Contradictory SEO Advice - Who's Right...Yoast or Stallion

by Zanti
44 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I've been using Yoast's SEO plugin and think it's one of the best available. Recently I've been reading about the Stallion WP SEO plugin and the why's of it's creation.

Stallion contradicts what Yoast says about nofollow and noindex. Here is the wp.org page for the Stallion plugin WordPress › Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin « WordPress Plugins and here is information on the Stallion site about Yoast's plugin and the difference between the Stallion plugin, Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Review Lots of interesting comments also. (Not affiliated with either Yoast or Stallion)

I've followed Yoast's advice and still do on SEO but I'm wondering what others think.

This is one of the most difficult dilemma I encounter with SEO, finding who to follow and stick with. So far I'm going to stick with Yoast but would like to hear the thoughts from SEO experts here.

Brian
#advice #contradictory #rightyoast #seo #stallion
  • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Banks
    Originally Posted by Zanti View Post

    I've been using Yoast's SEO plugin and think it's one of the best available. Recently I've been reading about the Stallion WP SEO plugin and the why's of it's creation.

    Stallion contradicts what Yoast says about nofollow and noindex. Here is the wp.org page for the Stallion plugin WordPress › Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin « WordPress Plugins and here is information on the Stallion site about Yoast's plugin and the difference between the Stallion plugin, Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Review Lots of interesting comments also. (Not affiliated with either Yoast or Stallion)

    I've followed Yoast's advice and still do on SEO but I'm wondering what others think.

    This is one of the most difficult dilemma I encounter with SEO, finding who to follow and stick with. So far I'm going to stick with Yoast but would like to hear the thoughts from SEO experts here.

    Brian
    Pretty lazy, don't feel like clicking through and filtering the info from both articles. Can you summarize?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016328].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Zanti
    Sure Jeremy, but instead of summarizing I'll give it to you from them.

    From wp.org Stallion plugin:
    There are several very popular WordPress Plugins including the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin (uses nofollow and noindex) and the All in One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin (uses noindex) that when used incorrectly can seriously damage a WordPress sites search engine rankings because they include the ability to nofollow and noindex sections of a WordPress site.

    Yoast Response to Stallion:
    ... I actually with you that a page should be found naturally. You only need XML Sitemaps to increase the speed of indexation, which on a lot of blogs is vital: you want to be ranking for new found issues quickly. It also allows you to check in Google Webmaster Tools whether Google is indexing your full site or if it's missing pages.


    Then for the indexation settings: these indeed are very powerful and can do some harm in the wrong hands. There's a lot of explanation on that page too which you failed to mention. Also, when you're blocking indexation, you're not blocking crawling, nor are you blocking link juice from flowing. As for search result pages: Google has been asking Webmasters to noindex their internal search results for quite a while now.



    That's why the feature is there, and yes, I think you should noindex those.
    Further down, again, you're making claims about nofollow that you can't backup with any research, and saying that "No true SEO expert", don't do that. You're insulting people you shouldn't insult and you obviously have never really tested this on any real site. You seriously just don't get what nofollow does (and used to do).


    The permalink redirect is less relevant now that we have canonical, but still preserves link equity better when you have a lot of crap added to your URL's by one or another cause.


    For breadcrumbs you've obviously only seen half the value. If you say "as long as your categories names are optimized (using relevant keywords)", you've not seen that you can actually set the breadcrumb link to use on the category page (as well as add an SEO title and meta description to categories, tags, or any other custom taxonomies). I'm glad to see you validate the RSS section, it's taken from another plugin of mine called RSS footer and adds lots of links to your site if you have some dumb scrapers, preventing Google from ranking other scrapers for your posts.


    Funny thing is, you check out the single post edit screen and see some stuff there, but you entirely fail to mention the snippet preview, a feature that does give guidance to bloggers and helps them by showing what their post would look like as a result in Google.


    In all, you have some fair points, but you've also not watched closely enough: a lot of these features are useful in some use cases, because the plugin doesn't set any defaults yet (and no you shouldn't use it on production sites yet, that claim is all over it). You have some views of SEO that differ from mine and I think are wrong. I do have research on nofollow but as that's done on one of my clients sites I'd have to get you to sign an NDA before I could show you that, if you're interested, drop me an email.


    Also, you've seen that almost everything this plugin does is an option, that's for a reason: SEO's have differing opinions. Instead of forcing my opinion down everyone's throat, I'm allowing you to use parts of the plugins and ignore other parts. In all, a bit of the feedback above was actually useful, thanks for that, and good luck with your theme.

