Can the Classic Editor Plugin cause Bing indexing problems?
Hi everyone,
I have been so happy that one of sites is doing well despite a year away! I did just a little with it and added one new post and I have featured snippets on Bing already! This is wild since I don't have many posts on that site. It was just a baby when I stopped and it didn't have nearly the content of my first two sites. I had lots of snippets from those sites but never had one from this site before.
The new post won't get indexed on Bing however. I keep looking up what the problem might be and can't find much. I have gone down the rabbit hole of trying to turn plugins off to see if that helps.
Does anyone know if the Classic Editor plugin which allows you to use the Wordpress Classic Editor causes indexing problems?
Everything else appears to be set up identically with my posts that are ranked 2 and 3 on Bing right now so I don't think it is anything like links, images, ads etc.
Here is what I am getting on the Bing Wordpress Editor in case someone knows what this means.
This next message seems to indicate I am missing Alt text for an image but I checked all three images in this post and all three have Alt text. It says that is the only error and it is low severity so I don't know why that would prevent indexing.
Google has indexed it but says it has problems with breadcrumbs. That is where I ended up thinking perhaps the Classic Editor could be the problem. I have never understood breadcrumbs.
I tried turning off All In One SEO and using Google XML Sitemaps plugin instead.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thank you so much!
Jessica
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Can you give us the URL so I can take a peek at the code. Maybe I can spot something there.
Thanks Marion!
Here it is:
https://realwebfreedom.com/the-best-way-to-build-a-website-for-a-small-business/
I don't know if any of this will help but:
Your featured image does not have an alt text set but the other image does.
You have raw affiliate links (not Pretty Links) and there is no affiliate disclosure either on-page (as required) or even a link to an affiliate disclosure page. Affiliate Disclosures, FTC Guidelines, and Amazon Rules You could try adding an external link to an authority website such as https://www.wikipedia.org/
Then resubmit your sitemap to all the search engines. https://realwebfreedom.com/sitemap.xml
Please let us all know if you get this sorted.
Hi Marion,
Thank you for looking into this. I am really confused though. I do have an affiliate disclosure on the page and will be adding the separate ones as their own pages. What I am really concerned about now it why the Alt text is not showing.
Here are two screen shots. The first shows the Alt text if I inspect the image itself. The second shows the Alt text in the Media Library/if I open up the Featured Image.
Any ideas?
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Hi, Jessica
This used to happen to me from time to time.
It's just a glitch in Bing's system. Their algorithm has so many URLs to index that some get overlooked or evaluated incorrectly. If there was something seriously wrong with your URL Google would not have indexed it.
I use the Bing URL Submission plugin.
It automatically submits your website URL to Bing as soon as you publish it. It also has a manual URL submission feature, which allows you to "submit a URL directly into the Bing index," effectively letting you bypass the process in Bing Webmaster.
You need to add your Bing API Key to the plugin, which you can find in your Bing Webmaster settings. Also, be aware that if you deactivate this plugin you will need to re-enter the API Key when you reactivate it, so keep it running.
Finally, don't forget to manually submit your new sitemap to Bing and Google when you publish an article.
Frank
Thanks Frank. I have manually submitted it on Bing Webmaster Tools and resubmitted a Sitemap too.
If I have done those things then will adding the Bing URL Submission plugin help?
I would give it a try because it bypasses Bing Webmaster tools. Going forward the plugin will automatically submit your URL to Bing.
I have been using it about 1year and it works great, but only if you add your Bing API key.
This sounds like a good way to go.
Barbara
Ok, thanks Frank! I will definitely give that a try. I really appreciate the advice.
Thanks, Barbara!