Does the Yoast SEO plugin work with Webcomic?

Hey @peterthomascrowell, thanks for asking! I haven’t used Yoast with Webcomic myself, but I know of at least a few Webcomic users that use Yoast with no major issues reported.

Webcomic itself doesn’t really provide any SEO-specific features. It *can* generate <meta> tags for Twitter cards, but you can toggle that feature off if you prefer to use Yoast for that sort of thing.

Thanks for getting back to me, Mike! I think I’ll stick with Yoast, since I’ve got a lot of the work done already. I just wanted to be sure it was worth my time.

Thanks again!

Hi Peter,

I’ve been using Yoast and relying on a written transcript of the comic for Yoast to work from. I’m not sure how helpful that actually is but it’s probably better than nothing.

I’m not an expert in this area so, for anybody here who knows better, is the above practice helpful?

Thanks Greenlaw!

Are you saying you use the transcript a the source for the copy you enter into Yoast?

Thanks again.

Peter

You could do that but I’ve just been putting it in the post’s text area. I believe Yoast reads from the content but it obviously can’t read a comic unless you write it down. It probably doesn’t matter which area it goes so long as Yoast can read it.

Anyway, it’s easy for me to include a transcript because I write my comics in script form before drawing it, and it’s just a copy/paste when I’m posting a new comic. TBH, I’m not sure how effective this actually is, it’s just something I made a habit of. (I decided a while back I wouldn’t obsess over Yoast too much because I already obsess over too many things.) ??

I’m currently re-working our site (littlegreendog.com), and I may switch to some other practice if somebody tells me better.

I’m not sure this is helpful but maybe it will give you some ideas. If you learn anything more useful, please let me know. Thanks.

A while ago, I found an article about SEO for web comics. It basically says there isn’t a lot you can do, since you’re not writing articles. But it lists a few things that help.

write an seo friendly title tag
write an seo friendly meta description
use a caption (shows up on hover over the image)
use alt descriptions for images
use seo friendly urls

These are part of a larger list of best SEO practices, but most are for articles, not comics. Even so, I figure I should do what I can, at a minimum.

However, including the transcript seems like it might be helpful, as it provides more for the search engines to scan. One more thing to consider.

What I like about Yoast is the ability to control what shows up in search results.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by peterthomascrowell.

Thanks! That’s good info.

For images, I read that Alt Text is also used in searches. Alt Text might be especially useful for comics, but of course, you’ll want to keep the description or tag(s) you enter as concise as possible.

I admit, I haven’t used Alt Text this way myself but maybe I should.

I’m building from the ground up, and establishing a workflow for new work, so I’m trying to create a list of requirements.

So far, the list above works, and I will add the cartoon transcript, also.

If you’d like to see an example, click to any of the comics on my website. I’m just placing the transcript below the main post text under a column line.

I started adding the transcript here because sometimes I don’t have any text content entered here at all, which understandably caused Yoast to give the post a low rating.

Webcomic has a built-in transcript system. I don’t know if Yoast or search engines read from that though. I want to experiment with it during my website reboot, especially if I can get some friends to provide translations into other languages.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Greenlaw.

Other languages is a great idea.

And I had seen your work before I posted here.

Great stuff!