    Stallion Response:
    The biggest issue I have with your Yoast WordPress SEO plugin is the nofollow attributes it adds and to a lesser degree noindex**


    ** Noindex doesn't delete link benefit, but it does waste it as it's not helping rank a page that's indexed (basically the PR/link benefit of a noindex page isn't used on that page, it's just passed on through links minus the damping factor). If you noindex your categories for example and they are all decent PR, the PR link benefit flowing through the category pages will go to the post pages etc... (assuming you haven't nofollowed as well). But the initial link benefit that flows into the category pages isn't generating SERPs for the category pages.


    Imagine how stupid it would be to noindex your home page (the page that tends to gain most link benefit), yes the pages of your site will still get their link benefit, but the home page would gain no SERPs (other than SERPs related to anchor text of incoming links). I don't see how the category, tags and even the monthly archive (which rarely rank for anything) pages are any different to the home page (any page)?


    If you are sending link benefit/PR through a page have it do something, don't use noindex unless there's a really good reason for doing so. ... more on the site.


    There is more in-depth conversations on the site for those who want to get a better understanding of what Yoast and Stallion are talking about.


    Brian
    Signature
    Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
    "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


    A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016425].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author milton11011
    lmao at your summary being like 8 paragraphs long. i got a feeling that he wanted a summary of a summary..
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016544].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Bottom line is, why create a web page If you don't want it in the SERPs? Do you want anyone to find your pages in Google?

    I've been over this a few times on this forum, I havn't found a reason on my own sites to ever need a NOINDEX.

    A unique canonical-tag + unique page-title will get all your pages in the SERPs.

    I have way more pages (wp-category + wp-tag) in the SERPs than I do content pages.

    Every single extra page is one step closer to a sale!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016587].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author UMS
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Bottom line is, why create a web page If you don't want it in the SERPs? Do you want anyone to find your pages in Google?
      Quite a few reasons for not wanting pages to be indexed. For example a download page, optin content, membership pages etc.

      And yes, I know that you should be using better protection, but a lot of people have content like this that is fully indexed by search engines.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016605].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by UMS View Post

        Quite a few reasons for not wanting pages to be indexed. For example a download page, optin content, membership pages etc.

        And yes, I know that you should be using better protection, but a lot of people have content like this that is fully indexed by search engines.


        If a NOINDEX is how someone protects a private page, they deserve to have that page made public, lol.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016630].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Zanti
          Yukon, I respect your SEO knowldege so help me out here. Are you saying that you don't agree with Yoast and more inline with Stallion?

          Also, can you share what is the best way to protect a private page.

          Again, what I'm trying to get a grip on is who are the SEO experts that one should follow. It's like when people jump from one system/program, WSO to the other instead of sticking with one.

          Yukon, from your experience what is the best foundation to build SEO knowledge. I would love it if you could point me in the right direction, I'm also open to learning. Thanks.

          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          If a NOINDEX is how someone protects a private page, they deserve to have that page made public, lol.


          I'm sure that's what he wanted but to be of help to others and not HOW I interpret the information, I felt it best to share the exact information. If one is to lazy to read what's in front of them that's cool and if you find enjoyment in how I answered the request I'm glad I brought some levity into your day. Brian

          Originally Posted by milton11011 View Post

          lmao at your summary being like 8 paragraphs long. i got a feeling that he wanted a summary of a summary..
          Signature
          Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
          "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


          A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016703].message }}
          • Profile picture of the author Zanti
            Originally Posted by Zanti View Post

            Yukon, from your experience what is the best foundation to build SEO knowledge. I would love it if you could point me in the right direction, I'm also open to learning. Thanks.
            Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge Yukon. Looking forward to additional comments from you.

            Thanks,

            Brian
            Signature
            Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
            "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


            A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

            {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046616].message }}
  • {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016796].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Zanti
      So, D Baker, why will you stick with Yoast on this? That's the direction I'm leaning but it's also the reason why I've asked Yukon and others to share their thoughts.

      So what are your thoughts on going with Yoast.

      Brian
      Signature
      Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
      "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


      A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016824].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author vivaarturo
    I work with a lot of IM marketers and they have done testing and have moved all their sites to the yoast plugin, they used to use all in one seo or platinum.

    Hi am using thesis theme which gives me better control and therefore do not use Yoast

    Cheers
    Arturo
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016927].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Zanti
      Thanks vivaarturo for your input. I use the Headway Theme which also has built in SEO but I also use the Yoast plugin.

      Brian
      Signature
      Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
      "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


      A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4016953].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    I'm the author of the Stallion SEO Plugin and Stallion SEO Theme : best WordPress SEO theme available today by a mile, find a WordPress SEO theme with all the Stallion SEO features plus one more and I'll give you $1,000 by PayPal.

