ContentRobot Posts
SEOing Your Blog with Tags
Blogs are great in attracting search engine indexing because they, by their very nature, are updated often with fresh, relevant content. Beyond implementing the excellent All in One SEO plugin, what else can you do to optimize your blog? Tag your posts.
What is a Tag?Tagging allows you to add keywords to your posts. They can assist your readers to understand what the post is all about in a fine, diced up way. It also allows you to link your post to to other tag-driven sites, such as Delicious, Technorati, and Flickr.
As you can see, tags on your site can have two functions:
- Tags can link to external sites (like Technorati) to display a collection of posts from around the web, all related to the tag. It’s similar to a “Yellow Pages” of information.
- Tags can link to an internal page that lists all of the posts on your site related to that specific tag.
Tags can be linked in a bunch of places, such as:
- Within your text
- Within a list at the bottom of your post
- In your sidebar (in a Tag Cloud)
- On its own page
Categories, which are often located in blog sidebars, are used illustrate topics. They should be used primarily for navigation and as a way to group content on your blog.
Tags vs Categories- Categories can have long wordy names, but tags should be short (one, two, or at the most, three words).
- Categories generate a page of posts on your site, tags can generate a page of off-site posts on an off-site website.
- Categories don’t help search engines find information, but tags help search engines and tag directories catalog your site.
- Posts are usually in found in one to four categories, but a single post can list as many tags as you want.
- Categories help visitors find related information on your site, but tags help visitors find related information on your site (and on other sites).
- Categories provide broad grouping of posts describing your blog’s focus, but tags allow micro-grouping of posts, which helps to narrow down the reader’s interest.
- Finally, an analogy might help. If you have a blog that discusses tools, you might create categories such as “bolts,” “nails,” and “screws.” And when you are writing about screws, you might tag the post with as “flathead,” “Philips,” “galvanized,” “half-inch,” etc. to describe features.
Since WordPress 2.5.1, bloggers have had the ability to tag posts (and display them, too). We recommend that you don’t throw one technique for another, yet use tags and categories in conjunction with each other. Simply, use categories to help with your blog’s structure and use tags to provide meta-data for your content.
Thanks, Lorelle, for some great background information for this post.
ContentRobot is Blue
No, we’re not depressed - ContentRobot took the next leap in our redesign!
What’s new?- More Streamlined Copy - We could pare down our copy to focus more on how we can help and less about what blogging is (since lots more people are aware of it).
- Updated Navigation - We simplified the nav to reflect our main offerings: blogs and blog-powered websites, WordPress expertise) along with links to our portfolio and a “hire us” form.
- Home Page Features - Click on any button in the nav to reveal a succinct overview displaying what we are all about and a featured project. Also, explore our themes & plugins, our new WeFixWP service, and (of course) our blog.
- Interior Pages - Within any feature, click on any link or project to see how we’ve designed our (converted) pages in blue.
- Review Every Page - Ensure that all copy has been reviewed and all pages converted to the “new blue.” Yes, that contact form is ugly still!
- The Blog - The poor blog needs to be integrated into our new look. But we are getting there!
We are excited with our new branding. Hope you like it, too!
Social Media and Obama
Whoever you voted for on Tuesday, it was interesting to note how technology, and specifically, social media helped to send Barack Obama to the White House. The Obama team not only was committed to its 50 state strategy, but they really wanted to connect to individuals throughout the country.
The Website
With a well-designed website, they were able to successfully attract donors ready to give to the cause. You didn’t have deep pockets? They didn’t mind, five dollars was OK with them, making the era of the big donor irrelevent. And guess, what, they even have a surplus of funds to help with the next election - that’s astounding.
Other website observations:
- While you have to register for an account to make a comment, the blog actually allowed two-way communication.
- Tools for local organization were deep and wide, making grassroots gathering possible.
- An online store made it easy to purchase schwag and show your support on your back, your car, or anywhere you wanted.
Social Media
Where else could you find Obama online? Anywhere you might already be hanging out. He has a visible presence in these places: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, Eventful, LinkedIn, and more. His campaign showed an obvious mastery of spreading the word via audio, video, and tweeting, phone text messages, and email. We especially liked the iPhone app!
In the end, Barack Obama made it possible to get involved in the process. The younger generation, who cut their teeth on tech, responded to his message and they came out in droves to vote for him. To be fair to print media, newspapers flew off the shelf the day after his victory.
It will be interesting to see what our first tweeting President will do with the new media during his term. Blog.on, Obama!
New Site Launches and Relaunches for October 2008
It’s been a long time since ContentRobot tooted our own horn, but we wanted to share with everyone what we’ve been busy working on lately.
Bite of the Best added a new feature - Bite of the Rest - that will allow them to showcase products that they haven’t necessarily reviewed but want to highlight. Readers can share what they think of these particular food items and ask questions directly to sponsors. With the addition of a whole lot more content, the theme was reformatted to display more item via excerpts throughout the site. BOTB was also treated to an upgrade (a leap from 2.2.1 to the new 2.6.3) and a bunch of newer plugins, such as Viper Video QuickTags and All in One SEO.
The GrokDotCom site features an entirely new design that is now more closely aligned with their FutureNow site. The blog now highlights their offerings better in the right sidebar and displays more content. The blog was upgraded from 2.5.1 to 2.6.3 (and they are happy to use the newer native Media Manager for writing posts). Their daily, weekly, and monthly newsletters also were re-skinned with the new “look.”
ContentRobot launched a blog for this performance marketing solutions provider. While it sports a simple look (that is similar to the corporate site), the blog provides a way to connect with the LinkShare team. They are using it conjunction with Twitter and other social marketing tools, so we expect the blog to grow quickly and be a great help to their readers seeking information and assistance.
On the other side of the house, the WeFixWP team has been busy assisting these great clients:
- eMinutes and metrosnapshot each received Blog Audits that outlined specific action items for improving their blogs
- Advancing Women (and related sites) was migrated from a poor performing host to Media Temple
- Executive to Entrepreneur (e2e) Coaching was migrated from WordPress.com to being self-hosted at Media Temple
- Give Me My Remote was upgraded their WordPress version from 2.2.1 to 2.6.3 and got a bunch of newer plugins
