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 Performance Plugin
WordPress Related Posts Plugin and Links Plugin
Hello Dave,
I have just couldn’t find the term on which the ‘related posts plugin’ sorts for related posts.
secondly – I realized that alinks does not work when simple tags is activated.
please advice,
Nissim
WordPress Plugin Setup
Related posts plugin needs setting up first, so check the readme file for instructions. If setup correctly there is no term to add or anything it’s all automated. This means sometimes you don’t get related posts listed on blogs with little content or on posts that you or I would expect to have related posts on. Like this page, there’s no related posts listed despite this page being related to lots of posts!
The aLinks and Simple Tags problem I’ve no idea what it could be, I’m running the aLinks (downloaded from this page) and Simple Tags 1.6.4 (slightly out of date) on with no problems. Probably installed the Simple Tags at WordPress version 2.6 so maybe something changed, I only use it on a couple of sites.
I don’t offer support for these plugins as I didn’t write them.
In the readme files there are links to the original authors sites, maybe others have run into this problem and found solutions. Unfortunately the aLinks plugin authors site no longer works.
David Law
WordPress Plugin Setup
WordPress Plugins Fatal Error
Greeting David,
I have installed the theme and I tried install plugin alinks but it gives me a fatal error when I try to activate it. After I download the plugin I unzip it and FTP to sites/wp-content/plugins file. I have download it from your link twice and twice I get triggering fatal error. Any suggestions.
I activated SEO Post Teaser but it tells me that there is a 3.11.3 Version upgrade from 3.8. I presume I should not upgrade to 2.11.3 am I correct.
Just tried to activate Related Post SEO and it is also giving me a fatal error. I am using Word Press 2.7.1.
Appreciate your help.
Thanks.
WordPress Plugins Fatal Error
WordPress Fatal Error Troubleshooting
Hi Serge,
Not had that error with those plugins and have a lot of sites running the latest version of WordPress (2.7.1). Because you are getting multiple plugin problems suggests it’s not due to the plugins directly.
This is what I’d try to troubleshooting a WordPress fatal error.
Deactivate all plugins and trying those plugins independently, sometimes 2 plugins can’t run together?
Download the full version of WordPress 2.7.1 and upload it over your current files: if you have a corrupt file or an out of date file (messed up upgrade) this will fix it.
Note down the fatal error and do various Google searches see if others have had this problem.
Although I don’t think it’s the plugins at fault, unfortunately the original author of the aLinks plugin (headzoo.com) no longer updates the aLinks plugin, the domain above is no longer even live! As WordPress updates issues are going to develop, so far I’ve personally not had any problems with aLinks, but I’m sure eventually this plugin will stop working (WordPress 3.0 maybe :)).
Every few months or so I take a quick look at what’s new in WordPress plugins, but so far not found a similar plugin to aLinks to replace it, I prefer to use plugins that are kept up to date, (right now I think 3 of the plugins above are no longer updated by the original authors) even if I find a new one that’s updated today there’s no guarantee that will be the case a year from now. So far been lucky with not having problems or been able to find sites online with new bug fixes.
My SEO version of the Post Teaser plugin has significant code alterations to make it work for better search engine rankings, I wouldn’t use the original plugin without the modifications since the link to the full post has terrible anchor text (“Read More” if I recall correctly).
Are you sure you are looking at the right plugin when you say it’s updated to 3.11.3, when I go to the site I got the original from it still says it’s version 3.8?
Hmm, looks like there is another plugin with the same name that is based on the original Post Teaser plugin (original no longer updated). WordPress plugin authors don’t make things easy :)
I’ll take a look at it and see if it’s better than the original Post Teaser. From the text seams there is a difference, original would clip the post at X characters, the new one cuts at the end of a paragraph. As long as your posts aren’t one big paragraph this could be a small improvement (it’s also kept up to date).
David Law
WordPress Fatal Error Troubleshooting
SEO WordPress Plugins
Very nice and informative list of wordpress plugins I think plugins play a vital role in optimizing your wordpress blog and all blogger should navigate and search for usefull plugins and implement them on their blog
Yet Another Related Post WordPress Plugin
I usually install “Yet Another Related Post” plugin when I create wordpress sites. I was looking through the page.php file and noticed that you have something for related posts. I just want to confirm that I don’t need to install a separate plugin because your theme already has that hard coded in.
