[theme-reviewers] Proposal for new guideline

Tue Mar 6 22:42:42 UTC 2012

Let me ask a different way: what does rel=canonical or rel=nofollow have to
do with *presentation* of content?

Let me ask yet another way: what is the potential impact of changing
Themes, if rel=canonical or rel=nofollow are defined *by the Theme*?

Chip

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Angelo Bertolli <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>> 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>> 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>> 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>> 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
> >>
> >>
> >>             _______________________________________________
> >>             theme-reviewers mailing list
> >>             theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> >>             <mailto:theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org>
> >>             http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> >>
> >>         _______________________________________________
> >>         theme-reviewers mailing list
> >>         theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> >>         <mailto:theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org>
> >>         http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> >
> >         _______________________________________________
> >         theme-reviewers mailing list
> >         theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> >         <mailto:theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org>
> >         http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> >
> >
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     theme-reviewers mailing list
> >     theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> >     <mailto:theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org>
> >     http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > theme-reviewers mailing list
> > theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> > http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> _______________________________________________
> theme-reviewers mailing list
> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/attachments/20120306/eeb11d5b/attachment.htm>