I've been working from sun up to sun down on my blog e course, which I'm hoping will be available soon! There's so much to cover and I don't want to leave anything out so it's taking much longer than I expected.
In my writing, research and brain storming sessions, I did find one big mistake that a lot of bloggers make (myself included when I was a newbie) that I wanted to share with you guys.
Misuse of Blog Post Labels
I wish I would have known when I started that those labels are not helping my blog to appear in search engines. I used every label I could think of! If I write an outfit post, it doesn't help me in the least to label it "1940s, 1940s hat, navy skirt, polka dot skirt, 1940s jewelry, jewelry, hat, 40s, 40s fashion, 1940s shoes, peep toe shoes, coral shoes, pin up shoes"
More important than search engine optimization, a ton of labels irritates readers because it makes it impossible to find what you're looking for. If a reader just wants to see all of my outfits, they won't be able to find them in the sea of "pin up shoes" and "1940s hats" so I label outfits with "outfits"
Did you know that every label that you use gets a unique url? So if you only have 3 posts on the topic of 1940s hats, Google will register that your site doesn't have much information on the subject and you will rank lower in search engines.
I try to limit my categories to no more than 25 or 30 at the most. Of course as your blog grows with new weekly features, you may want to add a new category every once in a while and that's fine, as long as you have more than a few posts tied to that label. It's a good idea to go through old posts and delete unneeded tags to improve blog navigation for readers .
Learn everything I know about blogging and DIY blog design with my ecourse Bloggerific: A Guide to a Beautiful, Successful Blog
Uhhh haaa well that makes a lot more sense now someone has explained it that way. Thank you. Time to make some changes.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I have just started out on my blogging journey and this is great to know!!
ReplyDeleteEmily x
Neat tip!! Duly noted!
ReplyDeleteCrumbs, thanks for pointing that out. Off to my blog to make some ch-ch-ch-changes :)
ReplyDeletehaha! You're so cute! :P
DeleteLOL! Did that too when I was getting started. And until I read this, I didn't know that the labels were part of search optimization, or any of that; I thought it was just categorization. Is there any way to go back and get rid of the bad labels?
ReplyDeleteso far, the only way I've found is to go through old posts and delete those labels until you dont have any posts with those labels anymore. I've been slowly going through to delete some of my labels because I labeled the hell out of things when I first started too! :P
DeleteExcellent tip, dear gal! I am so, so excited about your ebook. Every piece of wisdom and advice (blogging, vintage or otherwise related) that you've shared with us over the years has been stellar (and very useful!), and I just know that your ebook is going to be bursting at the seams with lots more of the same awesome insight.
ReplyDelete♥ Jessica
Thank you for another great tip!!
ReplyDelete~xoxo, CoriLynn
Interesting post and handy advice - it's probably just that I'm a bit slow on tech things in general, but it's not clear to me after reading this what would be a good way to label for the best optimisation. Would you be able to provide some examples of good labelling?
ReplyDeletelabels are a strange thing when it comes to SEO. If you use keywords for labels, it could help but other than that, they don't really help SEO at all. If you have too many labels with only one or two posts tied to each, it can hurt SEO. The main thing to do is to use fewer labels to categorize posts to make your blog easier to navigate. For example, If I have a hair tutorial, I might label it "tutorials" and "beauty" and that's it. It's more to help your readers than it is to boost SEO. If I have a ton of posts about pin curls, I could have a whole pin curl category and that might help to boost my SEO as an authority on pin curls because "pin curl" is a keyword for my niche. I wouldn't label it "pin curl, tutorials, beauty, hair, 1950s hair, 1940s hair, pin up hair" because that's annoying and if I have too few posts on all of those categories, Google will see that as not being an authority on my subjects. I hope that makes sense! :)
DeleteI just found this out this summer and streamlined my labels down to 10 (I think...). I think it has helped quite a bit!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing - and making my day! :) Because I've always kept my tags as few as possible, because I thought it was annoying that some blogs had a million different tags. I have added a search feature, so my readers can use this if they need something really specific. And I sometimes go through my tags and remove some or merge some. I have a "Various" tag, that those things I only write about once or twice go into. I cannot wait for your course. I do so wish I had more readers, but I suspect it's because I'm not that active on the internet. But perhaps some of your tricks might help.
ReplyDelete