The Stallion Responsive theme and Stallion WordPress SEO theme includes a large number of social network promotion features, ranging from popular social media buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Google+…) to easy ways to link your WordPress blog with promotion services like Google Analytics and Google, Bing and Alexa site verification. To access the Stallion Responsive Promotion Options page log into your sites WordPress Dashboard and after installing Stallion via the “Appearance” >> “Themes” page on the left menu hover over the “Stallion Theme” menu and click “Promotion Options”. WordPress Social Network Promotion Below is a screenshot of the entire Stallion Responsive Promotion Options page, click the image for the large version. The Stallion WordPress Theme Promotion Options page has settings related to […]
Continue Reading Stallion WordPress Promotion Theme
Facebook Like Button
I think you know, this but on the latest update blew out the Facebook like button.
But I will report it anyway.
Facebook Like Button Code Broken
I’ve noticed the Facebook like buttons are not always loading over the past few days.
The Facebook like button content is an external script (not hosted on your site or part of Stallion) so when it’s down it’s most likely a problem at Facebook’s end, maybe their servers are overloaded.
View source of where the button should be and you’ll find this code
If you see code like this it confirms Stallion is loading the code.
BTW It’s not a Stallion v7 issue, Stallion v6.2 is the same.
David
Facebook Like Button Code Broken
Customized WordPress Themes
I know a few people using your theme that have – with – small CSS improvements made amazing looking website. I think if you took screenshots of some of the more artistic reinvention of Stallion Theme – this might help promote Stallion.
For example on the main menu, have a page that says:
“Some example of how people have customized Stallion”
That alone would create product differentiation over lesser SEOed themes out there that have a clone army of marketers.
Take a clue from the fashion and magazine industry, looks sell. If you can show people what is possible with Stallion beyond a standard install they might take a second look.
Customized WordPress Themes
Add Pinterest Button to WordPress Theme
Any recommendations for including a Pinterest “Pin it” button next to FB, TW, SU, Google buttons?
Not sure if Pinterest is hot where you are over there… but here it is taking on social networking like wildfire.
Adding a Pinterest Social Media Button
Adding a social media button where the current buttons reside would require editing the file
I’m not familiar with Pinterest, so no idea what their button code is.
If you look in the file above you’ll find code like
<?php if(st_stumbleb()=='1'){ ?> <div class="floatleft"><su:badge layout="1" location="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></su:badge></div> <?php } ?>The first and last line of the above code is checking if a Stallion options should load the code, since there won’t be Pinterest on/off option it’s not needed.
So what you’ve want is the middle bit:
If you added this below the Stunbleupon code so it looked like this:
<?php if(st_stumbleb()=='1'){ ?> <div class="floatleft"><su:badge layout="1" location="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></su:badge></div> <?php } ?> <div class="floatleft">PUT THE PINTEREST CODE HERE</div>The Pinterest button should load after Stubleupon (if you have it on).
This assumes the Pinterest button code is a single copy and paste bit of code (most buttons are).
If you want to try this I suggest installing a Stallion child Theme first, you can use the Free Example Child Theme from Stallion Child Theme Info. You’d activate a child theme and copy the /stallion-seo-theme/plugins/social-network.php file to your Child theme folder and edit it there. This would have the same affect as editing the file at /stallion-seo-theme/plugins/social-network.php but when Stallion updates you won’t loose your edits.
An alternative for some types of button code would be to try adding the button code to a Text Widget added to the “Content Ad widget” area under Appearance widgets and under Stallion Layout setting “Content Widget Area Alignment” to Float left or right. Whether this works depends on the button code, Google Plus code works this way, but adding the StumbleUpon code I’m using wouldn’t work because it includes PHP. Worth a try before messing with editing files.
You could also look for a Pinterest plugin.
When I get the time I’ll see if it’s worth adding to Stallion. My wife knows what it is :-) she says it’s used a lot with images on craft type sites.
David
Adding a Pinterest Social Media Button
Pinterest Theme
Dave
You are the greatest! Your customer service with regard to Stallion Theme is second to none. Really. Thanks for all this info. Pinterest is definitely worth adding to Stallion. Remember, the wives are always right… : ) Go check it out. People are obsessed with it. Heading off to Pin your Stallion Theme SEO right now.
Terri
Sell Premium WordPress Themes
Dave, I think the biggest challenge for me to sell your theme on my site is to develop a targeted keyword people would search and I would rank on that would get conversions.
