AdnanMahmud
Junior Member
- Jan 31, 2012
- 175
- 68
Most helpful post of the section, Great Guide and tips for newbies.
Advanced WordPress SEO Optimization
- Thread starter madoctopus
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MrMonetize
Newbie
- Dec 19, 2011
- 33
- 6
Ive just written about a 400 word post and it timed out when i posted it, ffs. I cant be arsed now. As you were.
Taktical
Elite Member
- May 15, 2011
- 1,641
- 3,343
@madoctopus,
based on your post I checked to see if one of my themes was setting the <H tags incorrectly. After checking the source, i see that the post name (keyword) is correctly the H1 tag, and the widgets on the sidebar occupy <h3 tags. I'm thinking im okay in this respect. Whatsayyou?
btw, thanks for the wonderful info...
based on your post I checked to see if one of my themes was setting the <H tags incorrectly. After checking the source, i see that the post name (keyword) is correctly the H1 tag, and the widgets on the sidebar occupy <h3 tags. I'm thinking im okay in this respect. Whatsayyou?
btw, thanks for the wonderful info...
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
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I prefer to make the widget titles (and any titles that are the same on every page) as DIV tags. Is not a big deal if they are H* tags, I just don't see them as relevant titles.
Taktical
Elite Member
- May 15, 2011
- 1,641
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madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
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Also, if you really want to take things to an extreme you can also optimize WP for page loading. In that case you would take the CSS & JS from all plugins and combine them with your theme's CSS & JS and every other CSS & JS you have and have just 1 file for CSS and one file for JS. Also the server should have mod_deflate enabled or you should compact/minify the files otherwise. Then you have to go and manually edit the plugins and theme so they don't output the CSS & JS files in the code anymore. That way instead of let's say 4-10 requests you have just 2 rquests. If you put them on a subdomain too, you get download parallelization and is the fastest. I will not go into technical details as for this you need good understanding of WP plugin system and PHP. The basics of this form of optimization are covered by both Google and Yahoo (google YSlow) and other guides - just google "page load optimization" or something like that.
Then if you want to go to the extreme of the extreme with page loading, you take all images in your theme and combine them in as few image files using the sprites aproach. This is a known form of optimization by HTML/CSS developers. That way, instead of loading for example 10 different 100kb files for background for navbar, panels, buttons, etc. you load just a couple. This requires massive modifications to the CSS of a theme though and is a bit of a maintenance nightmare if you have to change things in the future but makes things super fast.
Then, there's the option to install WP on a dedicated server or VPS and setup lighthttpd/nginx as a reverse proxy to serve static files and Apache for the PHP files. You add to that PHP opcode caching like XCache or PHP APC and is even faster even if a page is not cached. If you enable the flag not to check if a file as changed in the opcode caching system, that is blazing fast. Using a setup like this I optimized a custom PHP web app to serve in excess of 1000 requests per second. WP is a lot slower and bulkier and developed by drunken monkey who can't code to save their life. However, from the usual 0.1sec/req (non-cached/realtime) you can get to about 0.05 or 0.02sec/req. If the page is cached though, there's not much need for this as it's pretty fast anyway. This is more for dynamic sites that can't cache content for various reasons.
This is not directly related to SEO but it does help with both SEO and visitor time on site. I am not the only one to say this but a super fast loading site will appeal to visitors a lot more and they will prefer to browse through it than a slower site. I've seen increases of 30% in time on site for sites I optimized for speed.
Then if you want to go to the extreme of the extreme with page loading, you take all images in your theme and combine them in as few image files using the sprites aproach. This is a known form of optimization by HTML/CSS developers. That way, instead of loading for example 10 different 100kb files for background for navbar, panels, buttons, etc. you load just a couple. This requires massive modifications to the CSS of a theme though and is a bit of a maintenance nightmare if you have to change things in the future but makes things super fast.
