Justin Tadlock’s Breadcrumb Trail is the “smartest” one I’ve ever seen.
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Thanks I’ll check that out. My main issue is I rely on the hierarchy of pages within subcategory and category, which Yoast can do.
(using the plugin Post Tags and Categories for Pages)
This one is fairly new eh.
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I’ve just been thinking about plugins like Yoast, where they have a big market-share and seem to be the automatic No.1 pick. I imagine that the No.2, No.3 etc options would be quite interested in developing for CP, if we contacted them and said something like: “We don’t expect No.1 to be supporting CP, so how about you move in and get that market”.
People use Yoast because that’s become known as “the one to use”, but as Tim points out there are other options just as good/better. Should we pick one or two of those and make a concerted effort to ask that they consider working with CP?
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I like that idea. Let’s remember to check the security history of whichever plugin(s) we approach - Yoast has a somewhat chequered record and it’d be nice to do better.
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It just occurred to me that we are sort of going cap-in-hand to these people and saying: “please consider supporting CP”. Maybe we should be taking a line that’s more like: “Hey, this is a big opportunity and you might want to get in early.”
We are now compiling a list of CP-friendly options for “must-have” plugins, so developers could be encouraged to make a commitment to support CP, get their name down on that list and start picking up some new clients.
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SEOPress is another good one. SEO Framework is good too.
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+1 for SEOPress. That’s all I use.
Yoast has been bloated toast for a while now.
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Do any of the above mentioned plugins handle scanning for keyword density, header usage, sentence length, passive voice, Flesch readability, paragraph length, or transition words?
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We should also mention GD SEO Toolbox Pro as an option (paid).
Milan has thrown himself into supporting CP with all his plugins.
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Why should anything ever scan for passive voice? Even the grammatically incompetent Strunk & White didn’t suggest that it was impermissible.
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Passive voice is wishy-washy and lacks any kind of authority.
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Not necessarily. It depends entirely on the context. Sometimes passive voice provides more emphasis because it places the stress on the agent.
Studies of top novelists have shown that they use passive voice around 25% of the time.
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Yes, exactly. And without a scan for same, you have no way of knowing what your percentage is. I aim for 5% or less.
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Why is less than 5% so good? Are you a better writer than, for example, George Orwell? Do you scan for other things too? Strunk and White said you shouldn’t use adverbs or adjectives. You clearly don’t follow that one.
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I aim for 5% because I’m able. The features I asked about above are useful features that are built into Yoast. It doesn’t seem any of them are built into the others. This is really critical functionality, IMHO, because it helps you to improve your content not just slap meta around it. There’s no sense SEO’ing a piece of worthless content.
My handle isn’t an SEO’d piece of content, so the use of my verb/adverb is a moot point.
Edit: SEOPress claims to have content analysis (same tools I previously asked about), but it’s not clear to what level.
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My point is precisely that it doesn’t improve your content. It provides you with a means to achieve a goal that you have set for yourself. They aren’t necessarily the same thing.
I haven’t come across any corpus analysis that suggests well-respected writers have anything like such a low usage of passive voice. That, presumably, is why other plugins don’t provide that functionality. It also helps to explain why so many habitual users of MS Word, which likes to highlight every use of passive voice, typically turn out stuff that no-one wants to read.
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I disagree.
I think passive voice should be considered an “advanced” feature of the English language.
Unless you are specifically applying it to place emphasis on what would otherwise be the object of a sentence, then using active voice will probably lead to clearer, more direct phrasing, which is a good thing in the vast majority of cases.
Another reason not to provide passive voice analysis is that an algorithm to do this accurately is far from obvious.
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As everything in writing, the choice of writing style is up to the author. And authors choose the style that they think helps them communicate their ideas to the reader.
Active voice is encouraged in journalism because it helps communicate information in a way that makes reader feel as if they are there, it has purpose, direction, and clarity.
I personally like to think that passive voice tries to pull you into the story, while active voice pushes you in.
Neither one is the right one all the time. Do you want your reader to be a passenger getting a ride (passive)? Or, do you want your reader to do the driving (active)?
I like active voice because that’s how I was trained to write in my journalism classes, and I like brevity. Passive voice beats around the bush a bit too much for me, but occasionally it’s necessary.
This is my choice, your choice of the writing style can be different. And that’s ok.
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