I mean, if I ranked well for “WordPress SEO theme” it would be easy. But there is no way I can rank high for any keywords that could sell your theme. I would have to spend a lot of time developing this with organic links and all.
‘Make money online’ is one of the most competitive niches out there.
I did have a website wordpress-seo.org but gave it up as it had WordPress in it and I did not want to step on anyone’s toes (WordPress).
Therefore, I have the issue of promoting this great theme you have made your labor of love.
It is a theme I personally believe in as I know something about the web and I have done very well using it. But again, there are a lot of other guys swinging out there and to sell it on my site the conversions would not be large.
I have sold a few doing some consulting and in the package. I sell your theme after I get a consult. This is effective. Every time I get a consult I recommend your theme as I can talk people through why it is so good. And it is very good. Would not promote it if it was not the best.
I sell it because, I do not try to sell it. I just believe in it. I know how much is in it and it makes logical sense. It is really a no brainer to use your theme as the code is great, and the flexibility is also. I in good clear conscious can recommend it.
I would like to create a child theme, I would like to do a lot. It could not be my main source of income but a side project. However, I have not yet had an epiphany on how to market the theme.
The closet thing is the consultations. The issue with that is, you know how it is. It is a lot of work. I want to provide the best support and it takes time.
So I come back to square one. Just thinking out load, how can I promote this great theme of yours?
I am not asking for my own selfish reason, but I think this is the fundamental issues with getting the theme to be more widely used. You have an excellent product and personal customer support. But how the heck can I market this better, short of creating a website WP-SEO-Themes-or-something.com
Yes, I know I am repetitive something is my thinking, and questions to you, but this is the way I make breakthroughs. I keep probing the question from slightly different angles.
Sell Premium WordPress Themes
Promote WordPress Themes
Stallion the Best WordPress SEO Theme no one knows about :-)
Welcome to my world Mark :-(
I have the same problem, I know how good Stallion is SEO wise, it was designed for my use initially not for selling per se and no other WordPress theme, WordPress plugin or combination even scratches the surface of how good Stallion is.
I’ve neglected my website network recently (barely added any new content, been so busy developing Stallion features), now Stallion 7.1.1 is live and I’ve figured out WordPress Domain Mapping (ability to run multiple WordPress sites on multiple domains under one WordPress install) I’m building new sites: if I build 50 new sites before the New Year I’ll be happy (created 2 this week).
Built a ‘new’ (deleted a links directory that wasn’t working and reused the domain) site about Flowering Plants and for a person who understands SEO like I do they’d see how great Stallion is from this site.
I’m using the Stallion All In One SEO Plugin (built into Stallion) and I’m only using the All In One SEO “Title Tag” and the Related Keyphrase 1″ (not using Keyphrase 2, 3 or 4 mainly because trying to build sites quickly and not researching derivative SERPs yet).
This is a good example post Scarlet Pimpernel Plant.
Original WordPress Title : Scarlet Pimpernel Plant
Stallion All In One SEO Title Tag : Scarlet Pimpernel
Stallion All In One SEO Related Keyphrase 1 : Scarlet Pimpernel Flower
Stallion All In One SEO Related Keyphrase 2 : Not Used
Stallion All In One SEO Related Keyphrase 3 : Not Used
Stallion All In One SEO Related Keyphrase 4 : Not Used
Stallion All In One SEO Meta Description Tag : Not Used
If I wasn’t creating lots of sites with lots of content I’d also use the other settings above, but I’m going minimal SEO (I added 150 posts to this site in a day).
The above phrases are automatically used by Stallion throughout the site, on the Red Flowering Plants Category archive for example the Original WordPress Title is used for the main link to the post, the alt text for the Stallion Thumbnail Image, the Stallion All In One SEO Title is used for the Continue Reading anchor text.
I have two Stallion SEO Posts widgets (this is an awesome must use widget) on the right sidebar, the Popular Articles and Recent Articles Widget. I have the Popular version using the Stallion All In One SEO Title set for the links anchor text and the alt text for the thumbnail image the Original WordPress Title. I have the Recent version using the Stallion All In One SEO Related Keyphrase 1 set for the links anchor text and the alt text for the thumbnail image the Original WordPress Title. I can change what’s used with a few clicks of the mouse.
