013 – The SEO Influence of WordPress Custom Post Types, Categories, and Taxonomies

00:00.60
peteeveritt
Hello and welcome to this episode of the wp seo show I am your co-host pete and I’m joined by my brother from another mother. Mr. Jeffrey patch all the way from California how you doing.

00:11.53
Jeff
Who is quickly silencing his phone because he did not do that before and and you know nobody ever bugs me until I’m doing something like that’s recording or whatever. So you know as like it’ll just go nonstop. Actually we already had our kind of team meeting today and my. Phone and my watch was going off nonstop like you were talking and I’m going okay pay attention pay attention to be. Don’t get sidetracked by bowach I know it’s nothing important but blah. But oh my goodness I was getting everywhere I was going everywhere today try and to block all notifications. So there’s silence nobody can bug me now I’m good. How are you? ah.

00:45.98
peteeveritt
Ah, you see this I’m I’m good I’m good, but this is where this is where custom um, do not disturb profiles come in on on my iphone. So I I actually get like I get.

00:59.16
peteeveritt
Ah, shout it up from the house because I have like somebody’s what’sapp me for something and they haven’t seen me I’m like yeah but it’s it’s like my calendar says that I’ve got a meeting now and maybe I do maybe I don’t or maybe maybe you know the the thing was scheduled for an hour but only lasted 20 minutes but yeah I still don’t get anything until after the until after the the calendar notifications done. So. Yeah, I’m kind of the other way. Um, when there’s something in the diary I get nothing absolutely nothing.

01:23.14
Jeff
Ah, ah, ah, the digital age is is on top of all the stuff I am there’s so much of it that as soon as you get 1 thing set up another app is coming in there. So I don’t know one of these days I’ll get to the bottom of it all get it all handled. You know we’ll see we’ll get there.

01:38.77
peteeveritt
Well so we you know while we were having our chat earlier. We were just talking about how actually we seem to be both getting quite busy on the run up to Christmas and.

01:48.15
Jeff
Yeah.

01:51.40
peteeveritt
You know some people often say they’re quieted down at this time of year. But that’s that doesn’t seem to be our experience at the minute which is awkward.

01:57.62
Jeff
No, and it’s never it’s actually never been my experience the busiest time of the year has always been the end of the year for some reason. Um and I don’t I honestly I really don’t understand it because that doesn’t seem industry wide but that just seems what happens to me every. On one hand I would expect say January or February to pick up and and I think they do because you know everyone’s new. Year’s best solution is either go to the gym or start a new business in this in this day and age so you know I mean if you’re not if you’re not renting a gym I would recommend you get ready to build people websites for the new businesses.

02:31.48
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely Maybe that’s ah maybe that’s not kind of like a solid business plan. Um, but no, probably not I wouldn’t go trying to find light vc investment on on a plan like that if I’m being honest, but ah.

02:36.29
Jeff
No, probably not probably not. No, no, no, no, no.

02:46.43
peteeveritt
Yeah, know we we have a we have a similar kind of thing we we generally find that um like may June July are our quietest months of the year and then in the uk at least anyway anyway, by the time you get to the end of August schools are going back people start thinking about Christmas they pick up the business again wanting to finish the eartrong and then that.

02:51.77
Jeff
He.

03:04.29
peteeveritt
Tips over into January where people are wanting to start the year strong and then they get to April and they kind of hit their stride and we we get a bit quieter for a few months. So um, yeah, it’s it’s it’s always always a fun time of year that kind of sprint between kind of Mid -october and christmas.

03:19.12
Jeff
Yeah, well, 1 nice thing I see happening a lot of lot of times at the end of the year with ah some customers bigger customers usually is they’ve got budget to spend and that may I mean that may or may not be projects but some of them and and I mean I’m not saying go approach all your clients try to talk them into this or anything.

03:29.77
peteeveritt
Um.

03:37.10
Jeff
But you know if you feel that they might be a good fit. Ask them hey if you’ve got some budget you left over. Do you want to pay your invoice for the year ahead of time some people like to do that at the end of the year um because it’ll save them in taxes and you know it’s a.

03:45.60
peteeveritt
Sure yeah.

03:50.85
Jeff
I mean I guess it could hurt you in taxes but it could be a nice end to your boost to your cash flow too.

