The Stallion version of the SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin is built directly into the Stallion WordPress SEO theme (doesn’t need installing like a WordPress Plugin) and is a highly modified version of the Prelovac SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin. It’s easily activated on the “Stallion >> Advanced SEO” Options page.
No other WordPress theme has the set of WordPress SEO features described below.
The Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin options descriptions are at the bottom of this post.
The original Prelovac SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin turns all WordPress comments into WordPress post like pages (they are similar to a WordPress post but lack comments and use a comment as the body of the post) and used the title of the original post for the title element of the comment post.
This is a very good idea for a WordPress SEO plugin for a site with a lot of comments, but there was no way to optimize the title element (tag) of the comment posts and if a comment was a single word comment it would still generate a comment post (that’s far from ideal)!
The original SEO Super Comments plugin also broke when WordPress incorporated canonical URL support into WordPress core, basically the comment posts had a canonical URL back to the original post meaning Google didn’t index them.
The built in Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin is a major improvement over the original SEO Super Comments plugin and fixes the canonical URL issue and adds new features.
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin Features
Turns large comments into comment posts: On the Stallion Advanced SEO Options page you set the minimum number of characters (default 400 characters) a comment has to be before it will generate a link to the comment post. This means small comments won’t waste a link to the corresponding comment post.
Search engine optimized anchor text from and to the original WordPress post. At the bottom of a comment that’s big enough to generate a comment post there’s a link to the comment post with the title of the post as anchor text. For example all the larger comments on the page you are reading now will have a link to comment posts with anchor text “Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin Feature”, anchor text is more important SEO wise than standard body text, as long as you name your posts with keyword rich titles each larger comment supports the posts SEO. On the actual comment post is a link back to the corresponding WordPress post using the title of the post as anchor text, so each comment post results in a backlink using relevant anchor text to the original WordPress post.
The Stallion SEO Super Comments plugin has built in support for the Hikari Comment Title plugin (this plugin is also built into Stallion, activated from the “Stallion >> Advanced SEO” Options page). The Comment Title plugin adds the option for you and your commenter’s to add a relevant title to comments (you can see it in action in the comments below). This comment title is used by the Stallion SEO Super Comments plugin as the title element (title tag) of the comment posts. This means you can SEO the title element of the comment posts and in my experience this can generate a nice chunk of search engine traffic from long tail SERPs you’ve not covered in your main posts.
Stallion includes built in Featured Image and Auto Thumbnails support, if this is activated via the Stallion options page and the original post has a featured image, any image or a YouTube video the post comments related to the posts will also have the thumbnail. The thumbnails use the original title of the post as the alt attribute text (helps with SEO).
A comment post by a commenter with multiple comments will show an excerpt of the latest comments from that commenter with a link with relevant anchor text to the comment.
If you use either the Contextual Related Posts SEO Version Plugin or the Related Posts WordPress SEO Plugin from WordPress SEO Plugins page the related post for the original post the comments are from will be shown.
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin Settings
SEO Comments ON/OFF >> Turn feature On/Off
Comment Posts Size >> Set the number of characters for a comment to be considered a comment post (default 400). If a comment has more than this number of characters there will be a link at the bottom of the comment going to the comment post. This is an important setting, for SEO reasons we don’t want small comments turned into post like pages, for example you don’t want a single line comment like “I agree with Bob” as a page using valuable link benefit etc…
Comment Posts Title Element Size >> Set the number of words for a comments title element (title tag) (default 12). The title element is the title from the “Comment Titles Plugin” and an excerpt from the comment. This setting is the number of words from the comments excerpt.
More Comments by Author >> Set the number of “More Comments by Author” on the Super Comments Pages (default 5). This can mix the content up a bit and link back to other posts on the site.
More Comments Excerpt Length >> Set the number of words for “More Comments by Author” excerpts on the Super Comments Pages (default 40).
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19 responses to Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Super comments vs a forum for user generated content
The super comment plugin you have does seem to help in many ways, my traffic has increased from user-generated content. I can see the traffic on long-tail searches.
Maybe it is a Panda Slayer
Why? eHow seemed to be hit on high searched keyword titles. That is they find a keyword phrase highly searched and make the title of their post this exact phrase.
However, your super comments plugin creates a lot of very usual pages and titles, which makes things seem more natural and balance out of over zealous keyword targeters. Maybe Post Panda Google likes this natural writing more than exact keyword titles.
It would be great to get people commenting all the time on a website. This is the dream to start a website and have others generate the content with you and your value added is you manage it and build it.
I am now playing with the new bbPress Plugin for WordPress. I know you are not a forum guy but it is worth checking out. It is radically different from bbPress in the past as least in terms of code. I did have one minor issue with making Stallion work as a child of bbPress but I am looking into this.