This is just a taste of what’s going on with this site working with just a few Stallion features (if it starts to do well, I should add more custom SEO). No other WordPress theme or theme/plugin combination can achieve the above and with Google looking at the anchor text of links to a page more closely now this is a must use set of features: all other WordPress themes use the Original WordPress Title of a post as the anchor text for links etc… (unless they use really bad anchor text like “Read More” which is anti-SEO).
Stallion is the only WordPress theme that can mix up the anchor text and alt text of internal links to posts and this should help with the latest Google algo changes long term. Think about it, Google indexed your entire site and you’ve named your posts with the best keyword phrase you could think of for that post (“Scarlet Pimpernel Plant” for example) and Google finds every internal link that uses keyword rich text uses the same phrase (Scarlet Pimpernel Plant). You’ve been working for years on backlinks from other websites and most of them use the title of the post (Scarlet Pimpernel Plant) as the anchor text.
Google is trying with it’s algorithm to rank sites like a human would, if every link to a page uses the same anchor text (Scarlet Pimpernel Plant) it’s obvious they aren’t being added by people who think the content is worth linking to. If you were linking to a post you might use a derivative phrase like “See The Pimpernel Flowers”, or just “Scarlet Pimpernel” or even just “Pretty Flowers” :-) Google is looking for patterns that indicate the links aren’t natural (and Google is getting better at determining natural/unnatural links) and the latest version of Stallion take this into account onsite and a little off site, when your content is scraped it’s going to use the derivative anchor text for the links back. Oooh, that just gave me an idea, the CopyFeed plugin I recommend, I should link it in to randomly use the Stallion keyphrases etc… for the anchor text on RSS feeds so when a site is scraped the anchor text is random.
The problem is how do you convey this level of very easy to use SEO to your average WordPress user who still thinks meta keyword tags (that are COMPLETELY ignored by Google) are the be all and end all of SEO, and even those that do understand SEO to some degree think all you need is a plugin like All In One SEO or Yoast WordPress SEO (they pretty much only change the title tag and that’s it!) the above Stallion feature though a very complex SEO concept is really easy to use in practice: name your posts with SEO in mind and generate up to 5 derivative titles that will be used automatically by Stallion to mash up the anchor/alt text of internal links.
I bet most Stallion users haven’t clicked on to the power of using the Stallion All In One SEO Related Keyphrases yet.
Anyway, like you Mark I’m stuck on how to better promote Stallion, I’d have to educate all WordPress users about SEO so they understand what they are missing out on by not using Stallion.
David
Promote WordPress Themes
WP SEO Theme
I print out your comments and reflect on them while walking. Your comments contain more wisdom than any SEO book out there.
For example, the two points made here are subtle but powerful.
If:
1) You use the single post special widget and make it robust and meaningful and
2) The keyword variance in the theme such as the four options you have added
Then:
Each post becomes more unique, and less boiler-plate and hence more useful for the end-user. Maybe not a Panda slayer but it can not hurt from a user standpoint.
Else:
You could be ‘just another WordPress blog’ out there that Google does not see as anything special.
It’s pure genius. A simple but powerful tool to leverage onsite factors to differentiate your WP blog from the pack.
If people knew how important this is for SEO they would be using it. I do not know any other theme out there that uses something like this.
Also the good news is your theme is being updated at an exponential rate, in contrast with others WP SEO themes, which add incremental increases in functionality, whilst, you are adding exponential. For example, like the above mentioned domain mapping.
WP SEO Theme
SEO CMS
The Stallion All In One SEO Features are to make the site appear more unique, the problem with Content Management Systems (CMSs) like WordPress is the lack of unique template elements making SEO harder.
On your average CMS site these elements tend to be identical sitewide.
Header
Sidebars
Footer
Google will of course take this into account, the algorithm won’t be programmed to see every page has basically the same header, sidebar and footer so that’s a duplicate content penalty, that would result in 90% of the Internet being considered duplicate!
Having duplicate elements on a page isn’t an issue per se, however a carefully crafted search engine optimized website not built on a CMS can have a different header, sidebar and footer for every page: every page perfectly SEO’d. For a decade I’ve know the best way to build a site is one page at a time using HTML, BUT who has the time to build a 500 page site this way with having to link every page together in a meaningful way and incorporating interesting features like comments is almost impossible! Hence using a CMS like WordPress and pushing it to it’s limits to force WP into the best SEO CMS possible.