    My position on nofollow is very easy to show. We all know who Matt Cutts is, Google employee that on occasion gives us the odd tit bit of useful information about Google:

    Couldn't post links, search "Matt Cutts pagerank sculpting" in Google

    So what happens when you have a page with "ten PageRank points" and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let's leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn't count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.
    Pretty clear from the above nofollow deletes link benefit, it no longer flows to the followed links. If you have ten links and five are nofollow, you've deleted half your link benefit!

    Noindex.

    We know what noindex does, it stops a page from being indexed in Google etc... whilst allowing links from the noindexed page to be followed (assuming no nofollow associated with the noindex robots meta tag).

    We know when PageRank flows through a page it uses approx 15% of the PageRank, the 15% is the dampening factor (or decay factor Matt Cutt's mentioned above) from the original PageRank formula: I'm sure the formula has changed by now, but the concept will hold true a % of the PageRank is used on each page it flows through.

    What happens to the 15% of PageRank that would be used on the noindexed page to generate search engine rankings? It does nothing, it's wasted because it doesn't generate any rankings for the noindexed page. The remaining 85% still flows through the links, so it's just the 15% damping factor that's lost.

    My plugin recovers this lost link benefit through canonical URLs which to Google are basically 301 redirects minus the browser redirection.

    I've tested this concept for around a year and it works. Perfect for noindexing monthly archives, paged home page archives etc... whilst recovering the link benefit that would be lost.

    David
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4023317].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Stalliontheme View Post

      My plugin recovers this lost link benefit through canonical URLs which to Google are basically 301 redirects minus the browser redirection.

      I've tested this concept for around a year and it works. Perfect for noindexing monthly archives, paged home page archives etc... whilst recovering the link benefit that would be lost.

      David
      Makes no sense at all to NOINDEX those pages.

      A single unique canonical tag per page will keep every single page on your site in the Google SERPs.

      I've been ranking internal pages/post & category, tags, etc... with zero problems. It's all about:
      • unique canonical tag per page
      • unique page title
      • unique description
      I won't bother with PR pecentages since I don't work for Google, & I doubt anyone else here does.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046569].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author milton11011
    honestly, i havent even been in it that long, but I always hear contradictory advice (like most of the time). people always disagree on what works and what doesnt. just stick to quality content and try not to get banned by google lol
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4023438].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Zanti
    David, thanks for joining the conversation. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts directly, straight from the Stallion's mouth, so to speak. Sorry, couldn't resist.

    As I mentioned in an above post, I'm trying to get a handle on what's what in SEO. I'm assuming there are several others here who are trying to do the same.

    As I've mentioned, I've been a follower of Yoast or awhile. I'm still going through some of the comments on your site and also on Yoast's site to determine what makes sense for me. I can honestly say that at this point I don't really know yet.

    My hope is that this thread will led to discussions that will shed some light on the subject of SEO and provide many of us here with some solid information on which to build on.

    Thanks,

    Brian
    Signature
    Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
    "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


    A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4023447].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Zanti
    In an ongoing effort to increase my seo education I've decided to continue with Yoast as one of my top seo experts to follow.

    I'll continue to be open to other differing points of view but I think it's important to work from a base and not jump all over the place.

    Like everything in IM there are many avenues to follow. It's incumbent on each marketer to test theories and methods to determine what works best for them.

    My hope is that this thread will continue with others sharing their seo knowledge and the reasons why they do what they do regarding seo.

    Those willing to share the thought process behind their seo methods has been very helpful to me and I hope others.

    Thanks to all of you who have contributed in this important topic.

    Brian
    Signature
    Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
    "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


    A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046437].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Let me get my popcorn.

    Discussing WP Optimization is endless. My site architecture is different from yours. Heck, every site has a NATURAL different architecture!!

    How many Categories? How many Posts per Category? How many Tags per Post?

    It's endless.

    Discuss all you want, but in the end, it all gets down to content/titles/descriptions,relevancy/headings/internal linking strategy/outbound links/etc etc.

    Now I'm gonna get my popcorn.

    EDIT: OP, sometimes it looks contradictory, but it's not. Every site has it's own "rules" and "tricks". What works fine in one site, does not work at all in a similar site. As soon as you understand this, the better. Every site has it's own "life" - it needs to "breath" and be "fed" differently.
    Signature
    People make good money selling to the rich. But the rich got rich selling to the masses.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046683].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Zanti
      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      EDIT: OP, sometimes it looks contradictory, but it's not. Every site has it's own "rules" and "tricks". What works fine in one site, does not work at all in a similar site. As soon as you understand this, the better. Every site has it's own "life" - it needs to "breath" and be "fed" differently.
      Hey Fernando,

      Thanks for sharing and I agree with you that every site is different. I've always understood this actually. But there are also many common elements that most sites experience.

