SEO

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 Webmasters 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?

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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.

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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!

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There are tons of bullet point items on the proverbial SEO list, but one item in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of its overall effectiveness.

This key SEO component is so powerful because it serves both search engines and people. Oftentimes, we become so involved in site building details that we lose sight of the ultimate truth here—search engines, without people, are basically useless.

So, how can you give the search engines killer juice and provide something captivating for the end user at the same time?

By constructing dynamic, descriptive <title> tags for each page of your site.

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As a Webmaster, one of the things you always need to be aware of is how well your the pages of your site are interlinked. This is a crucial factor in overall search engine performance, and simply assuming that your architecture is robust enough to handle this definitely not the route you want to take.

Over time, you will likely accumulate tons of pages, and as this happens, the odds of certain pages getting buried to the point of becoming nearly inaccessible tend to go up.

To combat this, you can generate an XHTML sitemap that contains links to every page of your site.

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So you’re not sure if your site is really getting indexed like it ought to. You’ve got a couple of options here. You can:

1. Hope for the best
2. Do something about it!

Experience has taught me that relying on hope to generate results is about as effective as trying to get in shape without lifting a finger.

And since we don’t have a magic pill here, I think it’s best that we try something we know will help our site get indexed by our friends at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search.

Today, you’re going to strike up an ongoing conversation with the search engines by adding an XML sitemap to your soon-to-be-awesome Web site.

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Ever since I launched the new design here at Pearsonified, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about the little Web site tweaks that can make all the difference in things like:

• Search engine rankings
• Traffic
• Reader participation (comments, sweeeet), and
• RSS subscriber numbers

One thing that these little tweaks have in common is that they tend to be extremely easy to implement, especially if you already have a bit of experience under your belt. Another, more unfortunate thing that they have in common is the fact that they are not as widely known or practiced as they ought to be!

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