03:53.59
peteeveritt
It. It’s definitely worth something that’s worth having in mind at this time of year. Even if it’s to say in in my agency we we do allow clients to buy blocks of hours from time to time. So if.

04:05.74
Jeff
E.

04:08.50
peteeveritt
And do have unused but budget then maybe they could buy a couple of blocks of hours that they have them in advance for next year but also if people are having discussions with you about projects and wanting to ah you know if budget’s becoming an issue you just being proactive and saying well look if if it’s not going to fit into the 2023 budget. What about we get this schedule for 2024. We’ll just take a deposit now so that you know you don’t need to pay for it all and but we can guarantee you x y ed slot come come January and you know some sometimes just having the flexibility like that can be enough to win you a project particularly if it’s becoming between you and somebody that’s a bit more. Um. I was going to say desperate for the cash but maybe I don’t quite um.

04:47.66
Jeff
Ah, ah now yeah I don’t I I don’t think that’s the best by describe it. But yeah I mean some everybody has their own pricing structure and you know some people’s change every time depending on how much they need and how fast yeah.

04:55.28
peteeveritt
Well so to get on today’s topic we are kind of with this is going to be 1 of those overlap episodes you know, sometimes we’re going to have some episodes that are very much wordpress focused other times we’re going to have episodes that are very much fseo focused and sometimes we’re going to have episodes where they literally collide together and that’s kind of where we are today because we’re going to be exploring all about post types, categories and taxonomies and how you can use those for to to help you with Seo. So we’re going to. Drip it right down to begin with and firstly just look at it might sound basic but what is a post type. What is a category and what is a taxonomy.

05:40.38
Jeff
Yeah, and I’m I’m actually looking forward to hearing some more of your we were talking about this earlier some more of your kind of tips and thoughts about this because I’ve always approached this from the agency or the developer stand or side of things never taking Seo into consideration. I mean at least as far as like ah I mean let me rephrase that not not taking seo in consideration but not taking seo services into consideration meaning we weren’t you know being you know we weren’t scoped to do that we. We weren’t agreed to be doing in the seo but I still feel that obviously when you’re building a site. There’s still some minimum kind of like. Seo basics you ah apply and we’ve kind of talked about them. You know setting you know, making sure search engines are blocked and you know the titles are being added in there and when the big ones that I see left open so many times. So so so many times and in fact, on lots of sites that you know we inherit here too. Is just a wide open um indexing of all the categories all the tags or taxonomies and every custom post type that’s on that site and a lot of times. There isn’t a custom post type but there is because of the tools that they’ve used so sometimes you see like you know.

06:50.98
peteeveritt
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

06:56.21
Jeff
Custom layouts or beaver builder things just for an example and um, you know things that are really tools for you to build the site are being shown sometimes a lot of like really silly things that get overlooked and so. Just coming from ah like I said so this again this is not like from the Seo Expertise like trying to perfect the Seo this is just trying to make the site kind of user usable and then but I guess you know what I mean kind of a you know can cro what but what’s the term I’m looking for help help my. My fleeting mind right now. Optimization. Um.

07:30.73
peteeveritt
Um, ah well you yeah know it look so at at their bare minimum post types categories taxonomies. They’re all different ways of categorizing information and.

07:42.76
Jeff
Yeah.

07:47.14
peteeveritt
I mean let’s let’s put this out there right from right from the start you post types are the top level the top level ways of of filing information. You know wordpress typically has 2 big ones which are pages and posts.

08:00.62
Jeff
Who.

08:02.67
peteeveritt
Um, but you’re right loads of the tools use them for for other things but page builders do as you mentioned of course you go stick woocommerce in there and you instantly get 2 or 3 new post types for for products and for orders and and all that kind of stuff you know orders orders is one that people don’t often think of as a post type but actually that’s exactly what woocommerce.

08:12.87
Jeff
Yep, those are all post types.

08:19.70
Jeff
Yeah, obviously it’s not public facing. It doesn’t you know and those are like hardcore blocked from from going out there but there’s a lot of other things that just get put out there publicly.

08:20.91
peteeveritt
Classes The Mars That’s how they’re displayed in the back end. So yeah.

