WordPress Theme Talian with Targeted AdSense Ads, Clickbank ads included and SEO Improvements

Creator: David Cameron Law (aka SEO Dave)
Latest Version of theme: http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/wordpress-theme-talian-with-adsense-and-seo-optimisation.html
Version: 05
Based on original Talian Theme: http://www.va4business.com/business/64/free-premium-wordpress-blog-theme-talian-released-an-elegant-theme-that-is-very-much-close-to-my-heart/ Author: Steve Arun

We have a problem with nofollow on links now, basically Google has screwed over webmasters by changing how it treats nofollow. Basically a nofollow link DELETES link benefit rather than protecting it! This means if you use WordPress out the box your sites SEO will be damaged, you could easily throw away half your hard earned link benefit using default WordPress!!!

Unfortunately this means some areas of WordPress are now anti-SEO and need fixing!

Nofollow Links Within Comments
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Nofollow Author Links Solved: With Talian version 04+ comment author links do not pass link benefit and do not use the nofollow attribute. I've replaced the original code with code that Google doesn't treat as a link, basically replaced text links with form buttons that look like text links (it's not SEO blackhat BTW). This means you can safely let your commenter's add a clickable author link with no damage to your sites SEO.

There is still a problem with links within the body of comments. If you or your commenter's add links to the body of their comments they are by default nofollow, I have not found a theme solution to this problem (yet). I have however found a plugin that solves the majority of this problem http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/remove-links-in-comments/.

This plugin stops WordPress from turning a text (non HTML code) link like http://www.domain.com/ into a hyperlink, but it doesn't impact fully formed hyperlinks like <a href="http://www.domain.com/">Anchor Text</a> so these will still add a nofollow link to your pages! My solution is manually remove the HTML code of the fully formed text links or change them to basic text like http://www.domain.com/ and the above plugin will leave it as basic text.

Threaded Comments Adds Nofollow Links
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If you activate the threaded comments system you'll see a "Reply to Link" under all comments, under WordPress 2.8.5 to WordPress 3.0.1 they are nofollow links!

I could not find a way to change this at theme level, so have had to do it at WordPress core file level (hack WordPress). Fortunately it's only one file that needs to be changed.

/wp-includes/comment-template.php

Edit this file in a text editor and find the two instances of:

rel='nofollow' class='comment-reply-link'

And delete the rel='nofollow' parts.

Save, upload etc...

The actual changes to the 2.8.5 version is as follows:


Change:

		$link = "<a rel='nofollow' class='comment-reply-link' href='" . esc_url( add_query_arg( 'replytocom', $comment->comment_ID ) ) . "#" . $respond_id . "' onclick='return addComment.moveForm(\"$add_below-$comment->comment_ID\", \"$comment->comment_ID\", \"$respond_id\", \"$post->ID\")'>$reply_text</a>";

To:

		$link = "<a class='comment-reply-link' href='" . esc_url( add_query_arg( 'replytocom', $comment->comment_ID ) ) . "#" . $respond_id . "' onclick='return addComment.moveForm(\"$add_below-$comment->comment_ID\", \"$comment->comment_ID\", \"$respond_id\", \"$post->ID\")'>$reply_text</a>";


Change:

		$link = "<a rel='nofollow' class='comment-reply-link' href='" . get_permalink($post->ID) . "#$respond_id' onclick='return addComment.moveForm(\"$add_below-$post->ID\", \"0\", \"$respond_id\", \"$post->ID\")'>$reply_text</a>";

To:

		$link = "<a class='comment-reply-link' href='" . get_permalink($post->ID) . "#$respond_id' onclick='return addComment.moveForm(\"$add_below-$post->ID\", \"0\", \"$respond_id\", \"$post->ID\")'>$reply_text</a>";

	
		
Save and upload to /wp-includes/comment-template.php and the nofollow will be removed.

That's it.

As WordPress updates the above may change a little, but each time you update WordPress download the file /wp-includes/comment-template.php and search through it for class='comment-reply-link' and delete any rel='nofollow' parts of the code on the same lines.

I've tried my hardest to get WordPress development team to change this in core WordPress, but so far no joy, my attempts below:

http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10550
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/287704?replies=1
http://codex.wordpress.org/Talk:Template_Tags/comment_reply_link

As of WordPress 3.0.1 the nofollow attribute is still used :(

If you don't want to mess with core WordPress files I strongly advise not enabling the threaded comments system in your site, it wastes SO much link benefit without the above code changes.

David Law
http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/