I have seen some very high traffic forums out there, enough to maybe consider this again, but maybe super comments achieves this objective.
Off the subject maybe a site map on this page might help as I sometimes am looking for a page on a Stallion topic and can not find it with search.
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Spelling for user generated comments
Is there any way to encourage users to leave comments with better spelling and grammar? I am not one to talk. However, I get so many comments that are in chat style. I have to go back and fix them.
Spell Check WordPress Plugins
Not used them myself, but have seen the odd WordPress site with the ability for commenter’s to check their spelling.
I don’t worry about it, it’s user generated content and it’s going to be ‘messy’. Sometimes a commenter will cover spellings that you wouldn’t have used that can generate traffic, misspelling traffic from Google isn’t what it used to be since they now show the most likely spelling.
David
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Prelovac SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin Canonical URL Fix
For users of the original Prelovac SEO Super Comments Plugin (version 0.7.1) you will find your super comments pages will NOT be indexed by Google (this is not an issue for the Stallion SEO Super Comments version packaged with the Stallion WordPress SEO Theme). This is because a canonical URL is added to the head of the super comments which tells Google to redirect any benefit and indexing to the original post (only the original post is indexed).
Here’s a fix for non-Stallion WordPress SEO theme users (do not do this with Stallion, it’s already built in).
Make a copy of header.php and call it header2.php
Make a copy of single.php and call it single2.php
Add
function get_header2(){include (get_template_directory() . "/header2.php");}To your function.php file.
Edit single2.php and change
get_header();to
get_header2();Edit header2.php and ABOVE (must be above) the line
<?php wp_head(); ?>Add
<?php remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');?>Go to the Prelovac SEO Super Comments options page and change the “Template file in use” to single2.php
If everything works as it should when you view source of a super comments page it will NOT include a canonical URL.
For example the original post (Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin Feature) for this super comment (if you are on the super comments page) would have the canonical URL code:
<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.stallion-theme.com/stallion-seo-super-comments-plugin-feature' />If you view source of a super comment and see code in the head that looks like the above something went wrong.
Some of the WordPress SEO plugins that write their own canonical URL code are not going to work with the Prelovac SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin.
This is a small thanks to Vladimir Prelovac the author of the original Prelovac SEO Super Comments WordPress Plugin for creating such a useful plugin, a derivative of which I use on all my WordPress sites and thousands of Stallion SEO theme users use on theirs.
David
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
How can I get my hand on YOUR version of SEO Super Comments?
Hi David,
I loved reading what you did with SEO Super Comments plugin of Vladimir Prelovac…
However, since I’m not a Stallion user (and can’t be as I’m using a theme that was developed especially for us) – I can’t enjoy the great features you developed.
I would love to buy from you a stand alone plugin or an adaptation to my theme…
Is that a possibility?
Looking forward to hear from you, Neta
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin
The SEO Super Comments Plugin code built into Stallion has been changed so much it wouldn’t work outside Stallion without significant code changes, for example there’s half a dozen plus Stallion Theme options that the Stallion SEO Super Comments plugin uses and it uses other built in plugins and code.
Would be a pain to make it stand alone with all the Stallion features.
I don’t do custom work, I charge too much per hour.
Curious why Stallion wouldn’t work for your site?
David
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Super comments giving me traffic but what is SEO optimal?
The super comments plugin, a year or so latter has been working and getting more traffic to my site by creating landing pages. I pay attention to my commentators and try to maintain a standard of comments I publish as poor grammar and low quality comments I do not approve. I use the standard: ‘is this page useful to the reader’.
My question is do you think 400 characters is too short a criteria to create a super comment. You know Google is focusing on low quality pages as a ranking factor. I question is a 400 character page of truly unique content has any value?
Further, what if today I changed it to 2000 characters from 400 lets say, would that mean for example a 500 character super comment that exists today would no longer be super comment page? and the number of pages would decrease? I think so. That is not a bad thing. I deleted all my tag pages and therefore, my total number of index pages by Google decreased and nothing bad happened.
So super comments is brilliant and works and is saving me the pain of creating that forum I always talked about. It is just about the settings of super comments?
I guess I am asking is the default too low for optimal SEO in 2012? What do you think or feel about this?
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin Options
The original Prevolac SEO Super Comments plugin I got the starting code from for the Stallion SEO Super Comments Plugin “creates” (not really creates as it’s all database based) an SEO Super Comment for every comment even a single word comment!
