Most of this website is dedicated to supporting the Stallion Responsive WordPress SEO Package I develop. You’ll find various Stallion Responsive Tutorials and plenty of references to how Stallion works throughout articles within this website even when the articles aren’t specifically about the Stallion SEO package: examples include the general SEO Tutorial Series and the WordPress SEO Tutorial Series. Over the years I’ve offered a lot of free tech support for WordPress users and it can get frustrating when asked the same question that is answered and just a couple of clicks away from the visitor. You will find a simple list of all main articles on this website within the Sitemap, the sitemap is categorized so easy to find […]
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Duplicated meta descriptions and tags in Google
Hi David
I have a site motorhomescampervans.net built using an Avada theme on word press. I have read your info and have just installed your Stallion SEO plugin I have had the Yoast SEO free version for a while.(still in place)
The reason I have taken on board yous Stallion SEO free plugin is because it makes a lot of sense and being not the most technically gifted person it looks easy to set up.
So what is my problem duplicated meta descriptions and tags I have read all the Yoast info and Google but fail to understand how to remove the historic ones.
I am hoping going forward your plugin will eliminate the problem. If anyone can help point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
Regards John
Duplicated meta descriptions and tags in Google
Duplicate Yoast SEO Plugin Open Graph Meta Tags
Had a quick look at your site (home page and a WordPress Post) and you don’t have duplicate meta description tags, you have duplicate OG (Open Graph) meta tags.
You have the Yoast SEO OG tags and another smaller set of OG tags which I’m guessing are added by the Avada WordPress theme.
Inspired a quick article about Duplicate Yoast SEO Open Graph Meta Tags. Here’s a relevant snippet to your issue:
The site did have duplicate social media meta data, looks like they had either two WordPress plugins that add social network OG (Open Graph) meta tags or the Avada WordPress theme also adds a smaller set of OG meta tags.
For the commenter’s website a quick Google search for “Avada WordPress Theme OG” suggests it’s the theme, first result is “Reply To: issue with More Than One OG URL Specified – Theme Fusion” which says:
David Law
Duplicate Yoast SEO Plugin Open Graph Meta Tags
Duplicated meta descriptions and tags in Google
David
What a fantastic reply I am going to go through what you said and thank you for the detailed explanation
I guess its not every day you find a genius living in the same county as oneself I will let you know how we get on
As I said I am not the most technically gifted but I now have even more confidence in your word press stallion SEO plugin
Thanks again David regards John motorhomescampervans.net
Duplicated meta descriptions and tags in Google
Large ads above the fold on mobile
Hi David,
I got this msg from Google Adsense
—–
Policy violations
Google monitors the sites that AdSense ads appear on to ensure they comply with our program policies. We have identified the following violations on your sites. Please note that this represents only the violations that we have currently identified. You are responsible for ensuring that your properties comply with our policies at all times. We suggest that you regularly review all your sites for compliance. For more information regarding our policy notifications, visit our Help Center.
Violation:
Large ads above the fold on mobile
Action is required to bring your AdSense account into compliance with our AdSense program policies. Please make changes to the above site within three working days. We may spot-check the site again after this time. Once you’ve made the changes, hit the “Mark resolved” button below and complete the short form. Please be aware that if you do not make changes to bring your site into compliance, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above. Learn more
Example URL:
Publishers may not implement Google ads in a manner that disguises the ads in any way. In order to maintain a good user experience, it is important for publishers to clearly distinguish Google ads from site content. This includes, but is not limited to: site layouts in which the ads push content below the fold on mobile devices; placing 300×250 or larger ad units above the fold on a mobile optimized site.
—–
I could not figure it out and ended up turning off Adsense from the whole site. I wonder if you could please offer some hints on
I am still in version Stallion Responsive 8.2.1 (I’m just coming back to blogging again… do I need to pay something to take it to lastest version? )
Thanks a lot,
Large ads above the fold on mobile
Google Large Ads Above the Fold on Mobile Fix
I’m aware of the “Large ads above the fold on mobile” issue with Stallion Responsive, it was fixed in a Stallion Responsive update.
