I’ve been developing WordPress SEO themes for so long that the vast majority of SEO features I use are built into the Stallion Responsive theme (best WordPress SEO theme available) because so few WordPress plugin developers get the SEO spot on. Basically I find an interesting plugin or code hack and adapt it to exactly what I want and add it to my SEO theme, been working this way for over half a decade so my SEO theme includes a lot of SEO features from various plugins and code snippets I’ve found over the years. Occasionally I stumble on a WordPress plugin that’s either perfect SEO wise and so requires no modification and/or is so well supported by the plugin […]
Continue Reading WordPress SEO Plugin Reviews
WordPress SEO Post Teaser Plugin
Have solved the plugin/excerpt problem, can now create WordPress themes that by default create archive pages (like monthly pages and the index) that show a small excerpt of each post rather than the whole posts (which can create enormous pages!!).
If you install my SEO version of the WordPress Post Teaser plugin I mention above (will be available to download for free soon) you’ll get an improved excerpt that works with the Alinks plugin (which I’ll also add my version to the site).
Basically by using my WordPress AdSense/SEO themes you can use the two plugins (and others I use) to generate an SEO’d blog with semi-automated internal linking of important keywords.
Will take me a few days to update the themes currently available and I’m still working on the RSS links problem (think I have a fix) so will do that at the same time. Will then send out the new theme versions to anyone who has bought themes from this site.
David
WordPress SEO Post Teaser Plugin
Related Posts WordPress SEO Plugin Tutorial?
Hi Dave,
I couldn’t find a contact page for the SEO plugins post. So I’ll ask here.
I installed the “related” plugin and clicked the script and it failed (i think the path is off) Your instructions refer to a read me file. There isn’t one in the plugin folder. Can you point me in the right direction?
Jeff
Related Posts Plugin WordPress SEO Tutorial
Hi Jeff,
Looks like I managed to create a Related Posts zip file that lacked the tutorial file!
I’ve uploaded a new zip file (same download link on the plugins page) which included the tutorial file as well.
The script install bit your having problems with is to do with MySQL administration rights, last dedicated server I had this script failed, with the server I use now no problem at all. So depends on your servers setup.
There’s a fix (in the readme text file) as long as you can access MySQL through something like phpmyadmin.
David Law
Related Posts Plugin WordPress SEO Tutorial
Meta Robots WordPress Plugins
So far so good with your Adsense templates, I have a cottage industry of adsense sites. :)
Question: How much should users of your adsense templates use “nofollow” “noindex” plugins. For example, the ‘all in one seo pack’ and ‘Meta robots’ plugins recommend not to index/follow
1) categories and 2) tags as it creates duplicate content. Wow that is pretty radical as it will reduce the number of my pages.
Do your templates handle that or should I add something like the Meta Robots plugin and click off all the options to converse page rank etc?
Meta Robots WordPress Plugins
WordPress SEO Nofollow Links and Archives and Categories
LOL Mark,
I like the “cottage industry of adsense sites” comment :)
Very good nofollow questions.
Right now all the WordPress themes on this site have ALL administration type links nofollow. This includes:
Login links.
Registration links (if you use that feature).
Also these links are nofollow as well:
RSS Feed links (including the Follow-up RSS Comments Feed links)
Trackback (including the Leave a Trackback links)
This only leaves true content links like-
Blog Post pages
Pages
Categories
Archives (monthly, daily etc…)
Tags
Because of the formatting of a normal WordPress blog we need to keep either the Categories or Archives (normally Monthly) followed as otherwise Google etc… would only index the 10 posts linked from the home page and any blog posts linked from external sources!!
You could in theory also keep an entire WordPress blog indexed by keeping the Tag links followed, but only if you give every blog post at least one Tag and not everyone uses Tags.
So to be safe we need either Categories or Monthly Archives to follow for full indexing.