This was an awful idea for the sorts of reasons you’ve touched on which is why before I used it on a live site I added the character count so only reasonably sized comments are generating the links to the SEO Super Comments pages. The original functionality of “creating” an SEO Super Comments page for every comment is still part of Stallion SEO Super Comments, what the character limit controls is whether the link to the Super Comments page is shown at the bottom of the comment or not: so the super comments page is there all the time, but is only linked to when the character limit is met. If there’s no links Google etc… can’t find them. It’s equivalent to the WordPress search function, you can search a WordPress site for any word you like and if you link to the URL loaded for example WordPress SEO Consultant) Google will index it (the WordPress SEO Consultant search will be indexed now). As long as no one links to the search results they won’t be indexed.
This means if you have the character limit set to 400, Google etc… indexes the site and say indexed all 200 SEO Super Comments pages with 400+ characters. You change the character limit to 1,000 when Google reindexes the site the links to any Super Comments below 1,000 characters will be gone, but the pages will still exist (they can still be loaded). I would anticipate long term Google would remove most of them because of a lack of ways to find them naturally**.
** If external sites have linked to them, scraped your site or something that replicates the links they might remain indexed long term.
The number of characters to use is a difficult one. Most comments are small, so to benefit from the Stallion SEO Super Comments pages you can’t set it too high and if you set it too low the SEO quality of the pages it links to is debatable.
On the Super Comments pages I’ve attempted to automatically add more ‘unique’ content:
Thumbnail from the original post.
More comments by the same author which is an excerpt from the same authors other comments.
Support for the output of the Stallion Related Posts WordPress SEO Plugin from WordPress SEO Plugins. Specifically adds the related posts output for the original post.
So though 400 characters may sound small when you take the extra content into account it can add up.
A good SEO test would be too take a snapshot of how much traffic your indexed Super Comments pages are generating in say a month and check how many characters they have. If you find 90% of the traffic comes from comments with at least 1,000 characters there’s an argument for increasing the limit: set to 900 and check again a few months later to see if traffic overall has changed and if traffic to super comments pages has changed overall.
David
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
How to get hovercards working
Is there a way to get Hovrcards working with Stallion? I think the issue might come from the comment template. I have given up on an ‘all in one solution’ for socializing WP, instead an looking for incremental ways to improve the social aspect of my blog via the comment system, like using Hovercards.
Hovercards to social
Pursuant to our conversation ad nauseum on making Stallion social, I think if this one feature could work, I could make a social site based on Stallion by simply changing the comments to an area that people might advertise their profile or interest in others. Hovercards do not create a link to Gravatar in an SEO sense and people do have the ability to have a personal profile page off site that does not interfere with SEO>
I looked at the dating profile plugin out there and it is just OK.
I have no ideas if the site I am building will work but Hovercards working would help.
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Adding Gravatar Hovercards to a WordPress Theme
Not used Gravatar Hovercards before, so not looked into how to implement them in detail.
Tried a couple of plugins on a test site running Stallion, no joy. Took a look at what the plugins output and looks like just a reference to javascript.
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://s.gravatar.com/js/gprofiles.js?ver=e'></script>Tried a Gravatar Hovercard plugin with the TwentyEleven theme and the TwentyTen theme and it didn’t work, so looks like the two plugins I found first are broken (first two listed in Google for the “Gravatar Hovercards WordPress” search).
Found a plugin called Extended Gravatar v.06 which works in TwentyTen. Tested on Stallion v7 and didn’t work in the comments area, but did work on the author biography box and if I posted a Gravatar image link within a post. Interesting feature with the Extended Gravatar plugin, looks like it can be set to email your commenter’s an invitation to join Gravatar if they don’t already have a Gravatar image etc… which might fit in well with your plans.
Suspected the issue would be the Gravatar SEO code I use in Stallion 7 that turns the Gravatar image links (which are potentially SEO damaging) into CSS based background images (which are SEO neutral). Changed the code to what other WordPress themes use and it worked.
I’ve left the original Gravatar code within Stallion, so easy to revert it back.
Edit comments-reply-functions.php
Change
< ?php /*echo get_avatar($comment, 60);*/$email = $comment->comment_author_email;
$size = 60;
$rating = get_option('avatar_rating');
$gravtype = get_option('avatar_default');
$default = urlencode( 'http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536?s=' . $size );
if ($gravtype=='mystery')
$grav_url = 'http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/'. md5( strtolower( trim( $email ) ) ). '?s=' . $size . '&r=' . $rating . '&d=' . $default;
elseif ($gravtype=='blank')
$grav_url = "/wp-includes/images/blank.gif";
else
$grav_url = "http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/" . md5( strtolower( trim( $email ) ) ) . "?s=" . $size ."&d=" . $gravtype ."&r=". $rating;
?>
<div class="gravatars" style="background: url(< ?php echo $grav_url ?>)"></div>
to
<?php echo get_avatar($comment, 60);?>That should get you on the right track.
With minimal testing the Gravtar Hovercards were temperamental in Stallion, though this was a Localhost test site with various plugins running that look for code errors etc… and load a lot of javascript and other stuff that can get in the way.