      I don't think that this is going to be one of the "popcorn" threads that we're familiar with here.

      It's one of the reasons I've attempted to be very clear to ask others about the thought process behind what they do in "their" seo management. "their" is the operative word. It's not about the "I'm right and everybody else is wrong mentality."

      It's really about having a mature discussion about what works for someone and the whys of that. This also takes into account that every site and IM business may have a different why of doing something based on that person's understanding of seo.

      I firmly believe that anyone posting in this thread will be more than willing to share "their" thought process without it degrading into a "popcorn moment."

      I'm an expert in a few different areas in small business development and IM, unfortunately seo is not one of those areas as of yet for me. Which is why I want to educate myself and learn from the experience and knowledge of others who are well versed in seo and willing to share so I can make my own decisions regarding seo.

      I do hold the belief that this forum has many members who can maturely discuss and help educate others. At least that has been my experience here.

      Brian
      Signature
      Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
      "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


      A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046833].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Hi Brian,

    I wasn't degrading the thread - far from it. Otherwise I wouldn't post.

    But discussing SEO is (almost) impossible in some degrees: and plugins is one of them - at least for me.

    Every site architecture is what decides what to do, where to do it and WHY.

    One example: If I have this site with 50 Categories and amazing Archives, why would I want to NOINDEX them?

    On the opposite side, If I have a 100 pages website, all of them in ONE Category, most probably I'll NOINDEX that piece of the pie, or at least eliminate the snippets and just keep the urls to the Posts.

    Thats why discussing WP plugins that decide these small (and HIGHLY IMPORTANT) aspects, it's very, very difficult.

    At least for me.

    But I don't defend one plugin or the other.

    What I defend and advise, is for people to understand what is going on on their sites - and decide accordingly.

    Fernando
    Signature
    People make good money selling to the rich. But the rich got rich selling to the masses.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046874].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Zanti
    Hey Fernando,

    I know you weren't degrading the thread. I kind of know you from other post and threads that you contributed to and you've always come across as someone who does whatever he can to help others.

    Thanks for sharing and that's exactly what I, and I hope others are looking for. Well thought-out information.

    I really do get what you're saying about the difficulty of discussing seo. Honestly, it's the reason for the thread, understanding some of the whys and wherefore's of seo has been difficult for me. Yes, I have certain things that I do with my sites but seo is an ongoing learning process for me.

    I will say that what you posted was very helpful to me. It's often the small things that make the major impact on a site.

    So thank you my friend for sharing and please continue to do so.

    Brian
    Signature
    Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
    "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


    A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046978].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Brian Alaway
    As with most things in IM, I try to listen with an open mind to all educated opinions but the only definitive conclusion I can say I reach on most things, including seo, is there's only one way to know for sure what works best for you and that's to split test. Anything else is just someone's opinion. This includes what Google has to say too.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4046984].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi Zanti,

      I agree with Stallion, Yukon and Matt Cutts on the "nofollow" causing unnecessary PR bleeding. This is a topic that has been discussed here on this forum a couple times in the past. All my testing has confirmed this assertion.

      As far as recovering link juice from noindex pages through the canonical, I have seen evidence that suggest this, but have not done a full scale test (just added to my todo ). Like Yukon, I prefer to get every page indexed and let the link juice flow. Each indexed page adds another point of entry to your website and I am of the school of thought that casting the widest net catches the most fish.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4047587].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Zanti
    Thanks Don,

    I'm still studying the nofollow stuff. I do agree with you, Yukon and others regarding noindex.

    Brian
    Signature
    Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
    "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


    A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4047758].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    Hey again :-)

    Reading through the replies seems a few have not understood what my plugin is for.

    Like a few have posted here it's best to have a site where all pages are indexed, using nofollow and noindex is a bad idea generally and before I created the Stallion plugin I'd never use noindex or nofollow (every page on my sites would be indexed).

    However, I'm a rare webmaster, I've always put SEO above everything else, for example I'd never use a monthly archive because they have no SEO value, when I create a page it's normally targeting a SERP or two, so there are few parts of my sites that I don't want indexed.

    This is not the case for many webmasters, many use monthly archives, author archives, home page archives etc.... that have no SEO value. Then there's login links that waste link benefit (not an issue for me as my Stallion SEO theme has hidden them from search engines). This can result in quite a lot of links to pages that have little to no SEO value in being indexed, but are using link benefit.

    Webmasters are using plugins like the Yoast plugin to noindex and nofollow large sections of their sites including categories and tags (which is nuts to nofollow/noindex categories and tags!!) and wasting significant amount of link benefit in the process (there's no SEO gain in nofollow and noindex).

