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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Google Analytics
Do you suggest adding Google Analytics to this site, where, why? And what impact, if any, does Analytics have on the SEO of my site?
Does my site load slower because I am tracking analytics?
Thanks Dave
Google Analytics Tracking vs Site Speed and Performance SEO
Everything you add to a website that either means downloading more code or files or requires access to a database etc… will have an impact on site speed.
The more features you add slower a site will load, whether this is Google Analytics code, FaceBook Like buttons, AdSense ads, fancy slider features that require Jquery etc…
You decide if a feature is worth the performance hit. Note the vast majority of Stallion features have been coded in away to either improve performance or minimize any negative hit (can’t remove it completely, you want a feature it comes at a resource cost).
For example image sliders are a nice flashy feature and all I’ve looked at require Jquery (a 100KB plus sized javascript file) to work, but research shows visitors don’t click on image sliders that are added just to look cool. Since visitors don’t use sliders and they have a big performance hit, I never use an image slider. The Stallion slider uses Jquery, I added it before performance was a big SEO issue, I’ve minimized the performance hit using the Stallion slider by only loading Jquery on pages the slider loads on, but it’s still a performance hit.
AdSense has a performance hit, but it makes money, so I use AdSense. If you use the AdSense responsive code and use the Stallion load the AdSense javascript file in the footer the performance hit is less than using the original AdSense responsive code.
Google Analytics has a performance hit, but it provides invaluable SEO information, so I use Google Analytics.
Note the performance hit for Google Analytics is relatively small, it’s a small amount of inline javascript code (won’t have a major speed impact) and loads a small off site javascript file that’s only cached for 2 hrs which because it’s only cached for 2 hours throws out a performance warning on Google PageSpeed Insights Tool.
Consider millions of websites use Google analytics so odds are when a visitor loads your website the Google analytics javascript file is probably already cached on their PC. The 2 hour cache means when anyone is browsing the Internet when they visit a site that uses Google analytics they cache the javascript file. For the next 2 hours their web browser will use the cached file so if they visit your site in the 2 hour period they won’t have to download it again. After 2 hours it’s cached again next time they visit a site with Google Analytics installed.
So yes their is a performance hit using Google analytics tracking, but if you find the data useful (I do) it’s worth it. If you never look at the analytics data because you track visitors another way, not much point collecting it.
David
Google Analytics Tracking vs Site Speed and Performance SEO
Social Media Open Graph Share Data
This is a selection that is available on the post page with the following selections to fill in: Title, Description and Image. Under each selection it states “Add the title Facebook, Google+ etc… uses when sharing this post.”
Can you go a bit further into detail as to where and how to use this option please?
Thanks as usual Dave.
Open Graph Share Data
When a website visitor shares your WordPress posts on Google+, Facebook etc… what you’ve added to the Title, Description and Image is what Google+, Facebook etc… will add to Google+, Facebook etc… rather than guess what the title, description and image should be.
Means you can specify exactly what those social networks should use.
If you don’t care what Facebook etc… uses when your posts are shared leave the options blank: IME they aren’t a big deal, for example there’s no direct SEO value having your posts shared on social networks, it’s not where I spend my valuable time.
David
Open Graph Share Data
Do I get upgrades?
Hi Dave,
I am a past Talian theme customer with a website running it. I realize I need to upgrade the theme into something responsive, because my old Talian theme is not responsive. Pretty much outdated at this point.
So, do I receive any upgrades for this? My email is in your list and if you keep records, you will see that I indeed bought the theme from you.
So, please clarify. Thanks.
Do I get upgrades?
Stallion Responsive Discounts
The Talian 5 theme is really old and there’s no upgrade option from Talian 5 to Stallion Responsive v8.*
Basically separate themes = new purchase.
Currently there are no Stallion Responsive discounts, so previous Talian customers for example are not receiving discounts.
David
Chitika ads vanished
Hi, all my Chitika ads just vanished, can you suggest a possible reason for this?
How to Update Copyright Year in Footer
Hi David,
I hope you are doing well. I noticed that some of my blogs have the copyright year (the one showed in the footer, something like @year) set properly to 2015, but other is showing 2012… I wonder how to update to 2015?
In your blog is “©2014”
Thanks
WordPress Copyright Date
The date is based on your latest post, so if you haven’t published a new post since 2012, the copyright will be 2012.
To set a fixed date you could edit the footer.php file and set it to whatever you want.
Look for this code:
©<?php the_time('Y'); ?>And change to whatever year you want, for example:
David
WordPress Copyright Date
Full Sized Featured Images
Have looked through all comments here and see the variety within thumbnail display options.
Looking for a way to display the full sized featured image on the post as well as possibly the search and main page. Our business sells items and we would like to display a better quality version right up front for mobile viewers.
WordPress Featured Image Used as a Thumbnail
For a WordPress post it’s best to add an image like any WordPress image, that way you can set dimensions, placement, alignment etc… so edit a post and where you want the image click the “Add Media” button and add an image.
For archive parts of a site Stallion Responsive can use a variety of image sources as thumbnails, if you view any of the archives on this site like this category for example: https://stallion-theme.co.uk/responsive/stallion-responsive-tutorials/ you’ll see a small thumbnail image for each archived post.
To set this the options are
“Stallion Theme” > “Colour Options”
Options under the section “Auto and Featured Thumbnails”.
If you set “Featured Thumbnails Only ON” and set the “Thumbnails Width” and “Thumbnails Height” to match the size of your Featured Image Thumbnail size (set under “Settings > Media” : “Thumbnail size”) the images will be the same size as your Featured image thumbnails.
Under each posts Edit page you set a WordPress featured image and it’s thumbnail will be used on archives.
Note: Stallion also includes it’s own featured image option that overrides the WordPress featured image as a thumbnail. The Stallion image is set on the Edit post page under the “Stallion Featured Thumbnail Options” form.
If you set a WordPress Featured Image and a Stallion Featured Thumbnail Image the Stallion image will be used as the thumbnail. With the Stallion version a scaling script is used to make a smaller thumbnail image based on any image you upload.
The thumbnails are also used by the Stallion SEO Posts widget, see the Popular Posts widget on the sidebar, the two thumbnail images are Stallion Featured Thumbnail Images. That widget is really cool, can set Popular/Recent/Random etc… Posts widgets with just links, just images, just excerpts and everything in between including setting only the first popular posts having images/excerpts.
Hopefully that will point you in the right direction.
David
WordPress Featured Image Used as a Thumbnail