Improve SEO for single record page

It’s a good idea, as it is now, you’d have to write some custom code to grab the info from the record in your WP header template. I haven’t tried this, so I can’t be too specific.

Thanks.

Unfortunately writing custom code is is beyond my abilities.

First off, thank you Xnau for a brilliant plugin.

I am currently using the Participants database to build a product based database.

In this instance, I’m under the impression that the information is simply displayed upon request to the user and that there are no “record pages” which are actually created.

Is there a way of getting the single records to become actual linkable pages so that they could be indexed by the search engines?

Kind Regards.

I am looking for help with something else and noticed your post, @hikertommy.

There’s a “link” for every record (something like https://www.domain.com/whatever-you-call-your-record/?pdb=6). You can retrieve each product’s link by viewing your [pdb_list] list page (presuming you set a field the Record Link in the admin panel for the plugin).

As you say, though, there isn’t a “page” or “post” for all of those products.

It seems to me the way to accomplish what you want without advanced programming skills is to create [pdb_single] pages for those products you want to be indexed by search engines and add shortcode for the record ID. So the page containing [pdb_single record_id=6] would show only that one record. On that page, you could SEO info, like your title, description, etc. with the aid of a plugin like Yoast or All in One SEO (so it wouldn’t appear twice on the page).

It creates extra work, but if you don’t know the programming to do it, it’s one way to get it done.

Record pages are indexed if the link is publicly visible on your site so that the crawler will find them and follow them. The fact that the “page” must be reached by using a URL with the id of the record in it does not prevent it from being indexed.

Ooooh! Well, that’s interesting and good to know, xnau! My db is private, but I would’ve thought no indexing. I may have to use this in other places, once I get the hang of it!!

I was unaware of that Xanu.

Its because I have an instance of the plugin from an old project which is still active. I pasted a direct record URL into google but it yielded 0 results. The site has been active for over a year. I suppose the records don’t show in a XML sitemap?

The records don’t show in a sitemap because sitemaps are (generally speaking) built from WP posts. Participants database records are not posts, so they don’t normally appear in an xml sitemap.

As to single record pages getting indexed, they are supposed to be indexed due to the fact that a public link exists to the content. Whether they are or not in any particular case, I don’t know.

Getting to grips with it now. Is there anyway to hide some of the columns for mobile viewing? I tried via CSS but could only remove the column header and not the content:

Database is at: https://basedaq.com/smart-technology-databases/smart-home-database-basedaq-smarthome/

So basically when the screen is small and it starts to cut off, whats the CSS code to hide some of the columns?

I tried the responsive version but its very messy in my theme so editing the full version seems a potentially easier route for me.