the sake of it.
BTW Stallion validates if you don’t use the Facebook features, but like you I like that widget, generates traffic.
I went out of my way to make Stallion use as few resources as possible for the theme features, but each feature does use resources, so more features you turn on more server resources used (this is true of any theme/plugin you use). With many Stallion features if you don’t turn them on within the various Stallion options pages they have no impact on speed. For example if you turn an ad network off the files related to that ad network are never even loaded by WordPress (it’s like they don’t exist). This is not how many WordPress themes are designed, most themes if a feature exists the code related to that feature is loaded by WordPress even if you don’t use it.
Since to use an ad network like AdSense, Chitika, Clickbank etc… requires embedding javascript that connects to the ad networks servers it’s advisable to not use all the ad networks on one site at the same time. If you run all 6 AdSense ads that’s 6 connections to AdSense to connect to their javascript, add 6 Clickbank ads that’s another 6 connections, use the Facebook widget another connection, embed YouTube videos more connections… all slowing a site down a small amount each. If something you connect to is running slow (Facebook/Twitter for example) it will slow your site down.
Run a lot of WordPress plugins, some are poorly optimised, for example I used to use a category plugin on a site with over 60,000 posts and a few hundred categories (it limited the number of categories shown), it added hundreds of extra database queries which meant it was slowing down MySQL. For a quick way to check if a plugin is generating a lot of database queries I’ve included database queries within Stallion (within the footer for those logged in, queries can be turned on/off). If you find your site generates a lot of database queries check if it’s reduced by disabling a plugin. This page as I type this shows (55 queries in 0.465 seconds) which is pretty good.
Had a quick look at your code see a lot of javascript loaded related to various plugins. Also see you use the All in One SEO Pack WordPress SEO Plugin, it adds very little to a sites SEO : see All in One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin Review. I see your tags are nofollow, that is such a bad SEO idea, you are deleting link benefit for no gain!
These so called WordPress SEO Plugins are dangerous, if they had something SEO wise I wanted in Stallion it would already be built into Stallion or I’d advise it’s use at WordPress SEO Plugins.
David
Website Speed Optimization
Website Speed Test
Thanks Dave.
I deactivated all the WordPress plugins and did a quick website speed test… I did not notice much difference. I’m going to check my webhosting.
Regards
Héctor
WordPress Blog Speed Test
SEO Consultant Makes a Mistake… not you, but me!
Hey, I’m reading your WordPress SEO tutorial and I found a potential explanation for my website to be slow (it’s not plugin related since I turned off all the plugins and noticed no difference.
I don’t have that many paged (less than 15 maybe just 10), and I wonder how to test if these pages are causing my site to slow down.
Also, while writing this… I thought about images… what’s the optimal format and maybe size for images in a wordpress blog?
thanks
WordPress Blog Speed Test
Website Speed Test Tools
I wouldn’t read too much into Alexa speed ratings, I don’t think they are very accurate.
WordPress is an advanced content management system (CMS) with a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, unless you pay a lot of money for the best server/hosting available it’s going to be difficult to get a WordPress site (any site running a complex CMS) to be super fast.
I have sites with a decent amount of traffic that are not running WordPress. This one https://classic-literature.co.uk/ is about as simple as one of my older sites get, it’s not basic HTML, but it’s not far off basic HTML. The only scripting it uses is PHP includes, that’s it, the includes are to break the sites template into bits (header, content, footer) and will have little impact on resources used compared to if each page was one HTML document. The main site uses no database (there’s a small section of the site that’s WordPress, barely 10% of the pages and 5% of the traffic), it’s a very basic setup. the main site has hardly any images as well
That site is listed by Alexa : Slow (2.731 Seconds), 61% of sites are faster.
That’s total BS, it’s one of my fastest loading websites.
My recipe site https://free-recipes.co.uk/ is on the same server (cheap Godaddy virtual server) runs on WordPress and has 65,000 posts, runs with Stallion 6 with a reasonable number of plugins, many Stallion features turned on (an average sort of WordPress/Stallion setup).
That site is listed by Alexa : Fast (1.422 Seconds), 64% of sites are slower.
I’d take those numbers with a very large pinch of salt.
Search Google for “Website Speed Test” and try a few of the free tools to see how fast your site loads. When I checked your site it was taking around 1 second to load, which is similar to my sites some of which are listed fast by Alexa and others slow. Check Google.com in Alexa, does that make sense?
Those tools don’t check embedded content (videos, images etc…) and it’s important to optimise your images etc… If you are uploading a lot of images that are 1mb each say and loading 10 of them on the home page, it’s going to significantly slow a site (I had a quick look at your site, didn’t see an issue).