    If you've been using the Yoast plugin to noindex categories and tags you've been following some awful SEO advise, since you can give these archive pages a unique title they have the potential to rank high for relevant SERPs (monthly archives have the date as the title, they are highly unlikely to rank for anything). I would never advise nofollowing or noindexing categories or tags since they tend to have SEO value (my categories generate quite a bit of search engine traffic, I tend not to use tags). If you've been using a plugin like Yoasts to nofollow/noindex monthly archives, login pages etc... and still don't want them indexed, but don't want to waste link benefit via noindex/nofollow use the Stallion SEO plugin.

    If like me you build all your sites with SEO in mind, never using monthly archives, author archives (unless you have a multi-author site), use a theme like the Stallion SEO Theme that hides login links from search engines, create categories and tags that are targeting relevant SERPs (you want them indexed) then there's not much to gain from using the Stallion SEO plugin: you can save a little link benefit from the home archived links, but it's not an end of the world amount.

    David
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4164769].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Chucky
    Couldn't resist

    I'm NOT an SEO expert. My rules are simple.

    I NOINDEX my privacy policy, terms of use, disclaimer for 2 reasons.
    1. I have no sales copy on these, I have no intention of ranking these on the SEs.
    2. I don't rewrite these legal pages for each site I make. I don't want these to be indexed so that one could search Google to find out all my sites
    Check out this Google search to see what I mean "We have had a large internet presence for many years and we sure aren't going anywhere" - Google Search

    Then I nofollow links from my footer to my legal pages. I don't build any links to my legal pages, because as I said earlier I have no sales copy on them. So I also don't want the hard earned link juice to my sales pages leaking to my legal pages.

    Hope that makes sense!

    And now a question!

    I keep my category pages indexed, but I'm not 100% sure I should. Why let link juice flow from one post to another post through a category page when it can flow from one post to the other directly? I have all my posts interlinked at least with the 'next/previous post' if not an editorial link.

    Any benefit from my category pages getting indexed? If I only have 3 categories, would the 3 category pages generate enough PR for the site to justify keeping them indexed? Or do I lose more PR than they generate? Any thoughts?

    Thanks!
    Chucky
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4164963].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author timpears
    Is Yoast working for you? If so, keep using it. If not, then try the other one. It is called testing.
    Signature

    Tim Pears

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4164983].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Zanti
      Hey Chucky,

      Thanks for your input. You may not be an SEO expert as you say, (I think that might be debatable though.)

      I've been following your other thread for a while and still learning from the great information you've been sharing on an almost daily basis.

      Thanks again for contributing.

      Now get back to work studying for those test.

      Brian

      P.S. By the way, good question you asked here.
      Signature
      Brian Alexzander ~ Irie To The Highest - Respect
      "Irie"...the ultimate positive, powerful, pleasing, all encompassing quality/vibration


      A Candle Never Loses Any Of Its Own Light... By Lighting Another Candle

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4165166].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    Hi Chucky,

    You are deleting and wasting link benefit.

    Nofollow deletes link benefit, do the research you'll find SEO experts who keep up to date are clear, nofollow deletes link benefit (Google confirmed this via Matt Cutts) and should no longer be used. This is SEO fact and no longer a debate issue for those who keep up to date with SEO.

    If you have a 1,000 page site with one nofollow link on every page you just wasted the equivalent of one sitewide link to another site/page of yours. Would you ever link to a random site (not yours) from every page of your site, link benefit cost wise that's what you are doing!

    My Stallion plugin can help with this, you can block individual posts and pages (add a canonical URL pointing back at home on a page/post basis) though not finished that feature yet (had a problem removing the default page/post canonical URL).

    Install and activate the Stallion plugin Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin , by default it doesn't make any major changes (adds canonical URLs back to home on login/admin pages) so it won't cause any major SEO changes just by installing and activating. Go to the Stallion Plugin admin page and read what each option does (there's a small tutorial on the admin page which includes info about using categories and tags).

    The Stallion plugin can be used alongside the Yoast plugin, for those who know what they are doing the Yoast plugin has some useful features, as long as you do not use the nofollow/noindex features the Yoast plugin won't damage your sites SEO.

    My Stallion WordPress SEO Theme includes a section that warns which Yoast settings are damaging (doesn't make changes, just a warning), the Stallion plugin and the Yoast plugin only cover a small amount of SEO, if you want to see what full WordPress SEO looks like test my SEO theme, link to latest zip file can be found at 03-08-2011 - Stallion 6.0.1 Update Available

    Temporary Stallion ID: warrior123fghyw

    Note: this Stallion ID will deactivate within a month.

