Wordpress SEO Plugins vs Manual Approach

animalstyle

animalstyle

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As I try to keep plugins to an absolute minimum, and I have done a great job recently at ridding myself of the excess weight, I am now back to making a choice. My site previously had YoastSEO plugin and while I don't use most of the features, I had it handling some indexing stuff and the meta descriptions. Since I pulled it, I am meta description-less and I am looking for a solution.

I have run across a way to add meta descriptions using custom fields manually: http://www.transformationpowertools...eo-meta-description-field-for-posts-and-pages

I am wondering what your opinions are. Is an SEO plugin worth it with the level of control it gives you?
 
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YoastSEO is one of the few plugins that I do use on WP, even with my disgust with most plugins. It's far too convenient for me to let go of. Otherwise I'll write my own as functions in the functions.php. They are usually 100x lighter and more effective than one I'd download and install as an actual plugin.
 
qwianghomingh said:
Check my comment here:
https://www.buildersociety.com/thre...fastest-wordpress-theme.763/page-3#post-10771

It's manual for each page, but you set manual description for each page, don't you?
Click to expand...

@qwianghomingh Thanks for the tip, works perfect. Also thank you @Ryuzaki, If I find myself outgrowing this method ill take another look at Yoast.

I am running a plugin that handles all my custom fields, created a new one, assigned it out across all my custom post types and added it to the code and works like a charm across all post types.

Yes, the plan is to go manual for each page. Bout to whip out excel and get to work.

Skipped the keywords, didn't think it would be worth my time right now, can you speak to meta keywords still being of some value, worth enough to spend a couple hours doing a site wide update?
 
Meta keywords doesn't hve much value, if any at all, you should do them as the last thing on your on-page seo list, if you decide to do them, but don't spend to much time on that though.
 
Looking at the code, there's an if else statement in there:
<meta name="keywords" content="<?php if(get_post_meta($post->ID, "metakey", true) != '') echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "metakey", true); else echo strtolower(get_bloginfo('name'));?>" />

Someone who knows php might be able to tell us how to stick a text file path in there that will be displayed if no "metakey" is defined under a new article. I've tried different ways, but I'm no php guy, and only received parsing errors and the path printed I've defined, instead of the content of the file.

That what I've tried to rewrite:
strtolower(get_bloginfo('name'))

but didn't get anywhere.


animalstyle said:
Yes, the plan is to go manual for each page. Bout to whip out excel and get to work.

Skipped the keywords, didn't think it would be worth my time right now, can you speak to meta keywords still being of some value, worth enough to spend a couple hours doing a site wide update?
Click to expand...
 
animalstyle said:
I am running a plugin that handles all my custom fields
Click to expand...

I love this one if you've not seen it. It's THE one for me : http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/

lion1978 said:
Meta keywords doesn't have much value
Click to expand...

Maybe not, but when you and your main competitor are both at 99.9% perfect on-page SEO, and you plop in the 0.1% worth meta keyword, you win.

I agree with your statement. I thought you were talking about keywords appearing in meta descriptions. I don't bother with meta keywords either. That's an ancient practice when search engines needed you to force feed your topic down their throat because they couldn't sort it out well. Now it's a possible over-optimization spot, it seems. It exposes that you know just a little TOO much and might be a manipulator. I think most search engines ignore it unless you go overboard, then they use it as a negative signal, but never as a positive.
 
@Ryuzaki Thanks for the reccomendation on ACF. I've looked at them before, but I found and developed on: https://wp-types.com/ which I have found to meet my needs very well.

I have much more important items on my to-do list. If someday I find myself with a fat, fat bank account twiddling my thumbs, not sure how I could make more money, maybe ill revisit meta keywords.
 
In terms of speed difference you're not looking at a huge one for functions.php editing and plugins. Plugins don't necessarily slow down your site every time, it's what they add sometimes that can slow down your site, such as:
  1. DB tables (that aren't removed when uninstalling).
  2. Added css/js to header/footer.
  3. Poor coding for queries/db grabs that takes longer than needed.
  4. Combination of 3-4 by loading on every single page when not needed.
A big difference you're looking at between them is plugins load before functions.php.
Something like Yoast SEO isn't too much, it does leave some pointless html into your header but that's not hurting page speed.

If you were cautious about security risks though because Yoast is a big target you could just create custom fields in WordPress and then use functions.php as the meta field (ex. title tag, meta description, meta keywords). Here's an older tutorial but it breaks down everything I'm talking about by showing meta keyword, but you could use this for any meta data. I think this is similar to the functions.php stuff shared a couple posts up.

What Yoast is essentially doing is what that tutorial above lays out. Yoast creates a custom field and then edits the header to echo whatever is in the custom field.

Edit: and Yoast does a lot more than just the meta data, like connecting to FB/Twitter/Google+.
 
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juliantrueflynn said:
Plugins don't necessarily slow down your site every time, it's what they add sometimes that can slow down your site
Click to expand...

That's the point. You create your own minimal no-weight version without the "catch-all" bloat.

I change the yoast html in the header (two spots) and in the sitemap. He leaves the version and more nonsense in there. Easy to change. When I'm not on mobile I can tell you guys precisely which php files and which lines to alter in them. You have to fix it each time you upgrade the plugin.
 
Yea sorry I misread this completely and realized it later today when re-reading. Repeated a lot of stuff everyone was saying.
 
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