08:30.26
peteeveritt
Oh yeah, well and and you know the mistake we see with that is that people go in and set set their Seo plugin like Yoast or or Seo press or whatever they’re deciding to use. And simply set a blanket rule for all post types and they don’t check the post types that it’s going to apply to and that’s when you start to get the start to get the issues and particularly if you’re configuring the post type. You’ve done like the blanket settings in the in the in the seo plugin. So you know you’ve you’ve set to view all and then you go and add in something like like a beaver builder and hey pressto their templates post typepe is is available to for public view. For example I don’t actually know if that’d work. But I’m just using it as an example. Um, so.

09:14.60
Jeff
It’s good example.

09:15.91
peteeveritt
So yes, so you have post types now there they really are the top of the tree aren’t they. That’s that’s like and and for what we’re about to talk about when we get to the Seo part at no point am I ever going to suggest that you should be creating dozens and dozens and dozens of different post types. But they that that they’re the top of the tree.

09:28.38
Jeff
No, no yeah so and and if the data fits great and so what we like I was saying you know we kind of come at we’ve come in for years from the developer side of things without the seo in mind. But we still want to deliver a product that makes sense that works right? And what we would normally do and let’s just use yoast for an example and and the reason I’m telling you this is because I think that most agencies most people building websites. They may not be doing this and you should it’s it’s so simple so you’ll load up, whatever your Seo plugin of choice you go into the.

09:58.76
peteeveritt
M.

10:05.77
Jeff
The indexing or the site maps. Usually it’s related to that. That’s usually what they’re talking about and your pages. Obviously you’re putting pages on the site those need to be indexed um posts if you have blog posts obviously those need to be indexed but then with posts specifically. And other post types but posts specifically just from the start you have authors you have categories you have tags and depending on how the how big the blog is how many things have been added in there. How old is there could be a lot of categories. There could be there could be none there could be 1 there could be 1 is just called news and there’s 3 blog posts well in that case we would actually take the news category out of the sitemap the blog’s still in there. The articles are still being indexed but the category page that shows those 3 articles that’s not being indexed because.

10:42.26
peteeveritt
Oh.

10:58.65
Jeff
That’s the same as the blog right now there’s only 3 articles if there’s 30 and there’s multiple categories that’s a different story and and the same can go for any type of post type a good post type would be like portfolio pieces or galleries or events.

11:05.34
peteeveritt
Yeah.

11:15.27
Jeff
Those are those are good things that you probably do want to break out of your post and your pages and things and then you get more flexibility of what you’re indexing how much content is in each category, etc, etc.

11:17.88
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah.

11:24.50
peteeveritt
Absolutely and you know to a full clarity If you’re looking at this episode on our website we have podcast episodes lists listed within their own post type in wordpress. That’s exactly that’s exactly where we file them So when we’re going to go and create a new podcast. We don’t go into post. We don’t go into pages we go into podcasts.

11:36.40
Jeff
E.

11:43.20
peteeveritt
And then we create new and I think you I mean you did touch on this although you didn’t I guess use the word capabilities. But when you’re setting up a new post type. You have the option to give it the capabilities of a page sometimes called hierarchical.

11:51.12
Jeff
Right.

11:56.62
peteeveritt
And then you have the or the opportunity to give it and the capabilities of a post which means that it can have taxonomies, tags, etc. All those other things that you that you mentioned.

12:04.25
Jeff
Yeah, and every version in between you can you can There’s dozens of options on how you can describe them. Do they get.

12:11.22
peteeveritt
Aria.

12:13.38
Jeff
Um, are they searchable or do you know? do they have categories I mean yeah, there’s tons of things. Did they get a featured image. So I mean we’re not going to go into all of that. But yeah, they’re very powerful, very flexible.

12:20.92
peteeveritt
And the most important one. What dash icon are you going to use.

12:26.90
Jeff
Yeah, it’s probably the one I spend the most time on whenever I’m setting one up to be honest I I usually just like click one and I’m but Nope I hate that I got to fix that nope.

12:33.18
peteeveritt
So So so. So you’re dead right? They’re they’re the top of the tree they’re like the almost like the content types if you like is is maybe a good way of of looking at post types and you you do want to be slightly sparing with post types themselves. You know they are. As we say they’re they’re the top of the sort of administration tree but they if you have too many of these in wordpress then you will start to make the backend kind of very cluttered and quite unusable that you know you unsure where things are so you need to be clear and concise about the post types that you’re Using. And before we move on what is your preferred method of creating custom post types.