    WordPress SEO challenge, find a WordPress SEO theme with all the SEO features of Stallion plus one more and there's $1,000 available via PayPal. I had a similar offer on Talian 5 ($500) and no one came close claiming it.

    David
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4166845].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Kapoki
    Stallion, I installed your plugin on one of my sites. I asked you a question about it on your plugin page a few days ago. Could you answer it?

    Warriors: I'll let you know about the results I achieve with the plugin. The site I am testing on gets sandboxed (or how you want to call it) all the time for 2 years now and I am not building links agressively/the blackhat way (don't look at my sig, I did not use Scrapebox on this site ). I have a feeling it might have something to do with the huge number of tag pages we created so I use the plugin to cover this.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4268089].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Kapoki
    Wow, I can't say "blakk hat" on this forum?? That should be in place for "Bluefart".
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4268096].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author webjedi
      I completely agree with Stallion.
      However, the plugin was adding a canonical link in the header for a page a wanted to get indexed.

      Unable to find a way to allow this page to be indexed properly, I disabled the plugin and the code stayed and deleted the plugin and the code stayed.

      I remember reading on the Stallion site that it modifies the wp_core files I need a recipe to undo the Stallion changes (even though I want to use it).

      Can anybody direct me to a fix template or what I need to replace in core?

      WJ
      Signature

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4876937].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author athenistic
        Originally Posted by webjedi View Post

        I remember reading on the Stallion site that it modifies the wp_core files I need a recipe to undo the Stallion changes (even though I want to use it).
        Ouch.

        I was thinking about picking it up and testing it on a site until I read that.
        Signature

        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4877137].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
        Originally Posted by webjedi View Post

        I completely agree with Stallion.
        However, the plugin was adding a canonical link in the header for a page a wanted to get indexed.

        Unable to find a way to allow this page to be indexed properly, I disabled the plugin and the code stayed and deleted the plugin and the code stayed.

        I remember reading on the Stallion site that it modifies the wp_core files I need a recipe to undo the Stallion changes (even though I want to use it).

        Can anybody direct me to a fix template or what I need to replace in core?

        WJ
        Hi WJ,

        The Stallion plugin has no impact on any core WordPress files, makes no changes to them. Where did you get the idea it could make WordPress core file changes? I don't think a plugin would get in the WordPress plugin repository if it requires core changes.

        If you've deleted the Stallion plugin files there's no way it can add anything to your site, it's impossible. When you delete the Stallion plugin files all that would be left are the database entries which are only numbers 0, 1 or 2 (the canonical code is within the file stallion-wordpress-seo-plugin.php, so if you deleted it no way for it to be added to your site).

        When the plugin is installed the code added to the header looks like this:

        Code:
        <!-- Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin 1.0 by David Law http://www.stallion-theme.com/stallion-wordpress-seo-plugin -->
        <link rel="canonical" href="http://domain.com" />
        <!-- Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin -->
        Any other canonical URLs are NOT Stallion.

        what page are you seeing a canonical URL on?

        WordPress core adds canonical URLs to most posts and pages and there are other plugins that add them, so look at either core WordPress or another plugin for an addition of canonical URLs.

        So far had one support request at Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin that might have been an issue with the plugin, the user couldn't save settings (I couldn't replicate the issue).

        Not had any other reports of issues that could be caused by the Stallion plugin (your issue for example can't be this plugin), though this isn't a heavily used plugin (about 5,000) downloads. At WordPress › Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin « WordPress Plugins had 4 people click it was broken, but no other information given, which isn't very helpful in troubleshooting possible problems.

        David
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4877239].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author dagaul101
    Personally I would stick with what works, but ofcourse try out a nice tactic on a new domain to see if it could work
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4879656].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steven Elliot
      Zanti,

      These are wise questions you are posting. I cannot PM you (not enough posts). Would you please PM me, perhaps with an email address so I may ask you a few questions? Thank you.

      And, thanks to everyone participating in this interesting thread.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4886858].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author ZypreX
    Banned
    [DELETED]
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4888129].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
      Originally Posted by ZypreX View Post

      From what I have come to understand no follow and follow is not super important.. a mix is usually the best.. I personally dont pay attention to it, and I am ranking very well.. Go for quality links mate.. thats what matters.. if you can get quality backlinks you only need 15-20 a day until you are where you wanna be.. and if you ping that goes fast.
      That's a lot of backlinks a day, I've worked as an SEO consultant for about a decade, own 100 domains and don't need anywhere near as many as 15-20 backlinks a day to achieve good results. I haven't created a new backlink on a site not owned by me for SEO reasons for ages (I write the odd comment/forum post with links, but most of them will be nofollow so pass no SEO benefit anyway).

