I didn’t see a suggestion box thread so I thought I’d add one. Here it goes…
1. Add H1 header tag to home page.
Yes, we can add a text block that contains H1. However, many users will not know how to do this. Thus, many users will never have H1 on their homepage which negatively impacts SEO. Another theme I use detects if the current page is the home page, and if so, it applies H1 to the logo and hidden text containing the site title and tagline.
2. Add an option to the blocks that allows users to select a header tag for the block title.
This will allow users to get H2 tags on the home page and archive pages. For the predefined templates, H2 should be selected on the home page and archive page blocks.
3. Include Alt tags in the images contained in blocks.
Every piece of media I have has an alt tag define for it. I would like these alt tags used. In cases where the alt tag is not defined, perhaps there can be an option to use the article title or the media filename as the alt tag.
4. Make it so that interacting with smart lists generates a distinct view in google analytics. I don’t know if this is hard or possible but it would provide users with a great benefit in terms of page views and add impressions.
5. Make it an option that when a site visitor clicks “next” on the last smart list item, they are sent to a new URL we specify. This is a sneaky way to get views on additional articles.
6. Ability to select background images and a URL and target for these images for a category, page, or post.
7. Allow admins to use HTML in their author page bio.
8. Ability to easily embed Facebook comments in addition to regular comments. Perhaps FB comments and regular comments can be placed in adjacent columns, full width without a sidebar next to them? That would be AWESOME. Throw in Google plus comments while you are at it. I’d pay extra for all of this. 🙂
I’ve tried a dozen themes. I’ve thoroughly reviewed all of the top selling theme demos on Theme Forest. Newspaper is in the top 3 themes I’ve ever used. I hope the SEO issues (1-3 above) can be resolved soon. Of note, a lot of the top selling Theme Forest themes have the same header tag issues.
Good points on 1-3. I second those.
#8 – Super Socializer is a great plugin for that and more. Pretty stable with tagDiv themes and doesn’t drag as much as others. Free, available in plugin repo.
For #5 there is a plugin for that called Theia Post Slider. If you’ve ever seen slider on BleacherReport.com – this is exactly like it. Good plugin. Haven’t used it with Newspaper v6+ yet. And for #4, it’s really kind of unnecessary since it only trumps up pageviews in a way that doesn’t count for ads and such. Ads need a page refresh to count a new view. But then again, Theia Post Slider does include some functionality for this and for ads, so you might want to check it out. It’s on Code Canyon. Good price, and support.
Thanks Bryson. I will try both plugins you mentioned.
Regarding #4, I know SEOs are mixed on the importance of bounce rate and behavior flow. I like to believe that a site visitor clicking through several pages is a strong user signal to Google. I don’t think it can hurt.
I was also hoping to use some Amazon CPM ads in the slider since Amazon doesn’t forbid this behavior, at least the last time I checked. I don’t know if these ads can be refreshed via java script so I’ll probably use the Theia Post Slider and do a full page refresh. At least I’ll get the BleacherReport.com behavior I’m interested in.
Good point on #4. Seems like TPS includes support for refreshing AdSense ads via ajax, not sure about Amazon CPM though. Curious to know if that works for you.
Hi,
1,2 and 3 – I’ve added them on our list.
4 and 5 – We plan to modify or add a new smart list with this kind of behavior. For the moment i cannot provide a date for this implementation, we have a lot of features on our list and we have to take them one by one.
6. You mean to select a different background ad for category, page and post. As you know the theme already has a general option for this, we may add individual settings in a future update. I’ve added this on our list.
7. This is a wordpress restriction, check this solution – http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/enable-or-disable-all-html-tags-in-wordpress-author-biography-profiles/
8. Unfortunately we don’t plan to include such an option, sorry, you have to look for a plugin on this.
Thank you!
Number 6, I mean having different click links for different category backgrounds is also very important to us. Looking forward to seeing this option. Because when I link an ad in homepage and a different ad in subsection background, they forward to same link. Problem is, these different ads are from direct competitors and they don’t like it.
