Wordpress is already well optimized when it comes to SEO (that’s Search Engine Optimization). There are some basic changes that are usually performed like changing the link structure to include the title of the articles or displaying the title of the article in the web browser’s title. Most users stop here, some go ahead and install SEO plugins which do some magic in the background.
Advanced tips are not that easy to come by and most websites running a Wordpress blog do not have them implemented. This article will list some options that center around the nofollow tag. Nofollow basically tells search engines like Google to not count the link vote that is usually being passed when linking on the Internet. Why is that beneficial? A website has a certain linking power. Each link that is pointing to internal and external resources gets a piece of that linking power. Not all pages should be treated equally however which is what this article is about. It makes for example no sense to pass linking power to internal pages that you do not want to link for, think of privacy policies, contact pages, login, log off or social bookmarking links.
Wordpress themes come with a surprising amount of links, the majority of which is not set to nofollow. Here are a few areas where you should consider placing the nofollow link tag in a Wordpress blog:
- The more (read more) tag. The page is already linked from the title of the post properly.
- Wordpress meta data
- Pages like Privacy Policies, Contact Us
- Social Bookmarking links
To add the nofollow link one would simply add the rel="nofollow"
tag to the link structure which is not a problem if the link is displayed in the source code of the theme, for example:
<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">Example Link</a>
There are however links (like the previously mentioned more tag) that cannot be manipulated in the theme source as the link is created by a php function.
Here is how you make the more tag in Wordpress nofollow:
- Open the file post-template.php in the wp-includes folder.
- Locate the following line beginning with:
$output .= ‘ <a href="’. get_permalink()..
- Replace it with:
$output .= ‘ <a href="’. get_permalink() . "#more-$id\" class=\"more-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">$more_link_text</a>";
- You basically add the rel=\"nofollow\" tag to the line
This ensures that all more tags will be nofollow from then on.
Related posts:
- Wordpress Custom Tag Templates
- Wordpress Broken Link Checker
- Wordpress 2.6.1 released
- Secure Wordpress with the first Wordpress Worm
- Wordpress 2.8.2 Security Patch
- Wordpress Blogs: Create Custom Tag Pages
- Check For Broken Links on Websites
- List of Wordpress Plugins installed
Nice advice, I am going to give it a try on my blogs and see if it makes a difference.
I just changed it on our blog.. see what happens..
GOOD JOP…
thank you
Hi Martin
Good article, just one question before I start changing code…
When WordPress does an auto-update would the changed code be removed by the update and have to be modified again?
Thanks, Philip
Philip yes that is the case.