I personally use the Category links to pass link benefit through to every blog post on the site and recommend others do the same since the Category pages can add traffic to a site IF they also target SERPs not covered by individual blog posts.
If you have a site with a Funny Jokes Category, but none of the jokes actually include the phrases or partial title “Funny Jokes” the main Category page stands a chance to rank for that and related SERPs, especially as all the content will be related to that phrase. If you nofollow Categories you might be loosing traffic from potential SERPs.
In contrast the content of the Monthly Archive pages have no keyword focus. therefore their no benefit to having them indexed in any search engine as long as long as all the pages of your WordPress site can be found and spidered (the Category links).
If you look at my WordPress installations like this one you will see the Category links and Tag links are followed and I haven’t even included the Monthly Archive menu item.
Easiest way to achieve this is use widgets (or manually edit the sidebar.php file) and don’t add or remove the monthly archives menu item then there is no need to worry about nofollow.
If you want to use the Monthly Archive links with nofollow you could either edit the theme (not looked up how) or use a plugin (not used any like that).
David Law
WordPress SEO Nofollow Links and Archives and Categories
WordPress SEO Sitemap Plugin
I installed Talian and it worked perfect! I have been looking for the perfect solution for years and have found it. I have lots of changes on my site to put my content into this new system but it already looks great since your template had everything right where it needed to be.
I also used the link you provided for the SEO plugins. The plugins you suggested are excellent, I just have to set them up still.
In addition to the plugins you suggested, added one more for a sitemap. I just googled “wordpress sitemap” and took the first link.
I think a sitemap is good for SEO for a number of reasons.
Thank you very much for providing this quality (nothing comes close anywhere) for such a good price so folks like me who want to get started in an online business can for very good price!
WordPress SEO Sitemap Plugin
WordPress SEO - Do We Need a Sitemap?
Hi Clayton,
Glad you like the theme and thanks for your kind words, I sell these themes more as a hobby than as a business, I made them for my own use and seamed a shame to just use them myself :)
There’s a sitemap template with this theme, create a Page (not a post) and on the Attribute menu under Template select the Sitemap template.
Give the Page a name like I did for this site-
Google AdSense Sitemap
No need to add any content and you get a page with asitempa only.
That being said the themes on this site shouldn’t need a sitemap (added this one as an example) since Google etc… can easily spider the entire site via the category links etc… from my perspective a sitemap page is a waste of PR/link benefit which is why I never create a sitemap on my other sites.
With regards creating child Pages I’ve made a mistake in the code! What I’ve done is restrict the Pages shown to just level 1 (Parent pages) by adding &depth=1 to the Page coding. Easy to fix.
If you use Widgets load functions.php in a text editor or the online theme editor and find-
wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=');Change to
wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=');That will then show all Pages on your sidebar menu.
If you don’t use widgets load left_sidebar.php and look for the same code.
Looks like I need to send out an update now :)
David Law
Edit: my code got deleted due the the PHP coding, fixed now
WordPress SEO - Do We Need a Sitemap?
WordPress BlogRoll Links
Thank you again David.
I will hold off on the sitemap as you suggest. Like you mention, the categories alone should be adequate for a sitemap.
1) I think the code you were going to paste into your answer above was left out. I found the code in the theme editor under “theme functions” and I found the section of code and changed the 1 to a 9 just to see if it would work but that was a no go. :-)
2) Is it possible to have parent child links in the “Blogroll N Links” section?
I added a category in the Links (hiking stores) and made a child link but the link showed as usual with no category showing. This is not too much of a problem though, it would be real nice if we could put a category in the Blogroll N Links.
3) And finally, where should I place my google analytics code? – may be another part of an update eh? :-)
WordPress BlogRoll Links
WordPress BlogRoll Links Formatting
Hey Clayton,
Pasted a couple of PHP codes above and WordPress deleted them, sometimes you can post PHP and sometimes you can’t!! Removed the PHP part so fixed now.