Best Regards,
Thanks Emil. I look forward to the future updates!
9. HTML 5 SEO suggestions/questions:
9.1 Could you wrap the main menu with the <nav></nav> tag?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/nav
9.2 Should the <header></header> tag contain the top menu, logo, top ad banner, and main menu?
I see that Newspaper does this: <article><header><h1>Title</h1></header> content </article>
One theme I have does this: <header> logo, menu, ad, search </header><article><header><h1>Title</h1></header> content </article>
Another them does this: <header> logo, menu, ad, search </header><article><h1>Title</h1> content </article>
In my opinion, <header> would tell Google the information in this tag is not the content. Thus I would go with the third option. I am not certain of this however. Any thoughts?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/header
9.3 Should the entire sidebar be wrapped with the <aside> tag? I think Newspaper widgets are individually wrapped with <aside> but this does not happen for all widgets. Two of my other themes wrap the sidebar with <aside>.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/aside
Hi,
I’ve added your suggestions on the list, Radu O. is going to investigate this, he’s the expert on this area.
The Google SEO requests are not properly defined, Radu constantly looks for the pattern used on big sites with lots of employees which benefit from high quality SEO expertise and are highly ranked on Google. He also makes tests with various installs to test the theme pattern are working and the results are excellent. The theme is constantly tested with Google Structured Data Testing tool, a fix on this will be released in the next update to address some issues which appeared lately (Google is constantly changing the requirements).
If you’re in a hurry the title h tags can be changed manually in the code, ex for modules/blocks – http://screencast.com/t/pk3pvqzQvZ – http://screencast.com/t/fVS4pOnM
The header container can also be changed, it seems it doesn’t affect the css but additional tests should be made (i just made a quick test) – http://screencast.com/t/R5ewHTxWGii
On the sidebar is more complicated, on a quick look you have to modify the before and after used on widgets – http://screencast.com/t/5o1A6ZJd8F4 – then change the sidebar container tag on templates – http://screencast.com/t/Lke6IZsOk – extensive tests have to be done it this area too.
Any changes to these sections will be announced in the theme log.
Thanks for your feedback!
Thanks Email! One thing to note…
The big sites, news sites, and established authority blogs benefit from other ranker factors and don’t rely on on-page SEO as much as us niche site owners. Thus, the information gleaned from their code might not be as helpful. I will email contact(a)tagdiv.com a couple things I hope you will add to your SEO analysis. Thanks again for your support.
More suggestions:
10. A theme setting that allows you to toggle between H2 and H3 on modules, while on the home page and category pages.
I will try to implement this conditional logic on my own but it would be great if the theme provided this support!
11. Add rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags.
At the bottom of posts on the Next Article and Previous Article links, add the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags. This is suggested by Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
More to come.
Thank you for your suggestions. I will add them to our list for future updates.
Hi,
I’m interested in points 1,2 and 3.
I read you added in the list for future updates. Any news about it?
If the solutions suggested are not planned in a short period of time, I’d like to know how can I change the heading tags of block titles in home page from h4 to h2.
Thanks for your help!
Hello,
Point 1 is already checked. There is a h1 tag on the homepage since quite a few versions back.
Point 2: we cannot do that for each block in particular because our function is used on all blocks at once so if you want to change the heading tag of a block title you will have to change it in the theme code here: http://screencast.com/t/1JthDyiA
Point 3 is already implemented: http://screencast.com/t/jOH0PAfAgMM
Thank you!
Hi Bogdan,
thanks for your reply.
Point 1:
Ok, now I see the option “image builder + page tile” in template options!
It works perfectly with a row which contains a text with h1 tag as well…
Point 3:
Ok, I checked posts with images without Alt tag, sorry!
Point 2:
I don’t want to change the h3 tags for post titles in home page (“module-title”).
I’d like to change the h4 tags for categories (“block-title”).
Please have a look to this screenshot to be sure of what I mean: http://www.screencast.com/t/yMJ68oiIz65M
Thanks a lot!