Upgrade from Stallion Responsive 8.2.1 to Stallion Responsive 8.4 and the issue will be resolved. You should see the update available under your WordPress Dashboard.
If you use a caching plugin don’t forget to clear your cache. I got the “Large ads above the fold on mobile” warning a couple of weeks back on a site that’s not very popular, the cache of some deep content hadn’t refreshed since I upgraded.
The issue was Stallion Responsive was set to load the large 300 x 250 AdSense ads on some mobile device sizes. The fix was a few minor CSS tweaks to the mobile.css file so smaller ads are loaded. Switched them to the mobile specific AdSense ad sizes.
David
Google Large Ads Above the Fold on Mobile Fix
Site Down After WordPress Update
Thanks for the quick feedback, David.
I went to update wordpress – fine. Then attempted to update some plugins and my site went down! I am trying to recover (no idea what happened).
I wanted to update wpress and plugins before updating theme
I’ll report back one solved
Thanks
Héctor
W3 Total Cache Plugin v0.9.5 Broke Site
It’s back. It seems to be an issue with this pluggin w3-total-cache
I guess need to check your site for update to 8.4 directions.
I’ll work another bit tomorrow night
Thanks
Héctor
W3 Total Cache Plugin Version 0.9.5 PHP Fatal Error
To upgrade from an older version of Stallion Responsive to the latest version should be a simple case of going to your WordPress Dashboard, hoverover the Dashboard link on the left menu, click Updates. Under themes there should be a notification Stallion Responsive 8.4 update is available. Update as you would any theme: not had a single report of this process failing.
Not had any Stallion Responsive 8.4 bug reports beyond ones I’d already found: have an issue with Gravatars not being cached, will be fixed in Stallion Responsive 8.5, testing the 8.5 update on live sites now.
It would appear the recent W3 Total Cache Plugin Version 0.9.5 has multiple bugs.
So far I’ve updated W3 Total Cache to 0.9.5 on two of my sites (this is one of them) and I got an error when trying to upload images into a post on this site (the other site is fine both on the same server as well).
[29-Sep-2016 11:44:02] PHP Warning: require(/home/######/public_html/wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/stdClass.php) [<a href='function.require'>function.require</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/######/public_html/wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/w3-total-cache-api.php on line 161 [29-Sep-2016 11:44:02] PHP Fatal error: require() [<a href='function.require'>function.require</a>]: Failed opening required '/home/######/public_html/wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/stdClass.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear:/usr/share/php') in /home/######/public_html/wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/w3-total-cache-api.php on line 161Fortunately it doesn’t take the site out (not white screen) which you tend to get with PHP Fatal Errors. Though my quick manual downgrade to W3 Total Cache 0.9.4 did white screen this site, had to reupload the 0.9.5 files to get the site back online quickly.
My image issue might be (not 100% sure yet) related to the W3 Total Cache Plugin Version 0.9.5 update, their support forum is filled with complaints right now.
I’m still debugging my issue with the caching plugin. Going to wait for the plugin to be updated again before updating the rest of my network, from the WordPress forum it sounds like it’s not a good update. Don’t want to loose W3 Total Cache, it’s one of the few WordPress plugins I consider an SEO plugin (highly recommended).
