Are you trying to rank your images in Google image search?  If so, make sure the full path for each component stays the same.

As for general SEO, you're right on track.  The performance boost from the parallel loading will be one more step to help you rank!

Hey Robin-

I agree with Nakul - no worry about the link juice not flowing.  If you have rel="nofollow" then the juice stops.  The neat thing is you can combine the two attribute values as long as you put a space between them like rel="external nofollow".

Hope that helps!
John

Very much agreed... it really depends on how everything is structured.

There are a couple of different approaches to take.  My personal fave is the "noindex,follow" on tag & category pages.  Having said that, I've heard of some people who have great category rankings.  That may depend on just how much duplication you have going on between the category/summary page and the actual blog post pages.

The Yoast SEO and All in One SEO plugs are great for WP by the way.

It will be my first one too... should be great

Gabriel-

It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page.  There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else.  The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone.  For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you.  To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you.  The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.

So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title.  I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?

If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me.  This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.

Gabriel-

Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?

Gabriel, I think we're close here... give this a try:

<title></p> <p><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?></p> <p><?php echo mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo('name', 'display'), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES'); ?></p> <p></title>

Look in your header.php file.  Here's what the <title>tag code might look like.  Again, you may need to wrap the mb function around more than one piece.  This should get you started.</p> <blockquote style="color: #5e5e5e; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title><?php</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">/*</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span> */</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">global $page, $paged;</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog name.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>bloginfo( 'name' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog description for the home/front page.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo " | $site_description";</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add a page number if necessary:</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'oldheidelbergdeli' ), max( $paged, $page ) );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">?></title>

This worked for me....

$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');

The text is getting encoding in the second half of your meta tag, so if you convert the encoding you should be able to get around this.  You may need to apply this to several sections of that depending on what's going on... check the tag out on several pages.

Let me know how it works out.

Do you have a Google account with Webmaster Tools?  If not, go ahead and sign up for one (it's free!) then submit your site for reconsideration to Google.  While you're at it, make sure your XML site map is working.  You should be back on Google within a few days to a week.

It sounds like this is a short-term nofollow situation, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

-John

There are a couple of different approaches to take.  My personal fave is the "noindex,follow" on tag & category pages.  Having said that, I've heard of some people who have great category rankings.  That may depend on just how much duplication you have going on between the category/summary page and the actual blog post pages.

The Yoast SEO and All in One SEO plugs are great for WP by the way.

Are you trying to rank your images in Google image search?  If so, make sure the full path for each component stays the same.

As for general SEO, you're right on track.  The performance boost from the parallel loading will be one more step to help you rank!

The "See what Cerritos Nissan customers...." anchor text is pretty lengthy.  If I understand correctly, the 6 - 8 word max or less than 55-60 character rule of thumb should apply to the anchor text.  Like most other things related, keeping it in check seems to make the most sense.  If the anchor text is more descriptive this will give the link more weight.

On the shorter side of things though... How many times have we seen "click here" to download.  Is the link value "click here"... or rather is it about the page or item we're clicking to get to?

-John

Hey everyone... just seeing who's going to MozCon next month?  It would be nice to connect some usernames and faces when I get there!