Wordpress SEO

Ugh! I don't think the SEO on my new site was done. Anyone have any suggestions as I go through the website and add it in manually?

Just install the WORDPRESS SEO from Yoast. Then you can go through each page easily and put in your titles, descriptions etc. They score you along the way so you keep fixing it until it is right
P.S. I sure would like to see you change your color format. Grey is sooo boring to look at.:-(

EmptyNest said:

Just install the WORDPRESS SEO from Yoast. Then you can go through each page easily and put in your titles, descriptions etc. They score you along the way so you keep fixing it until it is right
P.S. I sure would like to see you change your color format. Grey is sooo boring to look at.:-(.

Click to expand...

Do what EN says. It works wonders. And you can see how well you are scoring and get hints about other phrases.

EmptyNest said:

Just install the WORDPRESS SEO from Yoast. Then you can go through each page easily and put in your titles, descriptions etc. They score you along the way so you keep fixing it until it is right
P.S. I sure would like to see you change your color format. Grey is sooo boring to look at.:-(.

Click to expand...

Grey is our background, our colour is actually burgundy (see our logo) and we highlight with it
I also have to set up a page with our accreditations, awards and reviews. We've been slowly adding to the website. Takes us a bit longer as we have to do everything in two languages.

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

You are meaning the page titles as in the info that shows up during a search (my inn in my town near this other town) and not the page names (myinn.com/rooms), right?
I only mention that for those just starting out creating a website, not you in particular. I made the colossally rookie error of changing the page NAMES when I created a new website 8 years ago. I also didn't know about redirect so I lost all that Google history with the old page names.

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

The page titles you have now are fairly redundant. They have the same 2 word phrase 3 times in some cases. I dn't see how changing them could make things worse.
I'm not sure what the override banner function is.
If you downloaded the Yoast plug in, it will give you clues as to which things to change. A list of places your keywords are missing from. And, whether or not you have too many pages with the same keywords. It will also tell you (English, not sure about French) what 'readability' level your page is written at. And how many words you've used and how many more you can use to make the page 'good'.
(Unbelievably, I have pages where I do not have a large enough word count.)

Madeleine said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

The page titles you have now are fairly redundant. They have the same 2 word phrase 3 times in some cases. I dn't see how changing them could make things worse.
I'm not sure what the override banner function is.
If you downloaded the Yoast plug in, it will give you clues as to which things to change. A list of places your keywords are missing from. And, whether or not you have too many pages with the same keywords. It will also tell you (English, not sure about French) what 'readability' level your page is written at. And how many words you've used and how many more you can use to make the page 'good'.
(Unbelievably, I have pages where I do not have a large enough word count.)
.

Click to expand...

Ugh! I see that changing the titles screwed up my menus too. This is going to take much more thought.

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Madeleine said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

The page titles you have now are fairly redundant. They have the same 2 word phrase 3 times in some cases. I dn't see how changing them could make things worse.
I'm not sure what the override banner function is.
If you downloaded the Yoast plug in, it will give you clues as to which things to change. A list of places your keywords are missing from. And, whether or not you have too many pages with the same keywords. It will also tell you (English, not sure about French) what 'readability' level your page is written at. And how many words you've used and how many more you can use to make the page 'good'.
(Unbelievably, I have pages where I do not have a large enough word count.)
.

Click to expand...

Ugh! I see that changing the titles screwed up my menus too. This is going to take much more thought.
.

Click to expand...

Oh, yes, that is true. Forgot about that. You have to come up with titles that fit the spacing you've laid out. Or...
There's the 'title' that is what you're having problems with and the 'SEO title' which is what shows up in the info box at the top of the web page.
If you're using the plug-in you can change the info in the SEO section without changing the title that's causing you spacing grief.
I guess what I'm saying, is you don't have to change the page titles you've got laid out, just change the SEO title to get your SEO problems fixed. So, your page title is, as an example, 'Nearby Attractions'. You can leave that alone as it fits your spacing, but change the SEO title to add in WHAT nearby attractions you're nearby.
Is that making any sense at all?

