i’m using the FV All in One SEO Pack (http://foliovision.com/seo-tools/wordpress/plugins/fv-all-in-one-seo-pack) on this site: http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/
for this plugin, i typically enter a specific Title and Description on each page and each post. except for the index page. the plugin offers a dashboard where I enter the Homepage title and description. Which I did.
But instead of the homepage pulling the title and description from this plugin dashboard page, it seems to be taking the description from my header.php file. And NOT taking the title from anywhere!
so how do i get the title to appear on the index page???
please help. thanks.
It should override the first meta description. I’m not sure why it isn’t . You might simply remove your meta description and then you would only have the one generated by the plugin. You may need to contact the plugin developer to find out if there’s something you need to be doing differently.
sixrfan,
- the first one is the real title as read by search engines and users
- the second one is so that rss capable browsers or rss readers know that they can read the feed and where it is located (the title is simply there as the title for the feed)
- the third simply tells the browser what the permanent link is for the page.
so, no, you won’t get in trouble for keyword stuffing.
there is a difference between a title tag: <title> and the title of a link or other element: title=“” inside some other tag. Likewise you could have a link to your home page:
<a href="/" title="some descriptive title here">Home</a>
and Google wouldn’t penalize you for that.
hey benny. yeah, it’s those items you mentioned. they all serve different purposes? maybe you can ellaborate? and if they all serve different purposes, google will NOT view this as keyword stuffing, or something along those lines that would give the site negative SEO brownie points???
Thanks.
I noticed though that every page (other than the homepage) there’s two META DESCRIPTIONS.
It appears that they’re all pulling the META DESCRIPTION i have in the header.php file. But rather than overriding that with the DESCRIPTION i enter in the FV All In One Pack window when i create each new page or posting, it’s just also putting that one in.
so how come its not overriding the first description, and instead just adding another???
hey benny. thanks so much for the great advice.
two remaining issues;
-
still, if you look at the source code of the homepage (http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/), you’ll see that the Title appears three times!!! how do I limit it to just once???
-
i attempted to change the default prefix of your database tables and it lead to a disconnect with the database and became a nightmare that lead to having to reinstall all of wordpress. can you maybe ellaborate on the risk of leaving the default prefix??? also is there any simpler way to change the prefix? to be honest this plugin was quite complicated and i didnt really know what i was doing when it came to all the selections to change the prefix.
sixrfan,
- are you referring to the following items?
<title>Experienced Lawyer serving Dundalk, Essex, Bel Air, and Baltimore, MD</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Experienced Lawyer serving Dundalk, Essex, Bel Air, and Baltimore, MD RSS Feed" href="http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/feed/" />
<link rel='index' title='Experienced Lawyer serving Dundalk, Essex, Bel Air, and Baltimore, MD' href='http://robgoldman.com/wordpress' />
I don’t see the title tag replicated 3 times only the above which all serve different purposes.
- Sorry that the security plugin caused an issue for you. Not only does the plugin attempt to modify the prefix in the database tables, it also tries to update the prefix definition in the wp-config.php file. My guess is that your config file was not writable by the server so it couldn’t update the prefix definition in the config and thus couldn’t connect to the database tables because the config still said the prefix was wp_ rather than what you had changed the tables to. Anyway, if you don’t want to do that, it’s fine. It’s simply another layer of protection, much like renaming the default admin username to something else. The goal is to make your system a little bit customized so it makes it harder for hackers to gain access. Since you are using an older version of WP, every little bit helps (though I would recommend upgrading to the latest version). All that said, if you aren’t comfortable with renaming the database tables, I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
i tried both your suggestions, but to no avail. 
here’s the original title line from the header.php file:
<title><?php wp_title(' '); ?><?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { ?> at <?php } ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
any additional ideas???
Just a recommendation, you should probably install some security plugins for your site. You can see in the above code that there is a meta tag for “generator” that states that it was created by WordPress 2.8.4. Hackers love it when you tell them that you are using an out of date CMS that has security flaws in it that they can exploit. At a minimum, you’ll want to hide that. I generally use at least two security plugins:
WP Security Scan:
and SecurePress
The first will hide the version that you are using as well as make recommendations such as changing the default prefix of your database tables (and help you change them) as well as checking for an ‘admin’ user (better to rename that user something else like myadmin or blar, or whatever). The second plugin you will have to sign up for the service, but it does a great job of blocking unwanted guests. I have a website that in about 4 months it has blocked close to 11,000 attacks against the site. I did sign up for the PRO account for that site and it has live monitoring as well since it gets hammered a lot.
