jon
CibbuanoUsing Blog Categories to attract Search Engine Traffic
October 2nd 2007 11:49
Categories are essential for organising all your posts to make it easier for you readers to find what they are looking for, however they can also be a very useful tool for attracting search engine traffic.
Because each category page has a lot of content -- a list of post summaries -- with great keywords and text they are very good at attracting search engine traffic with high volume keywords if named properly. In fact they are much more effective than a single post targeted at the same keywords would be.
On top of that categories take practically no time to set up so there is no reason not to do so.
When deciding what to call a category consider which keywords people are most likely to use to find the content within that category. Use these keywords to name the category and try not to use any unnecessary extras.
For instance, if you had a blog called Pet Advice you would probably have a category for cats (among others like dogs and birds). You should call the cat category simply "cats" rather than "good cat advice" or "cat tips" or even "cat advice".
An example of a blog which uses categories very well is jokes.org.au. Each kind of joke has a different category and you can bet that there will be lots of people searching for "blond jokes" and "redneck" jokes.
A blog which has well organised and named categories will attract much more than 50% of it's search engine traffic to it's category pages.
One very important caveat: Don't add a large number of categories to your blog and then modify all your posts to place them in these new categories. If you do this the search engines will view this as a very large change to your site and penalise you severely. You need to make each change gradually. I would suggest creating all your new categories and then just add your news posts to them if appropriate, and change perhaps one or two old posts per week. Also try not to include a post in more than 2 or at most 3 categories as doing so generates a large number of pages under the Orble system which can again upset the search engines.
Ideally you should create most of your categories when you set up your blog and only very occassionaly add a new one.
You can manage the categories for your Orble blog by clicking on the "modify" link for your blog and then scroll down to the categories section.
Because each category page has a lot of content -- a list of post summaries -- with great keywords and text they are very good at attracting search engine traffic with high volume keywords if named properly. In fact they are much more effective than a single post targeted at the same keywords would be.
On top of that categories take practically no time to set up so there is no reason not to do so.
When deciding what to call a category consider which keywords people are most likely to use to find the content within that category. Use these keywords to name the category and try not to use any unnecessary extras.
For instance, if you had a blog called Pet Advice you would probably have a category for cats (among others like dogs and birds). You should call the cat category simply "cats" rather than "good cat advice" or "cat tips" or even "cat advice".
An example of a blog which uses categories very well is jokes.org.au. Each kind of joke has a different category and you can bet that there will be lots of people searching for "blond jokes" and "redneck" jokes.
A blog which has well organised and named categories will attract much more than 50% of it's search engine traffic to it's category pages.
One very important caveat: Don't add a large number of categories to your blog and then modify all your posts to place them in these new categories. If you do this the search engines will view this as a very large change to your site and penalise you severely. You need to make each change gradually. I would suggest creating all your new categories and then just add your news posts to them if appropriate, and change perhaps one or two old posts per week. Also try not to include a post in more than 2 or at most 3 categories as doing so generates a large number of pages under the Orble system which can again upset the search engines.
Ideally you should create most of your categories when you set up your blog and only very occassionaly add a new one.
You can manage the categories for your Orble blog by clicking on the "modify" link for your blog and then scroll down to the categories section.
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Comment by Techno
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Comment by Jeanne Dininni
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I'm wondering why, when we choose to use the drop-down category menu, the regular category menu also remains in our sidebar. I'd like to save space in my sidebar by using the drop-down menu in place of the regular one; but, instead, the software ends up using even more space by displaying both category menus. At least, that's what happened the last time I tried to use it.
Thanks!
Jeanne
Comment by jon
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We leave both forms of category links there because the search engines need the links (rather than the drop down).
Jon.
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Oh, I see. I'm wondering, though, exactly what the purpose of the drop-down menu is, then. It seems just as quick and easy to use the regular menu as the drop-down menu.
Thanks!
Jeanne
Comment by Nathan 1
Film Banana
When adding a post to a category how can you do it so that you don't have to create a sub-category. For example, I have made a post about the show Buffy but instead of being able to just add it under the category Television, I have had to create a subcategory for Buffy to add it to, as I can't see a way to add it directly under Television. This means I will have to create a sub category for each show which will separate them all and leave me with to many pages. In short, how can I add a post directly under the root category?
Cheers