      Maybe it's because I don't waste most of my hard earned link benefit on nofollowing links that I don't have to work so hard on building backlinks :-)

      I don't understand why anyone would argue to use nofollow links when they know it deletes link benefit? What is the logic in deleting link benefit, what's the SEO gain (any gain)?

      Sure you can argue you don't have the skills/tools to achieve a nofollow free website: WordPress core, plugins and themes add so many nofollow links it's not easy to remove them all without a significant amount of code changes (assuming you don't use the Stallion theme that can remove them all**).

      ** Currently there is only one WordPress theme (Stallion) that can remove all nofollow links from a WordPress site including nofollow links added automatically to old comments and nofollow links manually added to posts without having to edit a single comment or post. In the last Stallion theme update I added a new feature to achieve full nofollow removal.

      Your argument is like saying I have a bucket with lots of small holes in it, but as long as I keep adding a lot more water the bucket remains full. That's true, but wouldn't it make a lot more sense to plug the little holes and use the additional water to fill another bucket (links to another website)?

      David
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4888646].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author jollyjollyjolly
    I love head to head matchups and agree that so much of what we hear is at odds with yesterdays advice (which is perfect for google BTW) I have like 40 sites and more then a few running yoast, which has done well. I am always looking for the next best however and will remove yoast and load up stallion on the and see what that looks like after a few weeks.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4898050].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author webjedi
      Didn't mean to misrepresent your plugin stallion, not my intent. In fact, since discovering your plugin I have really delved into the nofollow and noindex discussion and have learned some incredibly valuable information concerning PR flow.

      I just finished retro-fitting a site that is hovering at rank 13 for a week and a half, it's been solid there so I think G has decided that's where it belongs. I rewrote the site keeping all my KW densities as in place as I could keep them and no title changes of course.

      I am scared to start plopping canonicals in spots but I know I need them, for instance, I have a posts that belong to multiple categories and I know I want a canonical on the post to tell G that it isn't dup content but has one true home. I am just unsure of what the one true home should be.

      When I decide, I wondering where to plop the canonical, on every link that references the post?

      WJ
      Signature

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4904809].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
        Originally Posted by webjedi View Post

        Didn't mean to misrepresent your plugin stallion, not my intent. In fact, since discovering your plugin I have really delved into the nofollow and noindex discussion and have learned some incredibly valuable information concerning PR flow.

        I just finished retro-fitting a site that is hovering at rank 13 for a week and a half, it's been solid there so I think G has decided that's where it belongs. I rewrote the site keeping all my KW densities as in place as I could keep them and no title changes of course.

        I am scared to start plopping canonicals in spots but I know I need them, for instance, I have a posts that belong to multiple categories and I know I want a canonical on the post to tell G that it isn't dup content but has one true home. I am just unsure of what the one true home should be.

        When I decide, I wondering where to plop the canonical, on every link that references the post?

        WJ
        Sounds like you don't fully understand how canonical URLs work. They aren't added to links, they are added to the head of pages to tell search engines what the preferred URL is for a page.

        If you have say two URLS that are different, but essentially load the same content you add a canonical URL to both of them pointing to the preferred URL so only one of them is indexed, but the link benefit and SERPs to the other is redirected to the preferred URL (no SEO benefit is lost).

        WordPress core for example adds canonical URLs to all blog posts and static pages so if they are indexed with a different URL like the original dynamic URL :domain.com/?p=123 the canonical URL tells search engines to pass any link benefit and SERPs to the preferred URL. WordPress also 301 redirects URLs with format domain.com/?p=123 when you have your permalinks set to friendly URLs, so for that example a canonical URL is irrelevant.

        If you have a post with lots of comments and set comments to be paged, the paged comments all have the same canonical URL, see WordPress SEO Tutorial Duplicate Content and Canonical URLs for an example/details of how it all works. Canonical URLs on paged comments is how I got the idea for the Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin I noticed none of the paged comments were indexed, but the SERPs based on unique content within the comments were redirected to the indexed main post (SEO wise that's cool :-)).

        For blog posts and static pages WordPress already adds canonical URLs, so you don't have to worry about webmasters linking to the wrong URL, if a URL loads the page the canonical URL found in the head will be the URL indexed by Google and the link benefit is redirected all automatically.

        As I describe at WordPress SEO Tutorial Duplicate Content and Canonical URLs your main concern should be duplicate content on your categories and tags etc... if the theme you use uses the full content of a post on archive pages you might generate some duplicate content.