Another security tip, you’ll want to get rid of this file: http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/readme.html since it also tells which version of WP you are using. Unfortunately, you’ll have to remove it pretty much every time you update your site.
This is what I’m getting when I view the source of the homepage:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<title>Experienced Lawyer serving Dundalk, Essex, Bel Air, and Baltimore, MD</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta name="description" content="Convenient locations and sensible solutions to lifes challenges in bankruptcy, divorce, elder law and estate planning, guardianship, probate and real estate issues." />
<link href="http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/andrea/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Experienced Lawyer serving Dundalk, Essex, Bel Air, and Baltimore, MD RSS Feed" href="http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/feed/" />
<link rel="pingback" href="http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/xmlrpc.php" />
<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />
<link rel='stylesheet' id='contact-form-7-css' href='http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/styles.css?ver=2.2.1' type='text/css' media='all' />
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.3.2'></script>
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />
<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" />
<link rel='index' title='Experienced Lawyer serving Dundalk, Essex, Bel Air, and Baltimore, MD' href='http://robgoldman.com/wordpress' />
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.8.4" />
</head>
Is that not what you are expecting to see for your title and description?
Regarding the noindex/nofollow, you can see it in the header code above:
<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />
To solve that problem, in the admin of the site go to Setttings->Privacy and change the setting so it’s viewable to search engines. The noindex/nofollow is useful for development but once the site is ready to go live you’ll want to double and triple check that you have that switched over so search engines can index the site. I’ve learned the hard way to have double checking that setting in my checklist for pre-launch of a site.
how in the world did you know i have the setting and where do i go to change it? i’m not seeing that option anywhere. also, any chance you can address the new issue i mentioned in my last post???
Looks like it’s working okay to me. Just an FYI, in case you didn’t know, you have noindex/nofollow turned on so search engines won’t index this site.
oh, you might also try disabling your other plugins to see if one of your other plugins is causing an issue.
you might try upgrading WordPress and All in One SEO to the latest version. You are currently using 2.8.4. The current version is 2.9.2. It’s possible that there is some sort of incompatibility with your WordPress and whatever version of AIOSEO you are using.
sixrfan,
be sure that your header.php file includes the function call to wp_head() (more info here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference/wp_head. If there is no call to wp_head(), you’ll need to add that in so it makes that function call as All in one SEO utilizes that to load your titles and descriptions in dynamically. If the wp_head() function call is there and it still isn’t showing your AIOSEO info, you might try replacing what you have in your title tag area in the header.php file with the content from the default template:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
thanks. i got it straightened out now. i had to UNCHECK the “Rewrite Titles” button in the FV All In One Dashboard. and now it appears to be pulling the homepage title from the “Blog Title” field on my General Settings page.
And it’s pulling the META Description from the header.php file.
below is the code from my header.php file:
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<title><?php wp_title(' '); ?><?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { ?> at <?php } ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<?php bloginfo('charset'); ?>" />
<meta name="description" content="Convenient locations and sensible solutions to lifes challenges in bankruptcy, divorce, elder law and estate planning, guardianship, probate and real estate issues." />
<link href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" />
<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />
<?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>
my issue now is that, if you look at the source code of the homepage (http://robgoldman.com/wordpress/), you’ll see that the Title appears three times!!! how do I limit it to just once???
thanks benny. so first i tried upgrading to the newest version of wordpress but it failed and gave me the message “The update cannot be installed because WordPress 2.9.2 requires MySQL version 4.1.2 or higher. You are running version 4.0.26.”
so then i checked with the hosting company and they said they’re in the process of updating to a newer version (5) of mysql but its not gonna happen for another two weeks.
so then i disabled all plugins, EXCEPT the FV All in One SEO Pack, and the same problem existed. there was no title on the homepage, even though there was a META description. And all other pages and posts had both the title and description that i entered into the FVAIOSP dashboard.
thoughts???