13:19.18
Jeff
Okay, so this might be a hot topic but we actually we just used a cpt ui post plugin. But you just recently let me know that this is included an Acf now and I didn’t even realize that like I don’t.

13:34.78
peteeveritt
Yep.

13:35.52
Jeff
I feel so dumb because I’ve used acf I had a lifetime license for years and years and years acf advanced custom fields which is what usually you pair with your custom post types to put the little you know boxes the custom the custom data that you want in your post types and before Acf didn’t do that so you had to use another plugin. Um, so that’s that’s awesome I mean we’re just obviously or I’m personally not building many sites these days so I haven’t had to do it in a while. But um, I’d much rather keep it in one tool and the reason I say this could be a hot topic is not even about which plugin I use. It’s about using a plugin versus just using a code and putting into your trial theme and.

14:10.78
peteeveritt
Yeah.

14:13.78
Jeff
That is definitely the best practice. But the reason that I don’t gravitate towards that is simply because of the nature of our our our business that we’re working for other agencies that have usually built these sizes in specific manners. So we’re you know we’re usually not kind of rebuilding those you know core infrastructure for them. Um. But it also gives us the flexibility of having somebody go in there and making edits quicker when needed versus having to edit the theme code. You know I mean let’s be honest, if you have to load up a theme file and edit it in. You know, Ftp or something or even in the dashboard. That’s probably more of a development task. It’s probably requiring. You know you’re to run a backup first and it’s a lot more dangerous. You’re having a higher you know level employee doing those type of things usually so if it could be set with a couple clicks. That’s a convenience that I’m happy to take easily.

15:04.18
peteeveritt
I absolutely and you know for transparency. Ah well I’ve I’ve not done a direct comparison between ah, a code ah site running post types through Acf and a site that isn’t and however. The the main thing with the post types is that they get written to the database anyway. So the the actual frontend optimization I don’t think you’re actually really changing the way that that works this is all about how you administer it in the backend really that that’s ah, that’s that’s the key now. Of course if you asked us this.

15:31.35
Jeff
Biow.

15:36.90
peteeveritt
A year or so ago how if you know if you’re a purist and you don’t want to put a plugin in there to do that. Maybe you don’t need Acf. So if you you’re only going to use it for a few post types. Then then what’s the point and then I’d normally say go and look at generate wp they have like ah ah, a function builder in there you can choose your options and this that neither. But now of course we have the joys of chat gp and bard and whatever and you could just go and type a prompt in I’m sure and and get the code ready to copy and paste straight into your functions file. But so yeah.

16:00.99
Jeff
Those generators are great though. The ones on you can just plug into data you know or plug in the the specific fields and it just generates the code for you. Add it to your child theme. You’re set.

16:10.19
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. But you’re right I mean generating the code isn’t the problem. The problem is if you have to go and edit it in the future where you don’t have the Ui on the top if you’re not comfortable with code noticing files and and that kind of thing then yeah you you kind of lined yourself up for a bit of a fail when you when you get to that point.

16:16.13
Jeff
Um, yeah.

16:25.78
Jeff
Yeah, we have we have a lot of old like like 4 or 5 plus year old sites that were all built with custom themes and they you know to maintain them in a great they they run really? well. They’ve been going forever. You know as long as like PP code doesn’t kind of change in the themes they they they go great. But.

16:28.60
peteeveritt
Um.

16:45.68
Jeff
Whenever those clients are very low maintenance sites you know clients. Only update things once or twice a year, but whenever they’re like hey we need to update our hours I mean sometimes we will spend an hour trying to find where that develop you know developer years ago place that code to update the hours and the footer. It’s like why make it so hard I mean it’s It’s good code yet. It’s great.

17:01.91
peteeveritt
Ah.

17:03.50
Jeff
Did a great job but it’s you know to actually update that constantly into future is a whole different story.

