3.10 Settings
This section contains various overall settings where you can enable/disable specific modules, and adjust plugin behavior.
3.10.1 General Settings
Plugin Modules
Here, you can enable or disable any of the SmartCrawl modules. For example, if you’re using some other means to create sitemaps of your site, you’d want to disable the SmartCrawl sitemap module to avoid conflicts.
In case you have multiple SEO plugins installed on your website, here you can deactivate the modules that conflict with other SEO plugins.
Enable the Hide disabled modules from the dashboard and sub-menu checkbox to hide the disabled plugin modules from the plugin dashboard and sub-menu.
In-Post Analysis
These options enable modules that appear inside the post editor and provide per-page analysis and opportunities to fine-tune the SEO for each post or page. Our SEO analysis engine supports the languages below:
- Czech
- Dutch
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Russian
- Spanish
If your site language is set to any other language, you’ll see a notice informing you that the language is not supported by these features.
See the In-Post SEO Analysis chapter below for more info.
- Page Analysis – This option enables you to fine tune numerous SEO tweaks for each page and post on your site.
- Readability Analysis – Enable this to use the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests in each post or page to indicate how easy or difficult a passage is to understand. Note that your post must be in either Draft or Published status for this analysis option to work, as it scans the content output, not what is in the post editor.
If you enable either of the in-post analysis options above, you’ll want to select the scope of the analysis engine.
- Content – Recommended for most websites as it only reviews the_content() output.
- Wide – Includes everything, except for your header, nav, footer and sidebars. This can be helpful for page builders and themes with custom output.
- All – Checks your entire page’s content including elements like nav and footer. Due to analysing everything, you might miss key analysis of your real content so we don’t recommend this approach.
- None – Only analyzes content you tell it to programmatically. If you have a fully custom setup, this is the option for you. If you select this option, add the class .smartcrawl-checkup-included to container elements you want to include in the SEO and Readability Analysis.
Note that if you want the engine to analyze the SEO of featured images in your posts, you’ll want to select either the Wide or All option above.
Disable Page Analysis Check on Pages/Posts Screen
By default, SmartCrawl will analyze posts and pages one at a time in your Posts and Pages lists to avoid excessive server load. However, you can toggle on this option to disable these checks altogether if needed.
Admin Bar
Enable this option to add a SmartCrawl menu item to your admin bar.
Meta Tags
- Hide Generator Meta Tag – With this option enabled you can hide your WordPress version visible to the public and improve the security of your site.
- Hide Redundant Canonical Link Tags – WordPress automatically generates a default canonical tag for each of your website’s pages & posts. In many cases, this isn’t needed, so you can enable this option to remove them and avoid any potential SEO “duplicate content” backlash from search engines. See Working with Canonicals in SmartCrawl below for more info.
- Enforce Meta Tag Character Limits – Each meta tag type has recommended maximum characters lengths to follow. Enabling this will prevent you from adding too many characters.
Search Engines
This tool will add the meta tags required by search engines to your website’s <head> tag to verify your site with their SEO management tools.
Verification is the process of proving that you own the site or app that you claim to own. Search engines need to confirm ownership because once you are verified for a site or app you have access to its private Google/Bing Search data, and can affect how Google/Bing search crawls it.
Google Verification
To add Google verification follow the instructions given here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35179?hl=en
Bing Verification
To add Bing verification follow the instructions given here using verification method #3 https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/add-and-verify-site-12184f8b
Add Verification Code to
Here you can choose to add the verification code to All Pages or just the Home Page.
Custom Meta Tags
A short example of what you could enter here would be to help Bing by adding:<
<meta name=”geo.position” content=”latitude; longitude”>
<meta name=”geo.placename” content=”Place Name”>
<meta name=”geo.region” content=”Country Subdivision Code”>
Working with Canonicals in SmartCrawl
By default, WordPress automatically generates and adds a rel=canonical link in the source code of every page & post of your site, which is the same as the post permalink.