If you get something working that you think would extend Stallion would consider adding the plugin to Stallion and add an option to use the original Gravatar code above or I might be able to find a way to have it work with the current Stallion SEO safe Gravatar code.
Do like the idea if commenter’s will use it.
David
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Jetpack Hovercards
I do think Hovercards are a nice feature if it is made SEO. The Hovercard I was using was the one from Jetpack. It does not matter, but I figure the official WP hovercard plugin in Jetpack would might be the best as they keep it up to date and working.
I think I can get commenters to use it I design my site that way (I will show you if I can get it all working how it looks). I will give them some Gravatar invitations and show them examples.
As mentioned I have experimented with larger social networking plugins and they are good and work with Stallion, but they are huge, adding complexity and tables to the database and not as SEO friendly, as pure Stallion alone.
Hovercards is much more lite weight, and I suspect people will check out someone’s Gravatar more than they would ‘register’ and go to a profile page.
If you actually click on a person’s Gravatar link it opens a new page, while your website remains open in the background, so it does not affect time on site, except in a positive way (if that is a factor).
Thank you for looking into this an replying in detail about Hovercards, check out the JetPack one by the way.
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
Hovercards do work with your fix
I guess the question is if I have a whole site with 100s or 1000s of these image links via Gravatar will this hurt SEO.
The alternative would be to use something like Jonathan Kemp profile pages. However, I suspect Gravatars are easier. I am always concerned about SEO of course.
Again that premium Dating site plugin out there is nothing more than a basic search function on some profile pages.
SEO Value of WordPress Gravatar Images
Standard WordPress themes Gravatar code are standard image code with a blank alt text attribute. Images with this format used by all WordPress themes I’ve seen except Stallion have SEO value when used correctly, in particular the alt text is important as are the images file names.
The best code would be filename “keyword-phrase.jpg” and alt=”Keyword Phrase”.
With the standard Gravatar image code the filenames are awful and the alt text is non-existent (blank alt attributes) and the Gravatar images are hosted off site which are all potential SEO negatives.
The above information is SEO fact, below is SEO theory.
I don’t have SEO test data on this, but it seems commonsense SEO having dozens of images linked off site with no alt text and awful filenames is at best SEO neutral and more likely SEO negative.
I work on the belief all SEO factors have a finite value (lets call it SEO points) shared over elements that use that SEO factor. I assume the SEO value of having images on a page is shared over all the images that are readable by search engines. If there’s 100 SEO points (arbitrary figure) available for all image filenames and a page has 10 images, each image would ‘use’ 10 SEO points, if there’s 100 images each would ‘use’ 1 SEO point.
Simple SEO concept to work with.
If you have a page with 10 images within the post and a further 90 Gravatar images, you can see theoretically 90% of your image filename SEO points are wasted on Gravatar images.
It’s SEO fact images that are served via CSS as background images are SEO neutral (no value eitherway, won’t ‘use’ our SEO points), which is why I added the custom Gravatar code to Stallion, the output of which is.
background: url("http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/2949679560e858721221c9e0f215f991?s=60&d=identicon&r=G") repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"This Gravatar image output is definitely SEO neutral, the default Gravatar output is probably SEO damaging. I personally wouldn’t add hundreds of Gravatar images with standard image code if I could avoid it. I like the idea of the Gravatar Hovercards so plan to see if I can adapt a Gravatar plugin to use the background Gravatar images.
I’m currently turning Stallion into a framework theme so child themes will work with Stallion. Child themes are a really cool concept, rather than editing the main theme files you create a folder like /stallion-seo-theme-child/ reference the folder to the Stallion theme and add to that folder the files you’ve edited.
I’m finding it a royal pain updating some of my sites when I update Stallion because I tend to have custom template files and images so can’t use the built in WordPress theme updater (it deletes the current themes folder) as I’d loose the customizations (have to reupload via FTP, so might as well use FTP to update everything). When Stallion is a framework theme all my customizations will go into a child theme folder and updates will all be via the theme updater saving a lot of hassle using FTP. Will also open the possibility of other theme developers creating and selling Stallion child themes.
David
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
SEO Gavatars and child theme Stallion
Both the SEO Gravatar hovercard plugin and the sub or child themes would be very welcomed updates.
The Gravatar functionality is a nice from a user experience standpoint and I think Gravatars will only get more popular as the web expands, not less. This coupled with the fact, Gravatar plugins are pretty light in terms of development, yet Gravatars are used on every WP website. Plugins done right are marketing tools as well as useful.
The Child themes you can do a lot with for reasons mentioned. I have many customizations I forget about. You can have Stallion child theme developers which is good idea, help get the world out.
Stallion SEO Super Comments WordPress SEO Plugin
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