17:09.37
peteeveritt
Tell me about it but it it can get so I had to do this today. I had a client a client one of our ah maintenance plan clients emailed me and said um we have a policy that’s a pdf on our on our website and we need it updating. We can’t set it in the backend can you can you do it here’s the Pdf. And we hadn’t built the site and you sure enough right in the bottom of the footer. There’s a link next to the privacy policy which links off to this Pdf. Oh the place that was buried in that they’d used a theme that was like based on twig. Um, and that then had views and then partials and then helpers and then. Yeah, it took his ages to find the damn thing. Oh all just to copy and paste the link in oh the the the slug of a filing. Um, anyway, what when we did find it. We took the ah the opportunity to set an options feel for it. So now they can update it themselves to their hearts content. We we never have to find it ever again.

17:57.80
Jeff
There you get there, you go I I had to kind of like politely correct a client the other day because I was explaining this to them. You know I said hey look you know your your developer used a framework and they built a child name on top of that. And’s and that’s fine. They they didn’t do anything wrong. The problem though is just things have evolved over five or six years and you know they’re like oh that’s a bummer I can’t believe they did such a crappy job I said no they did a fantastic job. They are a better developer than I am I’ll tell you that much right now I could tell you by the code they’ve written. But. They’re not ah, they’re not a better how to use wordpress for clients person than I have or how clients use WordPress. Ah.

18:36.10
peteeveritt
Um, absolutely absolutely So So that’s I think that kind of covers What a post type is um and basically how to how to think about using them. So now we have categories and taxonomies now before anybody says anything categories in wordpress are a taxonomy called Categories categories and taxonomies are the same thing however categories particularly under posts are. Something that the wordpress already has baked into it. It’s a capability of a post type field. Um, how an a taxonomy is the thing that you can set so you can set up your own custom categories but they are essentially the same thing.

19:19.70
Jeff
Um, yeah, yeah, I’m not you know I Only want to elaborate because I’ve I have written some code recently to to deal with these and. Some of WordPress’s code still refers to categories in that sense a lot of times and others refers to Taxonomy so it can get quite confusing I don’t think it needs to be discussed too much on this show. But um, but yeah I think I think if we want to kind of keep it Simple. We can keep referring to categories and blog in the sense of blog posts and and tags because I think that’s still the kind of common way to do it. But but yeah, ultimately in the core when you actually peel back the code. They’re the same thing.

20:03.13
peteeveritt
Yeah, there. So right? Why? Why are we getting into this hot little mess right? So taxonomies or categories give you the ability to group information together in different ways. So. You know we’ve we’ve already mentioned Woocommerce if you’re using an e-commerce store. It is natural that people think about the the categories as part of the navigation. So maybe I when ah I’ve used it on the podcast before I often use the example of shoes when we’re when we’re talking about ecom because it’s just it’s something everybody has to buy.

20:27.56
Jeff
M.

20:40.52
peteeveritt
From time to time you know you you visit the front end of the site. You’ll have some products in there that can go straight to product but then you’ll have a whole menu full of categories. You’ll have men’s you’ll have women’s you’ll have training shoes. You’ll have sports shoes. You’ll have football boots. You’ll have high heeled shoes. You’ll have stilettos you’ll have ah maybe given too much out about my own my own browsing preferences.

20:57.81
Jeff
You guys would you would laugh if you saw Pete’s toiletto collection. It is. It’s phenomenal.

20:59.63
peteeveritt
Ah, but.

21:04.51
peteeveritt
Ah, it’s indescribable is what it is um anyway, ah you said you weren’t going to mention that on the show Anyway, Anyway, the in an ecommerce setting it.

21:15.26
Jeff
Um, sorry.

21:21.91
peteeveritt
It is just natural people think that kind of way and yet when we come out of ecommerce and come into ah some kind of lead generation site or brochure site. Whatever it is for some reason people instantly forget that categories are even a thing now.

21:36.10
Jeff
All logic goes out the window when it’s your own baby. It’s all logic.

