There are WordPress SEO Plugins that have the potential to seriously damage a sites search engine optimization if you turn the wrong so called SEO features of these WordPress plugins on, they use nofollow and noindex in inappropriate ways wasting link benefit and damaging your sites SEO!
I’ve reviewed some of the major WordPress SEO Plugins under the category WordPress SEO Plugins. I’ve incorporated the findings of the SEO plugin reviews into SEO warnings as part of one of the Stallion SEO Themes option pages: under the “SEO Advanced” options page.
WordPress SEO Plugin Reviews
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Review
All In One SEO Pack Plugin Review
If you have activated any of these WordPress SEO plugins:
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
All In One SEO Pack Plugin
And have the setting “SEO Plugin Warnings On/Off” set to “Warnings ON” on the “SEO Advanced” options page you will receive an SEO report (at the bottom of the SEO advanced options page) of any issues related to those SEO plugins.
You are not forced to turn those damaging SEO features off, but I strongly advise you do. If you receive no red warnings, you probably aren’t damaging your sites SEO using those WordPress SEO plugins.
If you use the above SEO plugins please be aware they add very little if any SEO value to the Stallion SEO theme. The vast majority of the plugin features are already dealt with by Stallion (usually better), but if you do use them there are further settings under the Stallion SEO Themes “SEO Advanced” options page for disabling Stallion theme features you wish the above plugins to take over (meta tags for example).
David Law
Website - SEO Gold
How to improve speed test results with plugins
Dave,
Each WP is different. In theory just using your theme should give top results.
However, things like Wavatars and like/share buttons (ie external files) etc the speed test results with my site are good but a few “F” ratings. I notice your site has only top ratings.
I have tried. fastest cache, w3 total cache, speed booster pack, autoptize and wp performance score booster plugins and have got incremental improvements with each one on.
Is there anything else you generally recommend or any other plugin?
Almost not matter what I do (via plugins) this comes up:
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Leverage browser caching
Enable compression
Optimize images
Minify JavaScript
Minify HTML
Any additional ideas?
How to improve speed test results with plugins
WordPress PageSpeed Insights Improvements
Have you gone through this post: https://stallion-theme.co.uk/pagespeed-insights/ including my comments?
Some of the stuff you discuss above are covered in the above article and the comments. Not everything can be fixed under WordPress, some of it requires server settings.
Some pagespeed issues can’t be fixed and some shouldn’t be ‘fixed’: the fixes are worse than the ‘issues’.
Currently (February 2016) I run WordPress 4.4.2, Stallion Responsive 8.3, W3 Total Cache 0.9.4.1 (caching, CDN etc…) and EWWW Image Optimizer 2.5.9 (image optimization). Other plugins not related to pagespeed Google XML Sitemaps,
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded and a plugin for selling Stallion. So I’m running with 5 plugins, 2 related to pagespeed.
W3 Total Cache is a major part of the pagespeed optimization, also use it’s manual CDN option which is a CDN on my own server (a sub-domain holds the CDN files).
Stallion deals with Gravatar issues by caching them locally (see under the Stallion Performance options: all of the top options On except Widget Cache, have that off).
Since I use the Stallion Rocket Lazy Load Images On option my images are lazy loaded as well without using Jquery: most lazy load plugins use Jquery, so you’ve added a speed improvement (image lazy loading) by loading something (Jquery) which causes a pagespeed issue!
If you want to use AdSense, social media like buttons I’m afraid it’s at a pagespeed cost. I’ve found barely anyone shares my posts on social media and since social media has no direct SEO benefit and conversion of social media traffic is low, I’m no longer bothering with the share buttons for sites like this one.
I’m building a new site to sell children’s books (writing/illustrating children’s books with my wife: heck of a lot more fun than SEO) and social media will be a big factor for that site, so will take the pagespeed hit.
David
WordPress PageSpeed Insights Improvements