[Plugin: WordPress SEO by Yoast] SyntaxHighlighter Evolved Plugin Incompatibility

There is a weird compatibility issue with the highly popularSyntaxHighlighter Evolved Plugin. You can look at the following post, to see how I’m using it:

https://bamajr.com/2012/08/11/500-internal-server-error/

Notice the two “code” areas, with line numbers?

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved uses shortcodes, like many other plugins and can be used to identify several programming languages (See: https://en.support.wordpress.com/code/posting-source-code/)

The generic shortcode is:

[sourcecode]your code here[/sourcecode]

When you want to highlight a supported programming language, the shortcode will look something like this:

[sourcecode language="html"]<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v1.2.5 - https://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ -->
<title>Bamajr.com - Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web Design</title>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://bamajr.com/" />
<link rel="next" href="https://bamajr.com/page/2/" />
<!-- / Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. -->[/sourcecode]

I always wait to add this feature, until the very end and noticed the issue yesterday.

Before I added the…

[sourcecode] [/sourcecode]

…shortcode, your WordPress SEO plugin, identified my post, with an all GREEN rating.

After adding the code…

[sourcecode]There are 1 words contained in the body copy. This is far too low and should be increased.[/sourcecode]

…turned red and…

[sourcecode]The keyword density is 0%, which is a bit low, the keyword was found 0 times.[/sourcecode]

…turned orange.

Both of these values had changed from the GREEN range, to RED and ORANGE after the shortcode was added. If I take the shortcode out, the following line changes back to GREEN…

[sourcecode]The keyword density is 1.40%, which is great, the keyword was found 18 times.[/sourcecode]

…and the line, I identified above, as RED, goes away completely. This, of course, changes the SEO status back to GREEN.

I’m not sure why it is doing this, but I’m sure it isn’t a behavior you want to happen.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/