In many cases, these links are not needed and this default behavior can be disabled by toggling on the option to Hide Redundant Canonical Link Tags above.
Whether the Hide Redundant Canonical Link Tags option is enabled or not, you can specify your own custom canonical links for each page or post as needed under SmartCrawl > Advanced in the in-post editor.
Here is the behavior to expect depending on your configuration:
With the Hide Redundant Canonical Link Tags option disabled:
- WordPress default canonical links are added to each post & page as expected.
- The SmartCrawl in-post option can be used to override the WordPress default canonical link for any post or page if needed.
With the Hide Redundant Canonical Link Tags option enabled:
- All WordPress default canonical links are removed from your site.
- The SmartCrawl in-post option can be used to add a custom canonical link to any page or post if needed.
Usage Tracking
Usage tracking is incredibly useful for our designers, and enables us to learn more about what features you use and don’t use. It is a completely anonymous feature, and helps us deliver more relevant features in the future. See our Privacy documentation for more information about the data we collect.
Usage Tracking when White Label is enabled
When White Label is activated in the WPMU DEV Dashboard, only users with permission to access the WPMU DEV Dashboard will be able to see the usage tracking option.
3.10.2 Configs
The Configs module allows you to save your SmartCrawl configurations so that they can be applied to another site in just a few clicks.
To help you get started, we provide a Default SEO Config denoted with a blue checkmark. It includes the recommended settings that are ideal for fresh installations.
Save a Configuration
To save your current configuration, click Save Config.
Then, enter a name and optional description for the configuration and click Save.
Saved configurations are listed alphabetically. To view details about a saved configuration, click the configuration in the list.
To make changes to a saved configuration, click the gear icon. The available actions are:
- Apply – Apply the saved configuration to this SmartCrawl installation.
- Download – Download the saved configuration as a .json file.
- Name & Description – Edit the name and description for the saved configuration.
- Delete – Permanently delete the saved configuration.
Upload a Configuration
To upload a configuration that you’ve downloaded from another site, click Upload, and select the relevant .json file from your computer.
SmartCrawl will import the uploaded configuration and add it to the Preset Configs list.
Apply a Configuration
To apply a saved configuration to your SmartCrawl installation, click Apply.
You will be asked to confirm that you would like to replace your current settings with the saved configuration. Click Apply to proceed.
Sync with the Hub
SmartCrawl configurations will automatically be synced with the Hub. Synced configs can be accessed and applied directly from the Config or SEO modules in the Hub, or from the SmartCrawl installation of any of your sites.
If a new config created in the Hub doesn’t appear immediately in the SmartCrawl Settings module, click Check again to refresh your data.
NOTE
This feature is only available to users with the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin and an active WPMU DEV subscription.
3.10.3 User Roles
User Roles allows you to configure access of user roles to certain parts of SmartCrawl. You can manage access to In Page SEO, 301 Redirects and Moz Data.
As always, don’t forget to click SAVE SETTINGS when you’re done.
3.10.4 Import
Import
Third Party
You can import settings from another SEO plugin you may have installed before deactivating it. Currently, import is only supported from the Yoast SEO plugin.
Click Import to import your third-party settings.
3.10.5 Data & Settings
The options here enable you to specify what should be done with your settings and data.
Uninstallation
- Settings – Select to either Preserve or Reset the plugin settings if you need to uninstall the plugin for any reason. By default, the Preserve option is selected. Settings include everything related to the plugin configuration.
- Data – Select to either Keep or Reset all data stored by the plugin when you uninstall it. By default, the Keep option is selected. This includes data from logs, sitemap crawler, SEO checkup, etc.
Subsites (Multisite only)
If you need to clear all settings and data from all subsites in your multisite network, click the Reset Subsites button in this option.
Factory Reset
If you ever need to completely wipe all data and reset settings back to their defaults, click the Reset button in this option.
3.10.6 Accessibility
Enable the High Contrast Mode option here to enhance visibility of the plugin interface and meet WCAG AAA requirements.