        This is one of the reasons why the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin adds nofollow links/noindex to categories and tags etc..., the plugin author is trying to stop duplicate content issues, but using nofollow/noindex isn't the best way to achieve this because it wastes valuable link benefit and SERPs. Also if you don't use the full content of posts on archive pages, but instead use excerpts the duplicate content issues are practically removed and you no longer have to worry about duplicate content (as long as you aren't a over user of tags and categories). This is why my Stallion WordPress SEO Theme uses excerpts of posts on archive pages, significantly reduces the possibility of duplicate content without having to resort to blocking the indexing of parts of a site.

        WordPress doesn't by default add canonical URLs to archive pages like the home page, monthly archives, tags and categories. The Stallion plugin does and allows you to point those canonical URLs to the home page of the site so if you don't want monthly archives indexed for example the link benefit that would be wasted nofollowing/noindexing them (if you use one of the popular WordPress SEO plugins) is redirected to the home page. the Stallion plugin also allows you to only have one page of each category/tag indexed redirecting pages 2,3 etc... to the first page in the set which conserves link benefit whilst allowing an entire site to be spidered. Also adds canonical URLs to admin pages so no link benefit is wasted there.

        So you don't add canonical URLs to links, you add them to the pages and it tells Google which is the preferred URL for that content, after that doesn't matter what people link to only the preferred URLs will be indexed.

        David
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4924255].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author webjedi
          Dang man !
          Thanks for the detailed breakdown, I way get it.
          I do want to MASTER canonicals particularly with WP.

          The problem I am running into with tools is that my pages are generated from a script and a url is assigned dynamically.

          Essentially every page on my site uses page.php in WP but there are a zillion different URLs.

          HTML Code:
          www.example.com/base_page/dynamic_page/
          What I am getting with tools is the canonical is set to

          HTML Code:
          www.example.com/base_page/


          So my deeper pages are nofollow (with some tools noindex as well).
          Manually assigning each page's canonical is not an option, I have been looking into things like page detection in functions php and then adding:

          remove_filter('template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical');
          remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');

          Which strips it out but I would rather get it to a canonical proper of:

          HTML Code:
          www.example.com/base_page/dynamic_page/


          WJ
          Signature

          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4925512].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    I use an edited version of the SEO Super Comments plugin with my Stallion theme (built in) that generates post like pages from comments. Described at Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin Feature

    Stallion generates links at the bottom of relatively large comments (there's a Stallion option for setting the character amount before adding the link so small comments don't get a link) with the format:

    domain.com/post-name?cid=5231

    Where post-name is the slug for the post the comment is on and the cid number is the comments ID. Example:

    Prelovac SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin Canonical URL Fix : For users of the original Prelovac SEO Super Comments Plugin (version 0.7.1)

    The above comment might be helpful to you as it explains to users of the original SEO Super Comments plugin (not the version built into the Stallion theme) how to fix a canonical URL issue with the original plugin code.

    When WordPress added canonical URL support it broke this plugin, every comment post like the one above had a canonical URL for the original post, so it lacked the ?cid=5231 part. This resulted in NONE of these comment posts being indexed, which defeated the whole point of using the plugin!

    I don't know what script you are using to generate the non standard URLs, but sounds like the end result is the same as what I had to fix in the SEO Super Comments plugin.

    My fix was to remove canonical URLs from these pages by creating a second header.php file (header2.php) and using "remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');" within the head of that file, this removed WordPress core canonical URL support for posts using the header2.php file as a header which was only the comment posts with the URLs like domain.com/post-name?cid=5231. The rest of the site still uses the built in canonical URL support from WordPress core.

    It's not a perfect solution because ideally the comment posts would have a canonical URL, but it's not a massive issue since Google is very good at determining a preferred URL without canonical code. Canonical coding was mainly aimed at the sort of site that has fully dynamic URLs where the variables can be loaded in any format and the same page is loaded, example

    domain.com/index.php?productid=123&size=small&colour=blue
    domain.com/index.php?size=small&colour=blue&productid=123
    domain.com/index.php?size=small&productid=123&colour=blue
    domain.com/index.php?colour=blue&size=small&productid=123

    In many shopping carts the above URLs will load the same product with ID 123 in the size small and colour blue. Add a few more variables and a poorly thought out script and the same content can be found for dozens of URLs!!!

    If you don't use paged comments like I described at WordPress SEO Tutorial Duplicate Content and Canonical URLs there is an argument you don't need canonical URLs when using WordPress, you could turn it off sitewide.

    David
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4925818].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author webjedi
      I wrote the script myself and did all the permalink mods so it ends up /word/word/word/ in the order I wanted.

      We came up with the same solution with the exception that I didn't use a header2 file but it's the same.

      Since I consider you far more of an expert than I in this matter, I will consider this case closed for now.

      WJ
      Signature

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4925983].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author staffers
    My head hurts a bit after reading this entire thread! Now back to work creating quality content
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5355797].message }}

Trending Topics