The WordPress permalink setup issue is something I know about, but as far as I’m aware haven’t experienced because I don’t create many Static Pages. I don’t know how much of a slow down the perfect SEO permalink structure generates, strongly suspect on the average site it’s tiny (when I researched this those who understand database queries better than I do said it was minimal), I would worry if I had sites with hundreds of Static Pages. I created the Stallion site knowing about the potential slow down and went with the perfect SEO WordPress permalinks. One poorly thought out WordPress plugin is going to cause far more problems than perfect SEO permalinks, I’ve run across a few plugins that have added several seconds onto loading time!
You are using at least two SEO damaging WordPress plugins I wouldn’t recommend anyone using, remove them and it’s less resources used:
All in One SEO Pack WordPress plugin : this adds noindex meta tags to pages and they damage a sites SEO. You can generate your own unique meta descriptions (post excerpts) that Stallion will use as a meta description. the only other useful feature of that plugin is more control over post titles, I always name my posts in a way that the titles don’t need editing. Meta keywords tags have no SEO value at all in Google (I no longer use them), the meta description tag has no SEO ranking value in Google (won’t get you a better listing), the description if used might increase click through (I let Google decide what’s a good description for a page, but Stallion does use the custom excerpt).
Yoast Robots Meta WordPress plugin: this adds nofollow and noindex meta tags to pages and they damage a sites SEO. that’s an anti-SEO WordPress plugin!
I’m working on the Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin that can noindex pages like many of these so called WordPress SEO Plugins offer, but without deleting/wasting link benefit. Should release the plugin in a week or two.
You are currently wasting loads of link benefit by nofollowing your tag archives for example! On your home page you have around 20 nofollow links, that’s like linking out to 20 random sites with no SEO benefit in return. Do you do reciprocal links, would you ever give out 20 home page links without anything in return? Using those WordPress plugins without understanding them is that bad SEO wise!
David
Website Speed Test Tools
WordPress Meta Tags
Hi David,
thanks for the detailed explanation. I’m taking your recommendation. I removed these two plugins. I also noticed that I have other site, which is ranking very well for its keyword and I’m not using these WordPress SEO plugins.
I have some questions about Meta Tags:
– Meta-Keyword-Tags: You explained it above, ok.
– Meta-Description-Tags: You explained it above, ok. Stallion theme will use the (post excerpts). btw: you set a different excerpt or leave it by default (taken from the first lines of the article itself).
a) what about the Meta-Title-Tags? I used to set it with WordPress SEO plugin, do I need it? if so, how I can set them up?
Thanks
Héctor
WordPress Meta Tags
Meta Description Tag and Title Element
The Stallion theme automatically generates a meta description tag for blog posts and static pages (doesn’t create them for archive pages) from the pages/posts excerpts.
If you build an excerpt for a post (when you create a post there’s an excerpt box, it’s part of core WordPress) it will use that excerpt. If you don’t create an excerpt it will use the first X number of characters (X can be set via Stallion) from the post.
If you aren’t manually writing ad like excerpts (I’m too busy to write them for thousands of posts) I would suggest not bothering with a meta description tag at all. Major search engines (Google) doesn’t use the meta description for ranking purposes (it has NO SEO value), it’s only value is in click through rates from Google search results, if you write awesome ad like excerpts AND Google uses them (Google doesn’t always use your meta description), you MIGHT increase the number of clicks relative to if you used the automated description Google generates on it’s own.
So if you don’t write excerpts that are awesome ads there’s not a lot to gain using the Stallion excerpts as it’s just the first few lines of a post and probably not written like an ad.
There’s no such thing as a meta title tag :-), the title of a page isn’t a meta tag, it’s an element (title element): pet peeve of mine when ‘SEO experts’ call it a meta tag, they should know better :-)
Anyway, the title element is very important and Stallion is set to show the perfect SEO title element as long as you name your posts, pages, categories, tags etc… with SEO in mind.
If you name a category Forex Exchange : “Category one” it’s not going to rank for anything related to Forex Exchange, name a post “Something Strange Happened to me this Morning” when the post is about how you used Astrology to make money from the Forex exchange, it’s not going to rank well for relevant Forex/Astrology SERPs.
As long as you title everything with SEO in mind (which you should anyway) there’s not a lot to be gained using the title element features of WordPress SEO plugins with Stallion. There is a benefit to those plugins title elements IF you are using a WordPress theme with the standard title element setup (Name of Site : Title of Post) and you don’t know how to edit the theme to remove the “Name of Site” part. All my WordPress themes have that part of the title element removed, so not much to gain from a second place to add a title.
David
Update: Stallion 7.* has custom meta tags as well.
Meta Description Tag and Title Element