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Madeleine said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

The page titles you have now are fairly redundant. They have the same 2 word phrase 3 times in some cases. I dn't see how changing them could make things worse.
I'm not sure what the override banner function is.
If you downloaded the Yoast plug in, it will give you clues as to which things to change. A list of places your keywords are missing from. And, whether or not you have too many pages with the same keywords. It will also tell you (English, not sure about French) what 'readability' level your page is written at. And how many words you've used and how many more you can use to make the page 'good'.
(Unbelievably, I have pages where I do not have a large enough word count.)
.

Click to expand...

Ugh! I see that changing the titles screwed up my menus too. This is going to take much more thought.
.

Click to expand...

You need to create custom Menu for your site and then you have control over what exactly shows up on your menu bar/s. All pages do not have to be on the main navigation if you don't want. And when you chage page names, it changes it automatically in the custom menu so you can go in and call it anything you want and it still goes to that page.
Here is a screen capture of a set up I have for a Karma theme site

Sorry but grey may be your color, but it is not very appealing visually to the viewer :-(

EmptyNest said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Madeleine said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

The page titles you have now are fairly redundant. They have the same 2 word phrase 3 times in some cases. I dn't see how changing them could make things worse.
I'm not sure what the override banner function is.
If you downloaded the Yoast plug in, it will give you clues as to which things to change. A list of places your keywords are missing from. And, whether or not you have too many pages with the same keywords. It will also tell you (English, not sure about French) what 'readability' level your page is written at. And how many words you've used and how many more you can use to make the page 'good'.
(Unbelievably, I have pages where I do not have a large enough word count.)
.

Click to expand...

Ugh! I see that changing the titles screwed up my menus too. This is going to take much more thought.
.

Click to expand...

You need to create custom Menu for your site and then you have control over what exactly shows up on your menu bar/s. All pages do not have to be on the main navigation if you don't want. And when you chage page names, it changes it automatically in the custom menu so you can go in and call it anything you want and it still goes to that page.
Here is a screen capture of a set up I have for a Karma theme site

Sorry but grey may be your color, but it is not very appealing visually to the viewer :-(
.

Click to expand...

Well, I've tried other colours and they don't seem to work. But I will add a splash of colour to the buttons on the website.
Basically, when I change the title of the page, I have to go to the menu (I'm also using Karma) and change the title that displays in that menu.
What I was seeing was when I changed the title (even if the URL stayed the same) the titles in the menu were changing and throwing things off.

Eric Arthur Blair said:

EmptyNest said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Madeleine said:

Eric Arthur Blair said:

Am I better off leaving the original titles? Changing the titles themselves or using the overide banner function? Anyone know?.

Click to expand...

The page titles you have now are fairly redundant. They have the same 2 word phrase 3 times in some cases. I dn't see how changing them could make things worse.
I'm not sure what the override banner function is.
If you downloaded the Yoast plug in, it will give you clues as to which things to change. A list of places your keywords are missing from. And, whether or not you have too many pages with the same keywords. It will also tell you (English, not sure about French) what 'readability' level your page is written at. And how many words you've used and how many more you can use to make the page 'good'.
(Unbelievably, I have pages where I do not have a large enough word count.)
.

Click to expand...

Ugh! I see that changing the titles screwed up my menus too. This is going to take much more thought.
.

Click to expand...

You need to create custom Menu for your site and then you have control over what exactly shows up on your menu bar/s. All pages do not have to be on the main navigation if you don't want. And when you chage page names, it changes it automatically in the custom menu so you can go in and call it anything you want and it still goes to that page.
Here is a screen capture of a set up I have for a Karma theme site

Sorry but grey may be your color, but it is not very appealing visually to the viewer :-(
.

Click to expand...

Well, I've tried other colours and they don't seem to work. But I will add a splash of colour to the buttons on the website.
Basically, when I change the title of the page, I have to go to the menu (I'm also using Karma) and change the title that displays in that menu.
What I was seeing was when I changed the title (even if the URL stayed the same) the titles in the menu were changing and throwing things off.
.

Click to expand...

then the custom menu should help you. also using the custom css section you can come up with any colors you want. Grey just does not come across as a welcoming color for someone as hospitable as you
get yourself firebug and use it and the header and footer sections to try out different color codes live, then copy and paste into your custom css box.