Category Cleanup - SEO Audit Every Post


I've been pretty good about giving my entries good titles and using sub headings within my entries and tagging each entry. Categories are applied to each entry leaving no-one un-categorized. Though I have neglected to add summaries or excepts for my entries which would really help for keyword density and clean displaying on sidebar "featured story" blocks as well as archive and search pages.

In 56 posts I've developed 27 categories and 245 tags.
Calculate that out to be...

  • 4 unique tags per post
  • 2 posts per category

Time to get to cleaning!

Best Category Practices for Posts

Before I can begin the tagging clean up I need to clean up my categories.

Right now I've got the following categories:
Adventure, Chumby, Design, Development, JavaScript, PHP, Plugin, DIY, Feature, Food, Get Creative, Leetes Island, Lightroom, Links, Personal, Photography, Flickr Inspiration, Project, Ramblings, Recipe, Shenanigans, Site Updates, Slideshow, Uncategorized, Vacation, Wordpress and Work

I've bolded the categories my templates use in building sections of the site, so these are required or involve more than just an update and re-direct.
I've also italicized the one required one: Uncategorized because that's what an entry is labeled if I forget to add categories. Though I think since I have no entries marked Uncategorized I'm going to make Personal my new default and redirect (see below).
(Category count: 26)

Some of my categories, especially the ones with only one or two posts might be best served as tags, possibly existing tags that are probably already on my over-tagged posts. Here's a few I found:

  • Flickr Inspiration (redirect to tag Flickr)
  • Leetes Island (redirect to tag Leetes Island)
  • Lightroom (redirect to tag Lightroom)
  • DIY (redirect to tag DIY)
  • Links (redirect to tag Links)
  • Recipe (redirect to tag Recipe)
  • Food (redirect to tag Food)
  • Chumby (redirect to tag Chumby)

(Category count: 18)

Some of my categories can be redirected to each-other and made more succinct than they currently are.

  • Uncategorized (redirect to category Personal) as discussed above
  • Plugin (redirect to category Wordpress)
  • Vacation (redirect to category Adventure)
  • Ramblings (redirect to category Personal)
  • Shenanigans (redirect to category Personal)

(Category count: 14)

Then some of the names need to be adjusted so that they are more descriptive and consistent and so I can update categorization and tagging for some of the other categories.

  • Site Updates (rename to Site Update)
  • Development (rename to Code)
  • JavaScript (redirect to category Code & tag JavaScript and JS)
  • PHP (redirect to category Code & tag PHP)

(Category count: 12)

I'm happy now. 12 succinct categories, all singular and filled with amazing content. I'll implement these changes and then the tags better watch out, they're next.

Code for Redirecting

Check out my post on 301 Redirects from Your Wordpress 404 Error Page as to how I redirected the necessary paths to their new homes!

Final Update Worksheet

If you're interested here's the changes I've implemented. It might be helpful to someone, if not myself in 3 months when I need to do this again.

New Category Structure

  • Adventure
  • Design
  • Code
  • Feature
  • Get Creative
  • Personal
  • Photography
  • Project
  • Site Update
  • Slideshow
  • Wordpress
  • Work

Old Category Structure

  • Adventure
  • Chumby (redirect to tag Chumby)
  • Design
  • Development (rename to Code)
    • JavaScript (redirect to category Code & tag JavaScript and JS)
    • PHP (redirect to category Code & tag PHP)
    • Plugin (redirect to category Wordpress)
  • DIY (redirect to tag DIY)
  • Feature
  • Food (redirect to tag Food)
  • Get Creative
  • Leetes Island (redirect to tag Leetes Island)
  • Lightroom (redirect to tag Lightroom)
  • Links (redirect to tag Links)
  • Personal
  • Photography
    • Flickr Inspiration (redirect to tag Flickr)
  • Project
  • Ramblings (redirect to category Personal)
  • Recipe (redirect to tag Recipe)
  • Shenanigans (redirect to category Personal)
  • Site Updates (rename to Site Update)
  • Slideshow
  • Uncategorized (redirect to category Personal)
  • Vacation (redirect to category Adventure)
  • Wordpress
  • Work

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1 year ago
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