With Google analytics you paste the code in the footer.php file above the /body tag.
The Blogroll links question, in WordPress 2.1 the option to add Categorized links was introduced. I tired to add this to my themes, but it caused some issues on my sites that I’m sure others will have, so decided to stick with the old coding that listed all links.
If you want to take a try at it you want to use the function
wp_list_bookmarks in place of get_links
Edit functions.php (widget users) or left_sidebar.php (non widget users)
replace with something like this-
wp_list_bookmarks('title_li=&categorize=0');That will give the same result as you have now (no categories), so if you make a mistake or hate the category version, but you want the updated code that’s your start point.
To add categories there’s a list of options at
The problem I found was because WordPress automatically assigns old links to the default link category, on this site it’s called “AdSense Blogspot Templates” and then uses that category name as a heading for those links you get a second heading under Blogroll and Links that doesn’t look very good.
Mine looked like this-
Blogroll N Links
AdSense Blogspot Templates
My blogroll links
….
rest of menu.
And if you add multiple link categories you’ll get something like this-
Blogroll N Links
AdSense Blogspot Templates
My blogroll links
….
Another Link Heading
More blogroll links
….
Which I think looks a mess!
This will be a problem for everyone who used WordPress pre 2.1! Nice feature to be able to add categorised links if you have a large blogroll, but causes a mess at first so didn’t add this to the code. I will replace the old coding with the non categorised code I posted above, just in case WordPress ever stops backwards compatibility with it’s depreciated code (unlikely, but you never know) and to make it easier to add this feature for those with BIG blogrolls.
David Law
WordPress BlogRoll Links Formatting
Recommended WordPress SEO Plugins
Thanks David,
You have just saved my time, my efforts and my all frets (from SEO perspective) using wordpress seo plugins.
Recommended WordPress SEO Plugins?
Thanks Dave for your answers,
Some other questions –
1. What plugins do you recommend to use (Alinks, Post easer, Related post, Popularity contest etc…)?
2. I understand that there are 3 ads (central, right and bottom), why you haven’t include the one on the left, where it’s seen in “adveture” website? It is one of the best locations.
3. can you give me a clue where to change the width of the clumns? style.php? do you recommend to do this change?
Thanks,
I have just passed the payment.
Recommended WordPress SEO Plugins?
Best WordPress SEO Plugins
The plugins on the WordPress SEO Plugins article are what I use.
The AdSense ad units you can use up to but no more than three of them. With the way I’ve set the ads up you can either have a sidebar ad on the right menu (default without using widgets) or the left (by using the widgets settings).
There’s also two versions of the sidebar ad, one lacks the header saying it’s a advert. You should only use one or the other of these ad units as otherwise you’ll add four ad units to your theme and one won’t work.
If you read through the older comments you’ll see how to use widgets to add the sidebar ad unit where ever you want in on the left or right menus.
BTW Sent your theme earlier today, thanks for the order.
Question 3 is a hard one, if you plan to make the sidebars wider you’ll also have to either make the entire theme wider or the main content area narrower. From an SEO/AdSense perspective there’s no harm in doing this, but it’s beyond the scope of these comments to cover something as detailed as this beyond the following.
Load style.css in a text editor and play around with these classes (it’s the width you want to change):
#right-sidebars
#left-sidebars
.post-fixed
#post-entry
.post-meta
#post-entry h1
Probably
.sidebar-box
.sidebar-box span
.sidebar-box ul , .sidebar-box p
.sidebar-box ul ul
.sidebar-box ul li a:link,…………..
.sidebar-box ul ul li a:link,…………..
And other css classes!
Depending on what you want to do will depend on what you need to change, you have to make sure all changes match together, so if you widen the two sidebars you’ll have to widen a lot of other stuff.
I learnt HTML making changes like this, didn’t have a clue what I was doing, would make a change to see what it did :)
David Law
Best WordPress SEO Plugins