[wp-hackers] Best SEO plugin?

Mon Nov 8 04:13:05 UTC 2010

I think you're missing entirely both the point and philosophy of WordPress,
and also the goals and objectives of the core developers. You're never going
to find WordPress core playing SEO games like this, and nobody wants them to
waste their time and energy on such things.

Simply, the core philosophy of WordPress (as I understand it) is to provide
the easiest solution for self-publishing. To that end, preventing the
distraction of spam is far more important than squeezing out a few more
drops of Google juice. And ironically, what all of the never-ending SEO
games fail to realize is that, by far, the most important SEO tactic
is to *write
quality content*.

Personally, I couldn't care less about my "Page Rank". My motivations for
writing blog posts are varied, but gaining PR isn't one of them.
Nevertheless, Google has managed to find - and to rank highly - some things
that I have written; rankings that are based solely on the degree of
usefulness that others have gained from those posts. For example: how to
synchronize a BlackBerry in
Linux<http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,18167,24472,26637,27147,27154,27404&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=how+to+synchronize+a+blackberry+in+linux&cp=40&qe=aG93IHRvIHN5bmNocm9uaXplIGEgYmxhY2tiZXJyeSBpbiBsaW51eA&qesig=_9bo8k66gKlZQC63sFs_5A&pkc=AFgZ2tlZ3aZv2I0R3fTJ0DPyPbCzc40o9x69n3BXM5SI37PTzrRJS5MaVv0LnSRgtJat8vnxrtnmM2MsT-kJUZyjDISk9BcZAQ&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=how+to+synchronize+a+blackberry+in+linux&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=fc8a743f8bb10773>.
Or another one, written just a few weeks ago - something that I just cranked
out in about an hour, after being inspired by another post that advised
using non-WordPress core implementation for customizing default Gravatars in
WordPress. So, I wrote a response post, quickly explaining the right way to
implement custom default Gravatars. It's already worked its way up to Page
#2 in Google<http://www.google.com/#q=wordpress+custom+default+gravatar&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=iv&ei=UnXXTNeGBIG78gbTgujFBg&start=10&sa=N&fp=fc8a743f8bb10773>-
all without me caring one bit about my site's SEO fu.

(And I'm not even a great, or influential, writer.)

What I'm really trying to say is: WordPress is focused on helping people
publish awesome content in the easiest (and perhaps most enjoyable) way
possible. Trying to argue for these SEO "tricks" in core is really just a
waste of your time, because it will never happen. Some people who are much
smarter than I am are giving you great advice for how to use hooks to make
WordPress work the way you want it to; I'd listen to them, and learn how to
implement their suggestions in your own Theme(s).