What I’m, trying to achieve from WordPress via Stallion is the power of a CMS with the options available of creating a site using single HTML pages and it’s not easy.
I’m currently looking for ways to change the widgets so they aren’t all the same sitewide. Stallion already includes the ability to enable/disable widgets on a page by page or category basis, but it’s not automated like I’ve achieved with the Stallion All In One Related Keyword Phrases. I’d like to be able to select say three alternative titles for Categories and set Stallion to use one of those phrases for different page types.
Example
Category Title – “Search Engine Optimization” used on the widget links of Category sections
Related Keyword Phrase 1 – “Search Engine Optimisation” used on the widget links of the Super Comments pages
Related Keyword Phrase 2 – “SEO Optimization” used on the Home Page, Tags and Dated archives sections
Related Keyword Phrase 3 – “SEO Tips” used on the Category link from Posts and the widget links of Pages
This is the same concept as the All In One Phrases and would make the sidebar widgets more unique, it would still be reused content, but where the anchor text of all Category links is currently identical sitewide this would mix it up a bit.
Same concept for Tags, Blogrolls, footer links to home etc…. and you can imagine how much more unique a site could be with a small number.
That’s just given me an idea for making the Stallion All In One SEO Keyphrases and the Stallion SEO Posts Widget even better, should be able to add a mashup option where for a Stallion SEO Posts widget will use the different All In One SEO Keyphrases based on the type of page loaded: currently it’s good because the anchor text and alt text of the SEO Posts Widgets can be different to the posts titles, but they are still all the same sitewide, this option would mix it up sitewide (that will be a cool feature :-)).
Must have spent 3 hours this weekend browsing though plugins and code snippits looking for code I could use as a starting point for a new blogroll widget that would add a meta box to posts and pages edit screen where multiple blogroll links could be added. I don’t like the sitewide nature of the default Blogroll, I want page by page control so I can add relevant blogroll links. Planning to finally convert my Classic Literature sites to WordPress and want a feature like this since the site currently has that feature (the pages are basically static HTML – really old site). Didn’t find anything close to useful! I did add the Single Posts Widget in the last update that could be used for this, but would be adding fully formed links rather than a nice add a URL here and anchor text there etc… which is far more user friendly.
On domain mapping, I’m not adding domain mapping to Stallion, there’s already a working plugin called WordPress MU Domain Mapping https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/ which I’ve recently figured out how to use. What I will be doing is making sure nothing breaks in Stallion while using it since I plan to move most of my sites over to a handful of mapped WordPress installs.
David
2014 Update: added most of the SEO features mentioned above (and others not discussed) into Stallion Responsive v8
SEO CMS
Facebook button_count Layout?
Hello David,
As I see your promotion part in the facebook, I want to change its layout from “standard” to “button_count” which is quite short in length. But I don’t where I can change it, please guide !!!
Thank you so much
Adding Facebook Button to a WordPress Theme
There’s no Stallion option to change the Facebook code to the button_count layout.
The code is located in the file
on line 11.
Not looked into what you want to achieve, so don’t have a code snippet, should be easy to find the code from Facebook. Basically just replace the current Facebook code with the new button_count code you’ve created.
David
Adding Facebook Button to a WordPress Theme
Change size of the Facebook share/like
Where can I adjust the size of social networking buttons that are at the top or bottom of the posts.? I tried CSS, did not see how these are created, maybe they are images, if so which folder?
I would like to significantly expand the size of these social buttons(or a custom image), yet keep it mobile responsive and not too heavy.
The objective is to increase shares.
Now days any social signal from shares to mentions help rankings and if the button is bigger or unique, I think it will help. I could draw my own image.
Change size of the Facebook share/like
Facebook Share and Like Buttons Customization
The Facebook share and like buttons built into Stallion Responsive are using the default javascript versions of their buttons, we don’t have that level of control over their default like/share code. There are alternative button styles, but each social network has it’s own button sizes and code, it’s not easy to use their default code and have multiple buttons look good together (they have different sizes an styles which limits what works).
Basically limited to a few default sizes, so trying to hack something together from what’s part of Stallion isn’t the way to go. Best bet is build something custom or find a plugin that is close to what you want (loads of social media plugins, though they have a tendency to damage SEO).
I took a look at the site you emailed me about http://home.ijreview.com/ and it does have an interesting use of Facebook and Twitter share buttons.
