Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [205]
Archive: Calendar
By default, blogging software also classifies the posts made on the site with a date stamp. When a month passes, all the posts published that month are then grouped into another category, month and year. For blogs that have been around for many years, this creates a very imposing list (see Figure 17-6). Although this may seem like a helpful default, it rarely is.
Figure 17-6: Archive listing by date
The trouble with this kind of archive is that few visitors are searching for content using the date as a reference. Visitors use words and subject matter and, as a result, rely on category navigation and the search box. The archive-by-date function takes up a lot of space and lacks context. Visitors need context, and navigation by topic will always meet their content needs, because topics and categories provide context to the need for information.
My advice is to delete the default archive setting and provide additional navigation by contextual topics (related content, latest posts, and so on) rather than by date. This will also eliminate a lot of content being indexed by the search engines in a completely different context rather than by the content. This navigation scheme allows the content to be indexed by date-based categories rather than by the content-based categories.
A calendar is another function that tends to be a default in most templates. The calendar highlights the dates that a post has been published to the blog. The date is a link to the posts that were made that date. Again, I don’t prefer this method of navigation. In addition, this can also be a reminder of how you forgot to blog last week, and it will remind your readers as well.
Blogroll
The blogroll is a typical feature at many blogs, and it can be a valuable place to be, especially on high-profile blogs. The blogroll is a “roll call” of recommended blogs from the author of the blog. These typically include friends of the publisher or business or other blogs that they read on a regular basis, as well as some off-topic blogs that provide humor, ideas, or inspiration.
The advantage of the blogroll is that it is a direct link from one blog to another in a very prominent place on the page. In many blogs, the blogroll is on every page, making it another sort of navigation tool but linking to other blogs of note.
This is not a must-have feature of a blog, but it is one that is used to build networks of blogs in different markets, political groups, advertisers, or other associations. This is a default feature in many blog software applications, but it can also be easily removed from the structure.
Tags
Tags are another method of classifying content. When getting ready to publish a post, there is a field on the page that asks the writer to add keywords based on the content of the article (see Figure 17-7).
Figure 17-7: Tags are associated keywords used for additional classification and navigation on the blog.
As you can see, the tags used in this article are a way of highlighting certain concepts and keywords that are an enhancement to the navigation. If the visitor would like to see more content about sustainable coffee farms, then all they have to do is click the tag to see all the posts that have that tag associated with the article. As the author of the content, you can assign as many tags to a post as you think are relevant. Typically, if the article makes mention of a word or topic, you add a tag. As you add more content, you can select from previously created tags or add new ones.
However, the tagging can go a bit too far, because some sites create what is called a tag cloud and provide all the tags in one group for visitors to navigate through the keyword tags rather than as a contextual navigation. The only context provided in