SEO by Yoast & Sitemap_index.xml & NextGen Gallery not working!

Seo by Yoast ist for WordPress the state of art SEO Plugin.

For picture galleries quite often NextGen Gallery is recommended, because it has a reputation, from old days – but it was simple forgotten to downgrade the ratings of that plugin.

So let me explain why I do make negative advertisement of NextGen Gallery.

For websites it’s not unimportant to present them self as aesthetical and stylish site, this can be achieved by using beautiful pictures … that’s keeping visitors staying longer on your page und keeps ‘em clicking.
So for that reason I did put much effort in a client’s website, to achieve a nice aesthetical design, which keeps visitors on the page.

So when you put effort in the pictures, you simply want to have them in the best position in the Google search results. But when you use NextGen Gallery, your pictures will never ever appear in the search result. (That simple translates to me, you did much work and thanks to NextGen Gallery I’m the screwed one)

First thing where your pictures get a good touch with Google is via „Alt“ and „Title“ attributes of the pictures and guess what, those are missing in the NextGen Gallery output – I do wonder why the implemented a „picture shop“ feature into NextGen Gallery Pro, those pics will never show up in a Google search result.

Next thing where your pictures could get in touch with Google would be in the Sitemap_index.xml which is generated by the SEO Plugin. Yeah you’ll find many communities where is discussed how to get the NextGen Gallery pictures into the sitemap, but no real solutions. As customer you get updates form NextGen Gallery, to alter its PHP files doesn’t fix it permanently. As an owner of a paid NextGen Pro licence I opened a support ticket and I was asking about Google and sitemap, the answer was awkward meaning „Alt“ and „Title“ are missing. Since I got that answer I did knew that they will not do anything about the sitemap. The NextGen guy just blames the SEO plugin, meanwhile you look into other galleries, the pictures will show up in the sitemap and Yoast is cooperating with other plugin developers, so with NextGen Gallery you are lost, as I am.

So here are things you can do:

• If your unhappy with NextGen Gallery, don’t buy the pro version, as there are better plugins to visualize the pictures like „Justified Image Grid“
• Give with ratings to NextGen Gallery the rating it’s deserving
• Migrate to other technologies like to standard WordOress gallery with a specialised Plugin. Use migration script https://kovshenin.com/2012/convert-nextgen-galleries-to-wordpress-galleries/

Anyway other plugins do have a better lightbox and better picture layout. So take your luck and use that option.