Chip

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 9:17 PM, David Law <
wp-hackers at google-adsense-templates.co.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, 7 Nov 2010 20:14:42 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >What about this plugin?
> >
> >http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-case-by-case/
> >
> >Chris Carter
> >314media.com
>
> You are missing the point, from an SEO perspective we don't want ANY
> nofollow links as they delete PR/link benefit (see earlier in the
> thread), but from a user perspective we still want the option to link
> in comments.
>
> So switch nofollow with another way to link out without passing link
> benefit and damaging a sites SEO and you have a solution. My solution
> is to use forms for author links (see comments on my site in the sig,
> that site has no nofollow links and doesn't link out with text links
> as the author comment links are forms).
>
> David
> --
> Monetize your WordPress blog with Search Engine Optimized templates
> including AdSense ads http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/
>
> >
> >
> >On Nov 7, 2010, at 8:06 PM, David Law
> ><wp-hackers at google-adsense-templates.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, 7 Nov 2010 19:46:03 -0500, you wrote:
> >>
> >>> Or, alternatively, use the get_comment_author_link filter to remove
> >>> the nofollow attribute.
> http://phpxref.ftwr.co.uk/wordpress/nav.html?wp-includes/comment-template.php.source.html#l138
> >>>
> >>> William P. Davis
> >>> will.davis at gmail.com
> >>> 207.660.5342
> >>> http://twitter.com/williampd
> >>> http://www.wpdavis.com
> >>
> >>
> >> Not helpful if you don't want to link out to anyone who can find your
> >> site and paste a URL into a comment form or use a script to
> >> automatically spam your site for links. I only link to sites in a way
> >> that passes SEO benefit when I choose to link to that site.
> >>
> >> Unfortunatly allowing dofollow links in your comments can result in
> >> your site being added to dofollow lists which are shared amongst
> >> comment spammers.
> >>
> >> I'd like to see core WordPress have the ability to both allow and
> >> block author URLs etc... in multiple ways without harming a sites SEO.
> >>
> >> David
> >> --
> >> Monetize your WordPress blog with Search Engine Optimized templates
> >> including AdSense ads http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Nov 7, 2010, at 7:19 PM, David Law wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On Sun, 7 Nov 2010 18:18:03 +0000, you wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 7 Nov 2010, at 17:34, scribu wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 7:07 PM, Peter Westwood <
> peter.westwood at ftwr.co.uk
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On 7 Nov 2010, at 00:41, AdSense Templates wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10550
> >>>>>>>> http://wordpress.org/support/topic/287704?replies=1
> >>>>>>>> http://codex.wordpress.org/Talk:Template_Tags/comment_reply_link
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> This is a massive SEO issue with WordPress, if you want to
> >>>>>>>> understand
> >>>>>>>> the problem and see some partial solutions see
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/wp-content/themes/talian-adsense-clickbank-seo-05/readme/08-nofollow-problems.txt
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> You haven't provided any evidence for your claims to support your
> >>>>>>> request
> >>>>>>> for changes.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Where can we see documentation which shows that PR is reduced due
> >>>>>>> to the
> >>>>>>> nofollow on these links?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> It's mentioned in the ticket:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thanks
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It doesn't sound so OMG important as the poster suggested as I
> >>>>> expected.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Cheers
> >>>>
> >>>> Here's an easy to follow example.
> >>>>
> >>>> I have a WordPress page set to show 50 comment threads with comment
> >>>> threading turned on of course.
> >>>>
> >>>> Each full page of comments will have at least 50 Reply to Comments
> >>>> links, that's a minimum 50 nofollow links on highly commented pages.
> >>>>
> >>>> Every link on a page shares the PR/link benefit that's flowing through
> >>>> that page, doesn't matter if it's an internal link or an external
> >>>> link, they all gain a fair share of the link benefit. If overall a
> >>>> page has 100 links from it, each gains 1/100th of the link benefit
> >>>> flowing through that page.
> >>>>
> >>>> This example page has another 50 links from it, combination of
> >>>> internal and external links (category links, tag links, home page
> >>>> links, blogroll etc...), so in total we have 100 links, 50 are
> >>>> nofollow and 50 are not nofollow.
> >>>>
> >>>> Since nofollow deletes PR/link benefit equal to one link share rather
> >>>> than protects it as this attribute was initially intended to do, this
> >>>> page looses half it's link benefit that could go to other pages the
> >>>> page links to for no gain.
> >>>>
> >>>> If you don't think loosing 50% of a pages link benefit for no gain
> >>>> isn't an OMG issue, you don't understand the importance of link
> >>>> benefit to SEO. It's the most important SEO factor that takes most
> >>>> effort to achieve.
> >>>>
> >>>> Like I said before, I have a popular jokes site with almost 18,000
> >>>> user comments, this is on a site with about 1,500 posts. If I allowed
> >>>> 18,000+ nofollow links on a site I might as well dofollow the links
> >>>> and allow link spammers free reign on the comments, at least that way
> >>>> the link benefit actually benefits someone rather than deleting it!
> >>>> That site is breaking through the 15,000 unique visitors a day mark
> >>>> and it's home page is only PR3 (I waste no link benefit, it all works
> >>>> on my sites).
> >>>>
> >>>> The Reply to Comment links is the extreme of this problem and fixing
> >>>> it is a big move forward. The nofollow links of authors links is less
> >>>> damaging, but it is damaging all the same and if it can be fixed in
> >>>> WordPress it should be (again doesn't hurt my sites, I've solved the
> >>>> problem, it's WordPress users who are loosing Google rankings).
> >>>>
> >>>> If 20% of your commenters add an author URL or link from the body of
> >>>> comments and your blog has 500 comments, that's 100 nofollow links
> >>>> that's deleting valuable link benefit.
> >>>>
> >>>> There's monetary value to dofollow links, depending on how you sell
> >>>> links it can be $10 a link per month for a PR0 page on a site with a
> >>>> decent home page PR. The wasted link benefit of those 100 nofollow
> >>>> links could be $1,000 a month, if they are on pages with PR they are
> >>>> worth more.
> >>>>
> >>>> Some WordPress sites will be deleting enough link benefit to run
> >>>> successful online eccomerce stores!
> >>>>
> >>>> BTW This is one of the reasons why the so called SEO plugins aren't
> >>>> SEO plugins, they have options to add more nofollow links!!!
> >>>>
> >>>> David
> >>>> --
> >>>> Monetize your WordPress blog with Search Engine Optimized templates
> >>>> including AdSense ads http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/
> >>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
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