SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 Footprint Removal

Earlier this week I was talking about website footprints, and why I try to make sure I clean up after myself when using certain tools, plugins or themes. Ever since the Google MayDay update, I have been on an optimization tear… In the process of cleaning up code to speed up sites, it’s surprising how many tracks you find!

In today’s post, I am going to talk about a kick-ass plugin called SEO Search Terms Tagging 2. I LOVE this plugin and it works FANTASTIC! But if you use it as-is out of the box… well, you are doing a few negative things and may set yourself up for a bit of a fail. Lets face it, this plugins’ SOLE PURPOSE is to help attract more search traffic through “automatic” creation of links and keywords. Regardless of how you look at it… it is, what it is!

If you are looking for one of the best WordPress SEO plugins, you need to see SEOPressor (Opens in new window) also!

By using it as-is, you are:

1. Shouting out that you SEO Optimize specifically for search engines to send more traffic!
2. Telling your competition the exact keywords driving traffic to your page, or entire site!

(Disclaimer: I am going to refer to some Google & Bing searches in this article, if I uncovered one of your sites, apologies in advance… but a great way to see it needs to be changed! Feel free to email me and ask me to change the reference if your site is ID’d)

(Disclaimer #2: I am going to discuss editing code in the browser. If you have doubts about what you are doing, just don’t do it! As always… backup your files (The plugin files) first, and if all else fails and the site jacks up, just delete the specific folder for the specific plugin, and start over! :-)

SEO Search Terms Tagging 2 Footprints

So… you picked up this plugin and installed it, lets see what we can find right out of the box:

Finding Sites Using the Plugin…

This is impossible to do without uncovering someones website… but I am just going to pick common things happening this time of year. Open your favorite search engine, and do a quick search for:

• “Incoming search terms” + “flu season” (Goog, Bing)
• “Incoming search terms” + “bookbag” (Goog, Bing)
• “Incoming search terms” + “nfl” (Goog, Bing)
• “Incoming search terms” + “halloween” (Goog, Bing)

So, in just a couple quick searches, we found lists of sites using the plugin… Imagine what a search algo could do!

First Fix – NEVER Use The Default Settings, Change EVERYTHING!

Change:

• Number of searches to a random number, everyone uses 10
• List Header text – I use NOTHING at all, change yours to whatever! Remember, everyone else is using the “Incoming Search Terms…” part!
• Before and After List <ul > – I use nothing at all!
• Before and after each keyword: Again, try to make it different. I use a word in front, then a space and comma behind. The result is a long paragraph of keywords versus a bullet list.
• NEVER link on the same page, save those for a sidebar widget! :-)
• Add an expiration date to your terms, so that the changes you are making to the page will stick! (If you have the same words on there forever, your key-freq will always be the same)

Bottom line… Being different is good!

OK Whats Next?

At this point, you have cleaned up the plugin and think all is good right? Wrong! View the source code on one of your site pages with the plugin running, and do a quick search (press Control-F keys to bring up the find box) for the phrase “searchterms” or “seo” or “tagging”.

Do you see what I see? Way down in your source code where the keyword list is generated, you have another footprint of the SEO plugin:

Anything within your source code that starts with a “<!– ” and ends with a “–>” is a comment, or html hidden comment that is usually put in place by the developer. If you use Firefox, you probably see them in Green text. Back in the day of coding BANS-WordPress themes, I placed several unique comments within the themes so I could easily search and find specific code blocks or even unauthorized usage.

As you can see now… the SearchTerms Tagging 2 Plugin also adds a comment to the code, which can be associated with a footprint!

Wiping Away the Plugin Comment Code Footprint

Just a note that if you choose to clean this up the way I suggest, you WILL have to to it again when the developer releases a new version of the plugin. Like I said earlier… it is what it is!

(Note: I use the WordPress Code Editor plugin to show line numbers in my editors)

• Goto wp-admin > plugins > editor.
• From the drop menu, select the “Search Terms Tagging 2 Plugin” files.
• Make sure you are editing the “searchterms-tagging2.php” file and search for: <!–
• On line 700, you find the first reference to the code:

In total, there are 5 references to the code comment. You will find it on lines: 700, 751, 809, 826, and 843. You need to either change it or delete the line completely.

If you want to retain the timer, just change the “SEO Searchterms Taggins 2 Plugin” section of the code to whatever you want, but don’t touch the rest. Looking below, you can see I changed it to: “My Site Timer took”

• Again… you MUST DO THIS on all 5 references on lines: 700, 751, 809, 826, and 843.
• Once you are done, save the file and thats it!

See this one, where I just removed it completely…

Reminder: If the developer updates his plugin, you WILL have to do all this again!

Congrats – The SEO Search Terms Tagging 2 Plugin is Footprint Free!

Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:

• SEO Companion Plugin for WordPress
• Keywords2Websites 1.8 Due Out Any Moment!

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