David
W3 Total Cache Plugin Version 0.9.5 PHP Fatal Error
Duplicate Title Tags Error
Hi David
I did what you said and had a purge on all pages posts and categories taking out the meta descriptions so in effect Google provides the descriptions
Thus far so good the list has gone down by 20 in the last two weeks in webmaster tools
I decided to delete most tags and only kept 4 and got rid of categories that did not work well from a user prospective so I had some 404 issues so put in a 301 redirect to the home page via all 404 301 plugin
Having not used comments before I installed your other wordpress plugin so it will take time to build comments but what it does makes sense
So all was going well or appeared to be
Then we suddenly got the duplicated title tags error
I do not think it has anything to do with your plugins
Any ideas why? Thanks a lot
John
PS My page load has improved by the way
Duplicate Title Tags Error
Google Webmaster Tools Duplicate Title Tags Due to Yoast WordPress SEO
There’s an article on the site about Duplicate Title Tags and there’s a comment specific to the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin overriding the WordPress SEO Comments plugin title tags : Wrong Yoast SEO Title Tags.
The WordPress SEO Comments Plugin creates unique title tags for the SEO comments pages from the comments text and the Yoast SEO plugin overwrites them all with the main articles title tags.
Like I’ve said dozens of times the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin isn’t very good SEO wise, I wouldn’t use it if it was the only SEO plugin online.
This comment for example: http://motorhomescampervans.net/motorhome-motability/?cid=2 should have a title tag something like :
Hi Carole So at the moment there has been a complete review…
But Yoast SEO is replacing it with the main articles title tag:
Motorhome motability schemes for the genuinely disabled UK people
I’ve fixed this issue in the Stallion Responsive Theme version of the SEO Super Comments feature (Stallion Responsive does work with Yoast active without Yoast ruining too many SEO features), but not had the time to see if I can fix the free Comments SEO plugin. All my free stuff is on a really low priority, currently working on a big Stallion Responsive 8.5 update, so have no plans to modify the free plugin this year.
BTW When using the free WordPress SEO Comments plugin as it doesn’t have comment titles (that’s a Stallion Responsive feature see: Stallion Comment Title plugin) to sort of match Stallion’s output, modify your comments. Add the text you want to be used as the title tag at the top of the comment.
So your comment starting “Hi Carole So at the moment…” could be changed to “The Title You Want Showing Hi Carole So at the moment…”. Far from ideal, but it’s how I used to do it years ago before adding comment titles to my SEO theme. IF I had the time I’d add the comment title feature to the free plugin, but I don’t have the free time.
Obviously for this to work you can’t use the Yoast plugin title tags feature.
David
Google Webmaster Tools Duplicate Title Tags Due to Yoast WordPress SEO
Index Home Page Only : Block Paged 2,3,4... does not work properly if your main blog posts page is not the home page.
Hi there, your plugin seems great. I was skeptical at first since I really love Yoast’s WordPress SEO in general. I was *just* about to noindex all my paged blog archives since I was tired of them always showing up above real blog posts themselves in search results. But I hated the idea of losing all that link value, so I was searching for a way to use rel=canonical. Your plugin is exactly what I needed.
HOWEVER when I first activated it and turned on the setting “Index Home Page Only : Block Paged 2,3,4…”, my blog’s page archives were pointing to the home page of the site (not the home page of the BLOG… which is a different page).
I have 2 suggestions…
1) rename that setting to “index main blog page only…” vs. “index home page only…” since that’s actually what the setting is really designed to do anyway. It’s only the home page if your home page IS your main blog page/posts page.
2) fix the code in your plugin so that it works for people who have set a different page for their main posts page (not the home page).
The funny thing is, when I went into your code to edit stallion-wordpress-seo-plugin/admin/class-settings.php I found the appropriate code around line 870… You already have the exact code I needed, but it was just commented out!!!?!? I’m not quite sure why, but maybe it was an oversight on your part and not intentional. :) But after I cleaned it up the code that is left works exactly right. It’s your code, so you get the credit, but I just wanted you to know since I think you should probably make these changes permanent.
