If you’re using the WordPress Tag cloud then be aware: You have hidden links on your website!
The WordPress tag cloud, also known as WP-Cumulus is a popular plugin that displays the tags of your posts in a nice Flash cloud. It’s a great tool to visually display your blogs most common themes and ideas.
However if you view source on a page that has the tag cloud installed, you’ll see the following:
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by <a href=”http://www.roytanck.com”>Roy Tanck</a> and <a href=”http://lukemorton.co.uk/”>Luke Morton</a> requires <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>Flash Player</a> 9 or better.
The three links above will be displayed to users without Flash or Javascript enabled in their browser – that means search engines. Now it’s not that you should mind some of your link juice going to the developers’ sites – after all they’ve created a brilliant tool and deserve the credit. But that fact that the links tend to only be visible to search engines and not a typical user means your site may be falling foul of Google’s Guidelines on hidden links.
How to fix
The quickest way to remedy this is to edit the plugin from your WordPress Dashboard. Once logged in, go to Plugins > Editor and choose WP-Cumulus in the drop down menu top-right.
Click Select and search for the links above and remove them. You can still give credit to the authors of the Tag Cloud but you should do that in the main body of text so it’s not mistaken for a spammy hidden link.
For what it’s worth, these links have obviously worked. I haven’t seen many personal blogs like http://lukemorton.co.uk reach a PR7! Any questions then please post in the comments below.
So until next time. Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well.
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Posted by Jon.
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Yeah I keep away from tag clouds. That look cool but I think they are terrible for creating themed silos on your site.
I am still playing around with different scenarios using tags or categories and cross links between highly related pages. But to date on blogs I’ve yet to find a satisfactory solution.
he has created the plugin, and he has the right to put what ever he wants in the code.why are you jealous about his site being PR7 ? btw , he has not forced anyone to use the plugin . its the users who have installed upon their , own will.
The users that installed it may not be aware of the link back to the authors’ sites, which is what I’m pointing out. Of course the author has the right to put a link in, but why make it hidden? Also, the post does say that credit should be given for creating a useful plugin.