Maybe it’s just me. Okay, I’m pretty sure it is, because this is painfully basic and I totally missed it. But just in case you’ve ever wondered what Google (and other search engines) see on a page with shortcode, I’ll tell you. But let’s back up a second.
I recently installed a plugin on another site that formats WordPress tables quite nicely. Nicely formatted tables are not one of WordPress’ strengths, so there’s not much choice but to use a plugin, unless you want to spend some time to define them in your WordPress theme’s CSS.
After you format a table in the plugin’s user interface, you then insert it into a page or post via shortcode like “[this is a shortcode]“. Easy.
So I’ve placed my table shortcode and I’m admiring my beautiful new table that doesn’t consume the entire width of my post and has lovely shading on alternate rows, and I begin to wonder: Does Google see the data inside the table in context of the page? Or do search engines only see the shortcode?
Because, SEO. If Google can’t read the entire page in context, my readers may never find that page with the beautiful table in a search engine.
So I searched online and found a somewhat related post by Craig Harris about his solution for dealing with the fact that Google does not index pages created by plugins. And I asked Craig in his comments my lame (I realize now) little question, and he patiently and kindly answered me something to the effect that:
To see what Google sees on your page, just look at the source code.
Oh. Duh.
But that’s how we learn. You can have majored in database engineering, and still overlook the nose on your face, especially if you tend to over-think things, as database majors are prone to do.
(And just in case you’re new to building your own site, you can see the source code for any web page by clicking “View” in the Firefox toolbar, then “Page Source,” or “View” then “Source” in IE, or right click the page and “View Source” in Chrome.)
We’ll be talking more about plugins and WordPress websites here on Crunchy Data soon, because our analytics show that many of our readers from the old eHow days have stuck around, and many of you are now building your own blogs and websites. And well you should, because at the end of the day, if you’ve learned anything here, it’s that your best hope of earning a living online is to invest in yourself.
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