If you’ve followed my advice over the last few years, then you already know how to use WordPress categories effectively.
But now that you’re using categories in a meaningful way, do you know how to get your category pages to rank well and dominate in the search engines?
Using this tip that I’m going to share with you today, you’ll be able to do just that.
However, before we begin, I need to let you in on a little secret—by default, WordPress does not provide you with the controls necessary to create category pages that have maximum SEO juice.
Fortunately, this is where I come in :D [click to continue…]
Because of the way they are misused all over the Web, categories have grown to become something that we regard in a purely user-centric light. We think of them as navigational tools and guides for users, but in reality, categories are a powerful tool that bloggers can use to exercise precise control over content in a dynamic environment.
Unfortunately, the true power of categorized content has been masked by the one size fits all implementation you see everywhere on the Web—the proverbial long, ugly list of category links now appearing on a blog near you.
As luck would have it, that awful category list also turns out to be a very poor presentational strategy for your site…but why? [click to continue…]
You’d think that as a result of open-source development practices, blog architectures would be pretty close to perfection in areas like Web standards and maximum SEO impact.
You’d be wrong.
Unbelievably, nearly every WordPress, MovableType, or TypePad theme that I’ve come across in the past year fails a simple test for truly semantic (and Google-recommended) XHTML markup. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that these failures are by no means fatal flaws. At the same time, though, I find it extremely unsettling that an inferior markup structure is prevailing in the face of an absolutely correct way of doing things.
After having this revelation, I thought I’d champion the cause and start changing sites one by one, all the while evangelizing the benefits of perfect markup. Then I realized that there are only 24 hours in the day, and I wanted at least three of those to go towards playing Guitar Hero…
So to compromise, I decided to publish the essential guide to semantic Web markup for blogs. Learn it, live it, and benefit from it—it can mean the difference between a good site and one that will blow you away. [click to continue…]
If you’re serious about improving your SEO, then you’ve probably already taken the time to generate a sitemap and construct dynamic, descriptive <title> tags.
Although I guarantee that you’ll see high-impact, positive effects from those changes, I doubt very seriously that either of them will flat out blow you away.
Today, however, I’m going to share a tip with you that, once implemented, will knock your socks off. It’s like the California Gold Rush, and you, my friend, are a savvy prospector. So saddle up, and let’s go panning for search engine gold! [click to continue…]
