[theme-reviewers] Proposal for new guideline
Emil Uzelac
emil at themeid.com
Tue Mar 6 22:36:31 UTC 2012
Yes we are. I will leave nofollow to Yoast.
On Mar 6, 2012 4:34 PM, "Angelo Bertolli" <angelo at bertolli.org> wrote:
> Backlinks to the theme's home page could have nofollow in them, although
> I suspect that not too many people would do this.
>
> Anyway, I will correct myself: we're just talking about guidelines, right?
>
>
> On 03/06/2012 05:32 PM, Emil Uzelac wrote:
> > Why would you use nofollow?
> >
> > On Mar 6, 2012 4:30 PM, "Angelo Bertolli" <angelo at bertolli.org
> > <mailto:angelo at bertolli.org>> wrote:
> >
> > So are theme developers also restricted from using nofollow? It is
> > functional.
> >
> > I don't think theme developers should be restricted from using
> > rel="canonical" just because some of them may use it wrong, or
> because
> > Google treats it a certain way for search results.
> >
> > On 03/06/2012 05:24 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:
> > > The criterion for me is Presentational vs Functinoal. I think that
> > > rel=canonical clearly falls under "Functional", and therefore is
> Plugin
> > > territory.
> > >
> > > Chip
> > >
> > > On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at themeid.com
> > <mailto:emil at themeid.com>
> > > <mailto:emil at themeid.com <mailto:emil at themeid.com>>> wrote:
> > >
> > > I was reading from my phone....
> > >
> > > I agree that Themes should not mess with rel="canonical" at
> all.
> > > Majority people are devs not SEO consultants. Required not to
> > use is
> > > what I believe we should do.
> > >
> > > On Mar 6, 2012 4:17 PM, "Joost de Valk" <joost at yoast.com
> > <mailto:joost at yoast.com>
> > > <mailto:joost at yoast.com <mailto:joost at yoast.com>>> wrote:
> > >
> > > It has nothing to do with using my plugin or not. It's
> > something
> > > even my plugin can't fix :-)
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Joost
> > >
> > > Sent from my iPhone
> > >
> > > On 6 mrt. 2012, at 23:14, Emil Uzelac <emil at themeid.com
> > <mailto:emil at themeid.com>
> > > <mailto:emil at themeid.com <mailto:emil at themeid.com>>>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >> If they do not use your plugin would this hurt the SEO?
> > >>
> > >> On Mar 6, 2012 3:47 PM, "Joost de Valk" <joost at yoast.com
> > <mailto:joost at yoast.com>
> > >> <mailto:joost at yoast.com <mailto:joost at yoast.com>>> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hi all,
> > >>
> > >> tldr version: I would like a guideline that tells
> theme
> > >> developers to /not/ include a rel=canonical link in
> their
> > >> theme as it hurts people more than it helps in a lot
> > of cases.
> > >>
> > >> long version:
> > >>
> > >> As some of you probably know, I do a lot of SEO
> > >> consultancy. Some of it is related to people who have
> > >> suddenly lost all their rankings and want me to help
> fix
> > >> it for them. Today I helped out a blogger, unpaid
> because
> > >> I just liked his blog as it was about children with
> Down
> > >> Syndrome.
> > >>
> > >> He had recently switched themes /and /started using my
> > >> WordPress SEO plugin, and of course he was blaming my
> > >> plugin for his sudden loss of rankings. What I found
> out
> > >> though, was that the theme had the following
> rel=canonical
> > >> link in the header.php:
> > >>
> > >> <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo home_url();
> ?>" />
> > >>
> > >> above the call to wp_head. This was causing each
> > >> individual post to have a canonical point back to the
> > >> homepage. Now you should know that Google especially
> sees
> > >> a canonical as somewhat of a "soft 301 redirect". It
> > >> basically takes a page that has a canonical pointing
> > >> elsewhere out of the rankings. The effect is quite
> > dramatic.
> > >>
> > >> This was a premium theme, whose authors I have since
> > >> emailed. It got me thinking though: is this in the
> WP.org
> > >> <http://WP.org> guidelines? Apparently, it's not.
> > >> WordPress itself adds a rel="canonical" through
> wp_head on
> > >> single pages, and there's a patch in Trac to add it on
> > >> more pages. There are several themes in the repository
> > >> though that have absolutely 100% wrong canonical
> links in
> > >> their header.
> > >>
> > >> This one: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/digu is
> an
> > >> example. It's not popular and hasn't been updated in
> ages
> > >> so I wouldn't normally care too much, but I wanted to
> use
> > >> it as an example. It has the following code:
> > >>
> > >> <?php if(is_single()){ ?><link rel="canonical"
> href="<?php
> > >> echo get_permalink($post->ID),"\n";?>" /><?php }?>
> > >> <?php if(is_home() || is_tag() || is_category() ||
> > >> is_month() || is_year()){ ?>
> > >> <link rel="canonical" href="<?php bloginfo('url');?>"
> > >> /><?php echo "\n"; }?>
> > >> …. snip ….
> > >> <?php } ?>
> > >>
> > >> Using that theme on a live site could kill your
> rankings
> > >> instantly, as it would make all category listings etc
> have
> > >> canonicals linking back to the homepage. In most cases
> > >> this would prevent Google from spidering the links to
> the
> > >> posts on those pages.
> > >>
> > >> Now some themes, like Thematic and Hybrid, have
> somewhat
> > >> more sensible canonical functions, which makes this a
> hard
> > >> discussion. I would vote to call it plugin territory
> > >> though and keep it out of themes completely. Would
> love to
> > >> hear your opinions.
> > >>
> > >> Best
> > >> Joost
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
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> > >>
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> > >>
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> > >>
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