Archives

I thought I'd throw some homework out to you fellow bloggers.

Optimize Your Title Tags:

Your title should include the title of the page and the title of the site seperated by a | (bar), - (dash), or · (dot). Why are only those three recommended? Because of what they sound like when read aloud.

Benefits:Google & Yahoo weigh title tags very heavily. Why waste this potential juice that could help you get better search rankings and more traffic? They will also be more informative when bookmarking and to people using screenreaders.

Bust Out The Oldies (But Goodies)

List some of your best entries on your archives page, on the very top. Pick your favorite entries, most popular entries or a combination. Stick to 10 or less gems.

Benefits: This can highlight your classics in addition to serving as a catch up to newer readers, because odds are they aren't going to sift through 2 or 3 years of old entries.

Highlight Author Comments

For MovableType install the Compare plugin. (For Wordpress see this solution) Then in your archive template paste the following where you want the author modifier to appear. Be sure to change pass@word.com to something secret. That will be your password so people can't pretend to be you.

<MTIfEqual a="[MTCommentEmail]" b="pass@word.com">
       <br /><em>The Author</em>
</MTIfEqual>

Then whenever you leave a comment just type your password into the email field and it's all set!

Benefits: For commenters they can scan and see replies to their comments easier. Provides a bit of security for people pretending they are you as well.

Thanks to Roger Johansson's Document titles, Jakob Nielsen's Weblog Usability, Dave Shea's comment on simplebits.com