Optimizing A Movabletype Blog For Google

[kaseytraeger]

Hi everybody!

 

I've been doing a little bit of reading on how to make your Movable Type blog optimized for search engines like Google. A couple of things I've read are confusing to me, so I'm hoping someone here can clarify them for me.

 

My first question comes from an article posted by Nicholas Carvan (htt*://www.nicholascarvan.com/blog/optimizing_your_movabletype_blog_for_google.html)

He makes a comment that you should make the title of your blog entry a hyperlink to the individual entry. He even gives a piece of code you can use to make this happen.

><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">
<h2 class="title"><$MTEntryTitle$></h2></a>

My question is ... where do I put this piece of code? When I enter a new post for my blog, there are input boxes on the MT interface where you enter (1) the post's title, (2) the post's primary category, (3) the post's entry body and (4) extended entry text. Do I enter the code in the box that is for the entry's title? Or do I put it somewhere else, like in the template body for my main index page?

 

Question #2: Mr. Carvan says that by default, the title of an individual blog entry in MT is the name of the blog followed by the name of the entry (e.g. Pudgy Puppy: How to Tie Your Shoes). He suggests getting rid of the blog name from the title. How would I do this?

 

My next two questions are from an article by Anders Jacobsen (htt*://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/archives/2002/08/06/my_movable_type_installation.html).

 

Question #3: Jacobsen suggest that you create an archiving strategy that stores each individual post in a folder nested as such ... /2004/05/04/filename.htm. To accomplish this, he offers that you should set your individual entry archives as

><$MTArchiveDate format="%y/%m/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>.htm

Again, as with my first question ... where do I put this piece of code?

 

Question #4: Jacobsen says to set up your category archive to

>categories/<$MTArchiveCategory dirify="1"$>/index.htm

Once again, where do I put this code?

 

Thanks all! Hope you're having an enjoyable evening

[LisaJill]

Woo kasey. If you're optimizing before going live, can I give you other suggestions? =)

 

First one, download MTDirifyPlus extract it and ftp the .pl file into your cgi-bin/mt/plugins folder - you may need to create the plugins folder, I don't think that we did.

 

This will come into play later. =)

 

Question 1) the title of the post should be the link - this should be changed in your Main Index template, and in any archive templates (category or date) that you're using. You can leave individual alone for this. You're looking for something after the first < MTEntries > (no spaces) container, it should look like < MTEntryTitle >, so modify that line. You can then remove the permalink a href's from around the date, a bit further down in the same sections in each template.

 

2)You need to locate the title attribute in the head section of your individual archive template, and change get rid of the tag for MTBlogTitle and just leave MTEntryTitle. Those names may not be exact; I know from talking that you have some idea about this so I think those instructions will be enough for you. Let me know if not.

 

3) He's right about having file names as permalinks, however they should have dashes, NOT underscores, as google treats underscores as alloneword. This is where the plugin above comes into play.

 

Go into weblog config, archiving preferences. In the individual template file name, place this code (similar to his but modfied to make dashes using the plugin)

 

><$MTArchiveDate format="%y/%m/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirifyplus="sld"$>.php

 

4) Category names are fine that way, as well, although I would suggest dirify plus again in case your categories have spaces, ala:

 

>categories/<$MTArchiveCategory dirifyplus="sld"$>/index.php

 

Now, I want to note a few things. One, I modified it to output PHP pages rather than HTML. I believe when I took you through the install we decided to output your pages as php? That's really better for the longterm, you'll find a lot of added flexiblity.

 

If you don't want to use php you can change the.php to .html. Or if you want to use PHP and we did NOT go through this, keep it as I made the code and also go to weblog config -> preferences and find "output file extension" and change it to php. Then in templates make index and archive output filename end in .php instead of .html. I *think* we did that anyway.

 

Ok, I hope that I clarified everything for you. I'm on Yahoo if ya need me!

Edited May 5, 2004 by TCH-Lisa

[kaseytraeger]

Once again, Lisa to the rescue! Thanks for such a speedy response. Wow

 

I appreciate all the advice and expertise you've got on the subject, so you can give me all the suggestions you want! (that's a hint!)

 

Anyway, I've got some things to do this evening, so I can't play around with it anymore this evening. I'll try implementing your suggestions tomorrow. If I have any questions, I'll either PM you, or if it's after work and I'm home, I'll send you an IM on Yahoo.

 

Thanks again, Lisa. I'll be talkin' with ya soon!

[LisaJill]

My pleasure!