Thanks,
Dana
Contextual Related Posts WordPress Plugin
The related post plugin I use is call Contextual Related Posts WordPress Plugin and it’s supported by the theme.
David
WordPress SEO Theme vs WordPress Plugins
About WordPress plugins I would second what Dave said above.
My plugin philosphy –
Before I used Dave’s themes I had scores of plugins to try to SEO my blogs.
Now I just let the theme do the work (with a few plugins like related posts and sitemap).
I found my pages load faster and less conflicts, with a good theme. When you load up with every plugin under the sun there is a lot of extra code on your pages and potential for conflict or wrong SEO moves like mentioned above with nofollow. That is why it is better to use a well coded theme. Talian works very well.
WordPress SEO Theme vs WordPress Plugins
SEO Impact of WordPress Plugins
With WordPress plugins you should aim to use as few plugins as possible.
There’s quite a few that are VERY anti-SEO, for example most of the WordPress plugins that add Digg and similar links to your WordPress blogs are awful SEO wise because the majority use links to Digg, Facebook, Twitter etc… that Google can read (basically a text link), so if you have an article with half a dozen links to Digg, Facebook, Twitter etc… it’s costing you a LOT of link benefit!
I was trying a popular one out a few weeks back and it added loads of text links that were hidden with javascript, but Google could read the text links! Some add nofollow links which is just as bad as that deletes link benefit now!
Then there’s the WordPress plugin authors that add a hidden link to their site from the plugin. I use a Comment rating plugin on some of my sites like (creates thumb links to click). If you install the comment rating plugin with the default settings it starts hiding comments that are marked down a few times (very low threshold) and creates a show hidden comment link PLUS a link to the comment authors website! I removed the code from the plugin I use (so not an issue for me), but if you leave the default settings you will send loads of links to the author of the plugins site without realising it. Only way to disable it is to set the threshold really high so it’s highly unlikely a comment will ever be hidden, though it does remove the hide feature!
David
SEO Impact of WordPress Plugins
Best WordPress SEO Plugins
I will be looking forward to your updated list of best WordPress plugins.
Do you do anything about rel=”canonical”?
Today (It changes all the time) my list right now is:
Admin Management Xtended (when I want to change things)
Sitemap (choose one)
wp-stats
wp-polls
tweetmeme
SEO related posts
most commented
privacy policy
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin and All In One SEO Pack Plugin SEO Damage
New Talian 05 WordPress SEO Theme Features Planned.
After reviewing two WordPress SEO plugins (Yoast’s SEO Plugin and the All In One SEO Pack Plugin) and finding I’d recommend neither of them I’ve been inspired to add new features that those SEO plugins try (but fail) to offer into Talian 05.
I’ve explained the main new SEO feature I want to add to Talian 05 in other comments. Basically currently the two main ways WordPress SEO plugins try to sculpt link benefit/PR is nofollow and noindex and both of them are seriously flawed SEO wise (explained in the page above why). As I looked at those plugins I had a Eureka moment and realised a way to protect link benefit without deleting link benefit (like nofollow does) or preventing it generating SERPs for noindex pages (like noindex does).
Not figured out how to code it into Talian yet, but confident I’ll get it working (no pressure then :-)).
The Yoast plugin and another SEO plugin called SEO Ultimate (I plan to review more SEO plugins) have a lot of extra features that though not strictly SEO features are useful: like I’ve added the ability to easily add your Google analytics code to Talian via the Talian admin page, not exactly a killer SEO feature, but useful all the same. So I plan to steal these good ideas and add them to Talian 05 at theme level.
No promises on a release date as I like to fully test important SEO features before releasing them to customers. The noindex/nofollow replacement needs some serious testing before release, would hate to accidentally release something that damages your sites SEO!!!
I wouldn’t normally be this cryptic about what I plan to do, but if I was an author of a popular SEO plugin I’d incorporate this into a SEO plugin as an alternative to nofollow/noindex. I’m also working on getting my eldest son (computer programmer) to create an SEO plugin with this new feature for those not using Talian 05.
Note: you shouldn’t use plugins that add nofollow links to your internal pages. Nofollow links are anti-SEO, they delete link benefit.
David Law
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin and All In One SEO Pack Plugin SEO Damage