Great info, Kevin.  I appreciate the quick feedback.

Eric

Thank you!

Great info.  I will look into these more deeply.  Thank you!

Hi Adam,

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "modifying your theme to display your category description as visible text on the page"?  I don't understand what this means.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the Title Tag Plug In

Eric

Hi Dunamis,

Does the plug in allow you to make the Title Tag different than the category name?

Eric

I’m helping a client optimize a word press blog, and I’m not that familiar with Wordpress.  The site is www.athleticfoodie.com.

At first I was treating it like a normal website, where the categories would be optimized like pages on a website.  However, I now realize that categories don’t have any content on them, so I can’t really optimize anything other than the names.

Are the following things the best way to handle on-page optimization for a blog?

• Optimizing the homepage & domain: Find ways to incorporate the most important keywords into the elements on the main frame of the site: Navigation menu, Widgets, Category names, Alt Images.
• Optimizing the categories: For the posts within the categories (i.e., photos), work to make sure the category keywords are worked into the post titles (but not too much to seem spammy)
• Optimizing specific posts. Work keywords into the text and images.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Great info!  Thanks.

I'm working with a client who has a website, but doesn't really have a clearly defined idea of who their key audience is nor do they know what keyword phrases they would like to rank for. I know that I can generate a starting list by reviewing their site, but I want to set some parameters on it so I can provide an accurate estimate.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to do this.

In the case of an e-commerce website, can you optimize multiple pages using the same keyword ‘root’ but including different long-tail variances of that ‘root’?  For example, say I’m optimizing for a site that sells wallpaper. I found search traffic for the keyword “buy wallpaper online,” but no traffic for “Blue Tinted Wallpaper” (or its variants) and no taffic for “Yellow Plaid Wallpaper” (or its variants). Could I effectively optimize both of these pages using the root “Buy wallpaper online”, yet distinguish the pages by using long-tail variants such as “Buy Blue Tinted Wallpaper Online” and “Buy Yellow plaid Wallpaper Online”?   Any examples of this you can point to?