The FaceBook and Twitter like/share buttons on the home page are the same code Stallion uses with a surrounding container with CSS to colour it blue (similar blue to the buttons) and hoverover styling so it looks like you can click the entire blue area. Click the blue area and it doesn’t do anything, still have to click the actual like/tweet button (same as Stallion): so looks like a big like button, but it isn’t.
The blue box is to draw your attention to the tiny buttons, interesting feature to try to encourage likes and tweets. With an Alexa rating of below 2,000 it’s a very popular site, so difficult to conclude if the number of likes/tweets are due to the design or just the sheer number of visitors: they could use the standard like format and they’ll get a lot of likes and tweets.
The huge Facebook like/share and Twitter buttons on the articles are custom buttons. Those are just text links with styling, you can do anything you like with that type of Facebook like button. As long as a social network has an option to like/share a URL via a standard text link (think they all do) that type of share button is easy to create.
Generally speaking it’s the Facebook text link share code with the WordPress permalink as the URL to share.
Something like this for Facebook:
We have a text link and the the_permalink() part is the WordPress permalink of the page the link is on. Each social network has it’s own format for it’s share code. the Facebook version above can include extra variables like the title of the post and size of the window to open.
Issue with this from an SEO perspective is it’s a text link that passes link benefit/PR and consumes anchor text benefit: would I want a link on an article with anchor text “Share on Facebook or Kittens Die!!!”, not really, ideally wouldn’t want “Share on Facebook” either. And that’s just one like link, add Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn…. and before you know it you have a dozen links on every post wasting link benefit and anchor text benefit to the social networks!!!
The reason I went with the current Javascript and iframe code for the like/share/tweet buttons is Google doesn’t pass/waste any direct SEO benefit to iframe or javascript like buttons: no link benefit/PR is passed or wasted.
I made this decision before Google went all anal retentive on pagespeed metrics (check Google PageSpeed Insights Tool results for pages running javascript like buttons).
Creating some new share/like buttons that use the standard text link format is on my list of features to develop, but with the option to use the Stallion Link cloaking script so they aren’t as SEO damaging. If you check my author bio box I’m using standard text link format for basic image links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin and they use the Stallion Link cloaking script.
Those links act like normal text links (image links) to users (click the Facebook one, takes you to my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/david.c.law ). Because it’s using the link cloaking script Google only sees the image, because the link is generated by CSS and javascript.
From a black hat/white hat SEO perspective there’s nothing wrong with this sort of linking. I’m not hiding the link, the alternative is to use a rel=”nofollow” tag which deletes the link benefit (damages my sites SEO). When I add a like button to Facebook I’m not voting for Facebook as a relevant resource to this article, I’m self promoting, if I had a sitewide link to four of my own sites (self promoting) on every article Google would consider that SEO iffy (blackhat SEO?) and it might count against this domains Google trust.
Is there really any difference between Facebooks javascript like button code and my Facebook javascript profile link? Only difference is my javascript is a lot less SEO performance damaging than Facebooks.
If I have the time for the Stallion Responsive 8.1 update (still trying to stick to the end of the month update release schedule) will see if I can add the option mentioned above and see if I can include something to style the links on the fly, create huge ass Facebook like links with neon pink background colours :-)
David
Facebook Share and Like Buttons Customization
Social media engineering onsite
That above mentioned site if you study it is a testament to what can be done with social media engineering.
The content itself is nothing spectacular, similarly, the look is nothing to write home about; yet, it is well thought out in terms of design – to get you to share it on Facebook to comment on Facebook which can lead to exponential growth if the content has emotional appeal.
I personally think Facebook is the Google of Social Media all otehr buttons pale in comparison. If that one button alone was easy to see and click then that alone could give you enough social signals (the links of today) to propel you to another level of organic traffic. I rarely get meaningful traffic from Twitter or others, maybe an argument can me made that Google + is the Bing of Social Media.
I like the CSS box around the FB share as this makes it light and mobile friendly yet does enough to attract attention.
You are correct to be cognizant of SEO considerations. You do not want your juice (whatever they call PR these days) flowing just anywhere, and yes Google going crazy with performance testing but it is a company run by academics and engineers, therefore, that does not surprises me. They are looking for measures to quantify quality on site and off site.
So if you did add some flexibility in social media and sharing (really FB is the most important). That would be greatly appreciated. In the mean time I may play around with CSS and plugins, or cute images (like a cat sharing with a dog) To test the affects.
Social media engineering onsite