Here’s the way the updated/edited code reads (works perfectly on my site), starting at line 866:
} elseif (is_home() || is_front_page()) {
if ( !isset( $options['st_seo_notindex_home'] ) ) {
$options['st_seo_notindex_home'] = '0' ;
}
// Index Home Paged Archives : do nothing
// Index Home Page Only : Block Paged 2,3,4...^^
if ($options['st_seo_notindex_home'] == "2") {
if ( 'page' == get_option( 'show_on_front' ) && get_option( 'page_for_posts' ) ) {
$posts_page = get_permalink( get_option( 'page_for_posts' ) );
} else {
$posts_page = home_url( '/' );
}
add_filter( 'wpseo_canonical', '__return_false' );
add_filter( 'aioseop_canonical_url', '__return_false' );
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rel_canonical' );
if ($options['st_seo_notindex_clean'] == "2") {
echo "\n<!-- Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin 3.0.0 by David Cameron Law https://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-wordpress-seo-plugin/ -->\n";
}
echo "\n";
if ($options['st_seo_notindex_clean'] == "2") {
echo "<!-- Index Home Page Only : Block Paged 2,3,4...^^ - Stallion SEO -->\n";
}
}
} elseif (is_author()) {
As proof of the issue that’s fixed by restoring the above code, see the before and after here. I was on page 9 of the blog archives and expect/want the canonical to point to the first/main page of the blog. But it wasn’t… it was pointing to the home page (not the blog). But now it’s fixed!
Here was how my canonical tag looked like with your original code (plugin version 3.0.0): http://imgur.com/a/2dFhM
And here is how it looks now (fixed!): http://imgur.com/a/Hpznb
Index Home Page Only : Block Paged 2,3,4... does not work properly if your main blog posts page is not the home page.
Stallion SEO Plugin Canonical to Blog Archive Rather than Home
Glad you’ve found the Stallion SEO Plugin useful.
Funnily enough the reason for commenting out the code (which works fine for what you want) was I thought it was confusing keeping it in without another option explaining the difference between Home and Blog Archive.
Home Page to me means the root of the site, so example.com/ is the Home page.
When the commented out code was active it would go to the Blog archives page which isn’t the Home page.
For it to make sense would have had to add another option: an extra tick box on that option so users can choose actual Home or Blog archive. I assumed ALL users would want the SEO benefit redirected to Home rather than the Blog archive page, so commented it out. Guess I was wrong :-) when I get back to plugin/theme development I’ll add the option.
I was working on a huge update to the plugin before Christmas, was replicating the Yoast SEO and All In One SEO title tag like options and adding features from the Stallion Responsive SEO Theme so users wouldn’t need Yoast or All In One SEO (or my SEO theme) for managing title tags etc… and SEO features currently only available in my SEO theme would be in the plugin. Basically turning it into a fully fledged SEO plugin that’s better than Yoast/All In One SEO, wrote some of the tutorials etc… at Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin (near the bottom).
I got distracted with setting up a new server and managing over 100 domains, so plugin/theme development is currently on hold (probably get back to it in a month or so). Currently updating the Classic Literature Library which is a huge project that I’ve been meaning to do for almost a decade! Was one of my first sites, built it using asp and txt files (tens of thousands of asp and txt files loaded as includes!!!) as I knew no better at the time! Finally moving it to WordPress one book at a time.
David
Stallion SEO Plugin Canonical to Blog Archive Rather than Home
Thanks again
Makes sense to me! Thanks again for your plugin. I am definitely interested in the idea of your plugin replacing Yoast’s. The main things I use Yoast for, which would need to be in place for me on any potential replacement plugin in order for me to switch are:
– ability for custom title & description (obviously) on each page/post/tag/category/etc.
– ability to easily rel=canonical any given post/page/etc., including cross-domain
– easily customize title/description/image/etc for social sharing if you don’t just want to use the meta titles/descriptions
– create XML sitemap with only the stuff I want in it
– easily noindex/nofollow/etc. any post/page/etc. (site-wide defaults for each section/tag/etc plus ability to override on a given item)
Anyway, thanks for your plugin and your response above. :)
Thanks again