Common Mistakes Uncategorized
July 29, 2008 by Blogboy
One of the most common blogging mistakes that almost all noobs and many more experienced bloggers make is us using the “Uncategorized” category. This category, while a useful catch all, shouldn’t be left as it is. Having any post in the category signals to Google that not even you can categorize your own thoughts and it puts less weight on posts in that category. To optimize your SEO opportunities you should do one of two things, either not use the category or change the name to something beneficial.
Not using the category is what I did for a long time in all my blogs. Then I got to a point where I just had too many categories with too few posts in them, which is also counter productive to SEO. When reading Courtney Tuttle’s fine and famous article on Keyword Sniping, I deciding I could once again make use of the dreaded uncategorized category. Once I found my niche keyword or in many cases search phrase, I simply changed the name of the uncategorized category. This leaves me with a nice catch all that actually benefits from having lots of posts in it. I am still not up to lots of posts in some of the blogs, but that doesn’t matter either, I will get there.
In true keyword sniping fashion, you can see where I have made good use of this on any of the following blogs:Entrecard Contest Directory, Free WordPress Themes, and The Other Blog by Pop Tart. The first use only their keywords as a category. The Other Blog uses it solely as a catch all.
Not that this has anything to do with anything, but…I love that picture!
Ryan Nicholes last blog post..Forerunners, Chapter Ten
There’s just about nothing I hate worse than hitting the Publish button for a post and realizing I have left it uncategorized. No real biggie if I catch it quick, but I have to do redirects if I catch it after it has been indexed.
Louises last blog post..Baked Chicken Recipe With Lemon and Garlic
I hear you man, i always make that mistake myself and then usually realise a day later… Total noobs mistake but we’re human right :lol: lmao.
Mr Articles last blog post..What do snails eat?
I just noticed the keywordluv plugin and had to try it! OMG it’s so cool, i’m amazed haha!
Gs last blog post..What do snails eat?
Hmm, I realized I’ve been making that mistake on blogs for a long time now. I will have to spend quite a bit of time going back and adjusting the category name. thanks for the heads up.
Steven
funny picture :) , where did you find it?
virtual milleniums last blog post..Mountains Wallpapers
@Steven D - The easiest think to do is simply change the uncategorized category name. There is another plugin that will keep you from posting if you didn’t choose a category name. I will post on it some time in the near future.
@virtual millenium@funny.wallpapers -
There is a wonderful plugin for wordpress called Tagaroo. It will not only help you pick semantic keywords/tags, but it will find publicly shared flickr photos you can add to your blog. It is fantastic. Expect a post on it in the near future.
You Adbrite plugin does not appear to be working properly _or_ they’ve run out of ads for certain words. The ads are blank.
Yeah, i constantly forget to add categories to new posts. I usually catch it right away though and go back and fix it quickly.