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Does google know when you're using a SEO Plugin for your wordpress blog and lower your rank?

by CupcakeCandyWolf
22 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am currently working with 3 wordpress blogs. In website #1 I installed YOAST, in website #2 I installed Ultimate SEO and in my NEW website I have not installed any SEO plugins. I have more hits on my website without the help of SEO plugins (and i rank higher in google!). This is dispite the fact that I post at least two articles on #1 daily and one article on the new one maybe weekly...

So my question here is,
Does google know when you are using a SEO plugin and lower the rank of your website because of it? Should I just remove SEO plugins? or am i doing something wrong?
#blog #google #lower #plugin #rank #seo #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Most Wordpress SEO plugins have an HTML comment saying it's an SEO plugin. That can be deleted from the plugin source code. Besides that most of the files include the text SEO.

    View the HTML of any WP blog running a Yoast plugin, or most other plugins.



    [HTML source = view-source:http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/]
    HTML Code:
    <!-- / Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. -->


    I do know for a fact that Google reads the HTML commented Wordpress version number, I had a warning in GWT once telling me my WP install was outdated. I removed the HTML comment for the WP version & never had that GWT warning again. So Google does in fact read HTML comments.

    [edit]
    WP also includes a meta tag that has the WP version number. The GWT warning of the outdated WP version number went away after I removed both the WP meta tag & HTML comment code with the version number. It's been a while since I did that, I had to go & check my site/theme files.
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  • Profile picture of the author DBMEDIALLC
    Even if Google did know, why would they lower your rank because of it? Something like Yoast's SEO plugin helps you improve your on-site SEO. It's not a blackhat/spam plugin.
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  • Profile picture of the author mec64
    Are they all targeting the same keywords? That might be a better comparison considering the varying degrees of difficulty ranking different keywords. This is kind of interesting though.
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    • Profile picture of the author CupcakeCandyWolf
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Most Wordpress SEO plugins have an HTML comment saying it's an SEO plugin. That can be deleted from the plugin source code. Besides that most of the files include the text SEO.

      View the HTML of any WP blog running a Yoast plugin, or most other plugins.



      [HTML source = view-source:http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/]
      HTML Code:
      <!-- / Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. -->


      I do know for a fact that Google reads the HTML commented Wordpress version number, I had a warning in GWT once telling me my WP install was outdated. I removed the HTML comment for the WP version & never had that GWT warning again. So Google does in fact read HTML comments.
      This sounds great! Ill try it out! Thank you.




      Originally Posted by DBMEDIALLC View Post

      Even if Google did know, why would they lower your rank because of it? Something like Yoast's SEO plugin helps you improve your on-site SEO. It's not a blackhat/spam plugin.
      I figured maybe they would think I was keyword stuffing and throw it in the sandbox. I'm not entirely sure but I was curious because there was a decline in my websites using SEO plugins. Also maybe the Plugins are running on something that doesn't work anymore since the algorithms changed...

      Also for example, website #2 was doing great until I put ultimate SEO and then the ranking and hits suddenly went downhill.


      Originally Posted by mec64 View Post

      Are they all targeting the same keywords? That might be a better comparison considering the varying degrees of difficulty ranking different keywords. This is kind of interesting though.
      No they target different keywords but I just noticed sites that I have made without SEO Plugins have ranked higher. Also when I added Ultimate SEO to website #2 the ranking lowered as well at the hits....
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by CupcakeCandyWolf View Post

    This is dispite the fact that I post at least two articles on #1 daily and one article on the new one maybe weekly...
    Here's a thought. Maybe site #1 is ranking worse BECAUSE you are posting two articles to it daily. If you are running the site like a blog instead of having a static homepage, then that means the content of your homepage is changing constantly versus the other site where your content is not changing as often.

    Just a thought...
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    • Profile picture of the author CupcakeCandyWolf
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Here's a thought. Maybe site #1 is ranking worse BECAUSE you are posting two articles to it daily. If you are running the site like a blog instead of having a static homepage, then that means the content of your homepage is changing constantly versus the other site where your content is not changing as often.

      Just a thought...
      That is a possibility. I will give it a try. I was using the blog entries as my home page because I was reading an SEO article saying that google likes websites that are frequently updated and return to crawl the website more often.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by CupcakeCandyWolf View Post

        That is a possibility. I will give it a try. I was using the blog entries as my home page because I was reading an SEO article saying that google likes websites that are frequently updated and return to crawl the website more often.
        It depends on the type of site really. If you are running a celebrity news blog, then yeah, it makes sense to be updating more often.

        I have plenty of sites that rank just fine which have not been updated in several years.

        Frequent crawling does not equal better rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    In my first comment I wasn't suggesting having HTML comments on a page is a problem for ranking pages, just pointing out that Google does look at HTML comments, at least the WP version (GWT warning).
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    There is nothing wrong with the "normal" SEO plugins like AiO or Yoast since they don't do anything shady whatsoever.

    But there are some blackh@t plugins or autobloggers etc.. which I would not necessarily want Google to see. (Not that I use any of them anymore). In such cases what I did is I removed all footprints and renamed them, changed filenames etc. so they cannot be detected. But for the normal SEO plugins you don't need to worry.
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  • Profile picture of the author thedanbrown
    I don't think Google will punish you for using SEO plugins, if anything it's better for them. I think it's because of posting 2x daily as well... Although I'm not entirely sure but in my experience with SEO plugins you don't have anything to worry about.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tashiads
    SEO Plugins are best part of wordpress blogs..They made seo easy for experts working with wordpress..but it does not mean that using plugins will help anyone to get ranking..after installing seo plugin there is lot more to do and moreover Google is never and not going to penalize a wordpress site for using plugin..
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  • Profile picture of the author NicholasCage
    google can detect it using HTML settings for each plugin but they have no concern what plugin you are using they just need correct HTML ...
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  • Profile picture of the author CupcakeCandyWolf
    Okay, Thank you all for the information. I will mess around until I figure out what it was.
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  • Profile picture of the author affilorama-portal
    I do not think the plugins are the factors here. I think that it boils down on the other things you've done in your blogs. Like for the one ranking w/o plugin, you are updating the content more often and it is possible that you have used good set of keywords for this blog too.

    As for the ones with plugins installed, I think you should look into the settings also and check if there are options there where you can fully utilize the plugins to your advantage rather than disadvantage.

    I do not see any reasons why the plugins are the reasons why your site is not ranking.

    I hope that helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author temlawn
    No seo plugin... the spiders are bots.. they do not know the difference... its just a comp. code
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
    Should be titled "Does Google Care You Use An SEO Plugin"

    Most SEO plugins e.g SEO Yoast, helps Google understand your site as much as it helps you rank it.

    The answer would be No they don't care. Most of the on-page changes that such plugins make to your site are a direct reflection of what Google advises on how you should structure your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author pietpetoors
    I installed a performance monitor on one of my wordpress blogs and found that Ultimate SEO was slowing down my web sites very much. It was like 50% of the time it took to load was used by Ultimate SEO. Maybe your bad seo on that site is rather speed related than penalized because of seo plugin. Penalized for speed, not for the plugin itself.
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