=== WordPress SEO Comments Plugin === Contributors: seo-dave Donate link: http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-comments-plugin/ License: GPLv3 License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html Tags: WordPress SEO, SEO, search engine optimization, google, yahoo, bing, SEM, google SEO, wordpress seo plugins, wordpress seo plugin, seo plugin, seo plugins, Hummingbird SEO, Hummingbird, comment, comments, wordpress comment plugin, wordpress comment plugins, comment plugin, comment plugins, blog seo, blog seo comments, seo comments Requires at least: 3.8 Tested up to: 4.4.2 Stable tag: 2.0 The WordPress SEO Comments Plugin turns comments into search engine optimized portals to your blog, new Google SEO entry points into WordPress sites. == Description == WordPress blogs can generate thousands of user comments, but WordPress out the box does nothing SEO wise with comments. After activating the WordPress SEO Comments Plugin and setting up a WordPress template to output your new SEO comments pages, Google will have access to all your users comments and index them in their own right. See the [WordPress SEO Plugin Support Page](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-comments-plugin/#respond) for more details. = SEO Super Comments Plugin = The WordPress SEO Comments Plugin is based on the SEO Super Comments plugin by Prevolac which wasn't updated for several years (last update 2011). I've been using a modified version of the SEO Super Comments plugin for over 5 years and incorporated it into the [Stallion Responsive WordPress SEO Theme Package](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-responsive-theme/) (premium WordPress theme). The Stallion Theme version includes a LOT of SEO features I could not incorporate into this new free WordPress SEO Comments Plugin. For example the Stallion version includes support for Comment Titles and the comment titles are used as the SEO title tags for the comment pages indexed by Google (title tags are VERY important to Google SEO) the comment title are also used as the anchor text for links to the SEO comments pages: very important for Google Hummingbird SEO. = WordPress SEO Comments Example = Take a look at this [Google site search result](https://www.google.com/search?q=XYZ#hl=en&q=site:http:%2F%2Fstallion-theme.co.uk%2F+%3Fcid%3D), this is specifically searching for the WordPress SEO Comments pages (their URLs include ?cid=). As you can see there are hundreds of Google indexed WordPress Comments pages thanks to this plugin, at the time of writing ~750 indexed WordPress Comments pages. The example site had just 85 published posts and pages, even taking categories into account (12 at the time) you would not expect to see much more than 150 pages indexed in Google yet in total there are over 950 pages indexed [see Google site search result](https://www.google.com/search?q=XYZ#hl=en&q=site:http:%2F%2Fstallion-theme.co.uk%2F). The additional indexed pages are thanks to this WordPress SEO plugin and they generate Google traffic in their own right from the comments, the example site has over 750 approved comments and Google is indexing AND ranking them in their own right. This turns your users comments into search engine entry points to your site. = WordPress SEO Resources = For WordPress SEO tips and tutorials, check out the following articles: * [WordPress SEO Tutorial](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-tutorial-for-wordpress/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Friendly Permalinks](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-friendly-wordpress-permalinks/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Title Tag Optimization](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-title-element-tag-optimization/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial 301 Redirects](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-tutorial-301-redirects/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Anchor Text](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-tutorial-anchor-text/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Alt Text](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-tutorial-alt-text/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Related Posts Plugins](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-tutorial-related-posts-plugins/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Duplicate Content](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-tutorial-duplicate-content-and-canonical-urls/) * [WordPress SEO Tutorial Google XML Sitemaps](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-tutorial-google-xml-sitemaps/) * [Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-wordpress-seo-plugin/) == Installation == 1. Upload the `blog-seo-comments` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory 1. Activate the 'WordPress SEO Comments Plugin' through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress 1. Configure the plugin by going to `Settings` : `WordPress SEO Comments` menu. == Frequently Asked Questions == See [WordPress SEO Comments Support](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-comments-plugin/#respond). = Create Template File Instructions = For more control over the output you could create a new template file for your theme and reference it on the options page. Since all themes are different it's impossible to give instructions that will work with every theme, but the instructions below for TwentyFourteen will point you in the right direction. Note: this is optional, NOT required, some themes will output features you might not want on the comment pages and the instructions below are generally how to remove them. The basic procedure involves making a copy of your themes 'single.php' template files (download to your computer), rename it 'single-2.php' followed by modifying the file (as described below) in a txt editor (Notepad for example) and upload to your themes folder (using FTP: Filezilla for example) under '/wp-content/themes/themename/'. And set Template File on the options page to 'single-2.php'. = TwentyFourteen Instructions = Using FTP (Filezilla for example), download a copy of the 'single.php' file from '/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/'. On your computer rename 'single.php' to 'single-2.php' Edit 'single-2.php' in a text editor * Find this code: lines 29 to 31: `if ( comments_open() || get_comments_number() ) { comments_template(); }` * Change to: `#if ( comments_open() || get_comments_number() ) { #comments_template(); #}` Save the file and using FTP upload 'single-2.php' file to '/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/' or better yet to a child theme folder so the file isn't deleted when TwentyFourteen is updated (all theme modifications are deleted during an update, use a child theme). Go to the plugin options page and set Template File to 'single-2.php'. This is disabling comments code on the comments pages the plugin outputs, I've used the comment code as an example because the plugin already disables comments, so it's just an example of how to comment out code using the sharp sign (#). You could for example comment out the code on line 26: "twentyfourteen_post_nav();" which adds the Next and Previous post links. The above covers minimum modifications for TwentyFourteen. There's a lot you can achieve SEO wise with this plugin concept, but for full SEO benefit it requires significant theme modification. For example with the [Stallion Responsive Theme](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-responsive-theme/) that uses a more SEO advanced built in version of this plugin with multiple SEO modifications builtin, for example Comment Titles that are used as the Title tags for the comment pages. If you get stuck see [WordPress SEO Comments Support](http://stallion-theme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-comments-plugin/#respond). == Screenshots == 1. Shows Google Analytics Graph of comment pages ONLY for a new site: shows 8,500 Google search impressions (around 10% of total impressions) due to pages on the site with URLs including cid. == Changelog == = 2.2.1 = * Removed the View Comment links from comments under the comments Dashboard (not needed). = 2.2 = * Fixed bug when no single.php template file exists: issue https://wordpress.org/support/topic/comment-urls-showing-blank-page now reverts to index.php * Fixed an oversight (bug) that allowed comments not approved (pending/spam/trash comments) to load if the SEO blog comments URL is known (if you approved a comment and then unapproved/trashed it etc... some users might have bookmarked the links). Also set comments of unapproved posts so they won't load either. When an SEO blog comment URL to a comment ID that's from an unapproved post or a pending/spam/trash comment (or a comment ID that doesn't exist) is accessed, the original post is loaded instead with a canonical URL to the original post. = 2.1 = * Renamed a function to avoid a "Fatal error: Cannot redeclare" clash between the plugin and the Stallion Responsive Theme built in version of these features. * Added options for the number of additional comments by the same author to load. Was fixed at 3 comments from the same post and 5 from the entire site. = 2.0 = * Custom template files now work with child themes. * Fixed "View Comment" permalink issue for posts with paged comments. Was linking to the wrong URL, format: /post-title/comment-page-2/?cid=1234, should be /post-title/?cid=1234. = 1.0 = * First release. == Upgrade Notice == * First release. Fixed a lot of bugs and errors (out of date code) in the original SEO Super Comments and removed the nofollow options (nofollow is SEO damaging), removed the need for creating a template file, plugin works with no theme modifications.