Then, there's the option to install WP on a dedicated server or VPS and setup lighthttpd/nginx as a reverse proxy to serve static files and Apache for the PHP files. You add to that PHP opcode caching like XCache or PHP APC and is even faster even if a page is not cached. If you enable the flag not to check if a file as changed in the opcode caching system, that is blazing fast. Using a setup like this I optimized a custom PHP web app to serve in excess of 1000 requests per second. WP is a lot slower and bulkier and developed by drunken monkey who can't code to save their life. However, from the usual 0.1sec/req (non-cached/realtime) you can get to about 0.05 or 0.02sec/req. If the page is cached though, there's not much need for this as it's pretty fast anyway. This is more for dynamic sites that can't cache content for various reasons.
This is not directly related to SEO but it does help with both SEO and visitor time on site. I am not the only one to say this but a super fast loading site will appeal to visitors a lot more and they will prefer to browse through it than a slower site. I've seen increases of 30% in time on site for sites I optimized for speed.
lmaestro
Power Member
- Jan 28, 2011
- 667
- 230
Hi great thread OP, I have a problem related to broken links. Similar to this:
I ran broken link checker and found broken links simlar to the above post. I already disable rss feed option. But I get the same 500 errors on the checker. Do I need to be concern about this? How do I delete them totally? Maybe a theme issue.
Hope you can help.Cheers!
I ran broken link checker and found broken links simlar to the above post. I already disable rss feed option. But I get the same 500 errors on the checker. Do I need to be concern about this? How do I delete them totally? Maybe a theme issue.
Hope you can help.Cheers!
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
- 1,388
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@Imaestro - I have no idea. Maybe a problem with WP No Category Base plugin or permalinks? Try asking on the WP IRC channel on freenet.
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
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@Imaestro - I think that if there are no results to populate a feed with (e.g. comments, posts in a category, etc) then WP returns error 404. Saw on a blog of mine that I was getting 404 for x.com/post-title/feed because i had no comments. After I got a comment on it it was a proper feed containing it, not a 404.
crazedspyker
Senior Member
- Jan 5, 2010
- 1,004
- 661
Awesome post! I've been looking everywhere for someone to answer these questions and it looks like you have them covered. Thanks!
I do have a question for you though.
You mentioned that its good practice to take some time and create a unique excerpt for each post. I already have a unique meta description for each post, would it be okay to just use my current unique meta description as the excerpt as well? Or would that be considered duplicate content? (I'm curious cuz the meta description doesn't actually appear anywhere on the posts but it is in the source code so I'm not sure)
I do have a question for you though.
You mentioned that its good practice to take some time and create a unique excerpt for each post. I already have a unique meta description for each post, would it be okay to just use my current unique meta description as the excerpt as well? Or would that be considered duplicate content? (I'm curious cuz the meta description doesn't actually appear anywhere on the posts but it is in the source code so I'm not sure)
radarsurge
Regular Member
- Mar 21, 2012
- 494
- 142
useful, good words to the wise.
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
- 1,388
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No. Meta description is too short. Excerpts should be 50 words at least. It wouldn't even look good on most themes. Also, I don't know about you but my meta description isn't very nice to read... I write it so i can include lots of keywords and be all-encompassing. Obviously my opinion is not a rule but for most cases I just don't think it is a good idea.
bertbaby
Elite Member
- Apr 15, 2009
- 2,025
- 1,535
By the way and I don't know how I missed this post but great ideas about WordPress and Google SEO. Of course knowing absolutely how Googliath works its magic is another thing but hey can a WSO be in the offing? Really, I follow Blackhat and the legit on page SEO articles and nobody gave this insight. Rep given but it's time to get to work!
madoctopus
Supreme Member
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bertbaby
Elite Member
- Apr 15, 2009
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Read my post again and no sarcasm was intended. Basically, my comment was regarding the mysterious nature of the Google algorithm, which they hide on purpose and how we have to reverse engineer our efforts to match their expectations. I was kidding about creating a WSO from your post but frankly your comments have a 100 times more weight than a typical WSO.
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
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I didn't thought it was sarcastic. I just didn't got it and the WSO part threw me off a bit.
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