Two of my favorite plugins have undergone recent changes and I wanted to share them with you so you can get the maximum benefit. The WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast has two upgrades, including one that will help get your posts get indexed in SERPs quicker. And the developer for Max Buttons finally fixed a glitch that had a lot of folks jumping through hoops to work around with size.
Changes to WordPress SEO Plugin
Joost de Valk (Yoast) is the creator of the WordPress SEO plugin and he has been doing a lot of work lately on the on-page SEO section of the plugin. The updates include:
- how the Focus keyword tool works
- help text replaced with question mark link
- removal of the Lindex box, which is the company that provides the service
He’s also made some core functionality changes that will improve performance. These include:
- not resetting query when it’s not needed
- change to search engine ping to allow immediate ping on publish
The last one is a big deal. This plugin automatically pings Google and Bing whenever you publish a new post or page. Instead of waiting on your site’s CRON job to pick it up, the plugin sends the ping immediately when you hit publish. That gets it to the search engines faster.
If you need help with setting up this plugin and understanding how to maximize it, check out the SEO and AuthorRank Video Course. It covers every aspect of this plugin, including how to coordinate your on-page SEO efforts.
Changes to Max Buttons
If you’re not familiar with the Max Buttons plugin, I suggest you give it a look. It makes creating super looking buttons so easy. I use it extensively on the Video Library site. What’s great about this plugin is that it gives you super 3D results with no coding. And they are great for drawing attention to your call to action.
I’m delighted that the developers at Max Foundry finally fixed this bug because I absolutely love this plugin and had to jump through a few hoops to patch a temporary fix.
The problem was that the container around the buttons sometimes would not expand properly to fit the width of the text. It’s all better now, though, and works perfectly on all buttons.
They also added a bit of code to the TinyMCE text editor so that you can insert a button shortcode from the Visual tab.
If you like, you can also enable each button so that you can move the CSS (style code) to an external style sheet.
MaxButtons comes in both a free and Pro version, the difference between them mainly being all of the button and graphic packs available so you don’t have to spend any time styling to get the look you want. I found all of the styling options fun to play with and had no trouble coming up with a perfect match for my site.
Bonuses
Be sure to subscribe to my blog posts to get more important plugin updates. I usually report on them first in Tips Tuesday.
And, see the new WordPress Plugins resource page too.
Wrap Up
Do you use either of these plugins? Leave a comment and let me know what your experience has been with them.
David Trees says
March 7, 2013 at 9:00 amI use Yoasts plug in on 2 of my sites and 3 client sites. I am following the instal / modify guidelines as shown in your video series, “SEO and Author Rank”. This video series is well worth the cost as IMHO.
I find the videos a great reference and Yoasts latest update helps me as it’s more intuitive than before.
So all in all I love it. I also love your Plug In resources page MaAnna… Superb.
Thanks again for taking your time to write and inform us of these updates.
:)
MaAnna Stephenson says
March 7, 2013 at 4:51 pmThanks so much David, and glad you are finding it all helpful!!
Rajkumar Jonnala says
March 18, 2013 at 2:06 amgood post covers the information that i need thanks for sharing
Pranjal says
April 1, 2013 at 10:22 amWordPress SEO, I am using it since early beta stage when AIO SEO was the popular. Joost, has taken WP SEO to completely new level. On page optimization and implementation is something what I learned only from WordPress SEO. The most exciting part of WordPress SEO that it comprises fairly three-four plugin in one package, SEO plugin, Sitemap plugin, Breadcrubms plugin, RSS feed editor to add html content, and also allows to edit Robots and .htaccess files, as well. I can say My favorite WordPress plugin so far :)
MaAnna Stephenson says
April 1, 2013 at 9:06 pmAgree about Joost putting the max amount of goodies into one plugin. But, that’s probably why he has to constantly update it for bug fixes too. Still, way better than anything else out there.
Amit Sharma says
April 9, 2013 at 8:06 pmSEO by Yoast, is one of my favourite too. But sometimes, it’s hard to keep a track of changes it has undergone. Thanks for the write-up, introducing the recent changes. One thing, I’d like to add, is that it’s always better to backup before upgrading to the latest version.
So that we can revert to the older version, if something, you know.. :D
MaAnna Stephenson says
April 9, 2013 at 8:13 pmYou’re 100% right about backing up before you upgrade the backup plugin! I’m finding that most of his updates are for bug fixes more than feature additions.