21:39.80
peteeveritt
It it does. Yeah absolutely it does whereas. Actually you know if you think of the if you think of the the end post whatever it, whatever that post type is and in this instance of our thing here. It’s a podcast episode if you think of that as a product. Then of course that can then sit within a category and that category can have multiple products that all feed into a similar kind of um, a similar theme similar ultimately into a similar authority group or cluster of content which is where the Seo piece then starts to to fit in now before we go dive into the Seo piece. There’s. 1 other thing that’s really important that I think you need to understand with this and this is where when people set post types or categories or taxonomies where I see they go wrong the most and that is they fail to or they forget that. All of those things post types, categories and taxonomies will all default to use the archive template of your website regardless of whether you’ve set that in code or through a page builder or some description unless you set specific. Um. And specific archive templates for each post type or category or taxonomy. So why is that important well because you can edit these things either through your builder or through code it means that your your.

23:07.65
peteeveritt
Ah, Index page your um, you know your archive page. It’s using that template. You can start to put other stuff on that page so you can start to use these pages as indexable pieces of content in their own right. Um, so again, if you go back to the product example so you’ve got ah a product of um training shoes. Let’s say of running shoes running shoes. A better example, you can have ah all of the all of the different running shoes that you sell on your website on the page but you can you can inject some content at the top and content at the bottom. Above the products above or below the products which will then give that page content so it can rank as its own Url. So rather than you just ranking? Oh you know trying to rank random blog posts for types of training shoes or running Shoes. You can have. You can actually use the category page to rank which gets people straight to the product that means that when you create that category Page. You’re not just creating a page that only has some text and some images on it but it already has a whole you know wealth of product straight underneath it a whole wealth of posts. Straight underneath it so rather than creating a single page. You’re creating part of that family tree Instantly. You’re like it’s like looking at a family tree and injecting a grandma somewhere and ah instantly they have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and so on and so forth because just because you’ve put them there.

24:38.00
peteeveritt
So Why does that Why is that important? Well if we run with the shoes example if we’re still doing Ecommerce. You know you can have training Shoes. You can have all those types of shoes that I mentioned but then let’s say you do your keyword research and you find that there’s There’s a really good. Converting Keyword. It’s got a good cost per Click Spend. It’s got a decent amount of traffic and you can see that the intent is transactional or commercial for pink shoes. Well you know you know you’re not going to have pink shoes in your menu somewhere. Nobody’s going to go through you know training. Ah, training tennis football boots pink it just doesn’t it just doesn’t sit but you can create a category of pink shoes and tag pink shoes from all different. You know you might have a pink set of football boots next to a pink set of trainers. Let’s do a pink set of squash shoes. Whatever they might be but you can. Instantly build that that little cluster of content to do with pink shoes ranking the category page and instantly having access to the products underneath it So you then take that out of E-commerce and move it over to something like a brochure site for a um. Ah,, let’s say it’s a brochure site for some kind of trades personson and you’ve got a services post type and within that you do I don’t know Maybe they’re an electrician and they do you know?? um, ah, indoor indoor wiring outdoor wiring house installs and meter replacement. Let’s say.

26:06.21
peteeveritt
You might then have a categories categories for commercial like electrics and residential electrics and then you can feed the services into whichever is commercial and residential and actually write content on the category pages for residential and for ah commercial and then you can you can instantly have. Subpages or you know, um, subcontent to those categories straight away. So your re you ultimately what you’re really trying to do is use your existing content to its maximum effect so that you can build out new categories New New Authority parts of your website. 4 particular keywords in particular areas using your existing content to prove your authority in them I feel like I’ve said quite a lot.

26:51.73
Jeff
Um, I think a good you have said quite a lot. It’s a that’s all so I’ll take that in okay, processed all right.

26:56.15
peteeveritt
Yeah Jeff Jeff can be the filter here I’ve just blurted out like idea.

27:04.19
Jeff
Ah, well I was going to say that I think another good way to look at it if like if this is feeling a little overwhelming or whatever which it might be. You could think of it like a magazine or a newspaper website right? because all of that content. All those articles you’re reading are always Categorized. You know it could be. Sports. It could be politics. It could be world the news you know it could be Science. It could be all kinds of things and what you see I mean that’s that’s probably the best example I can think of of the type of site that sucks you in as a user just from the user standpoint or given on Don time Seo So specifically. But it relates.

27:35.20
peteeveritt
Um.

27:41.40
Jeff
And you know you finish an article about I don’t know you know about the the latest Marvel movies and you see the tags or the categories at the bottom and it’s you know other comic book movies and like oh yeah, what? what? other you know that they have on here and you click that and yeah, you know you’re going to get more articles about comic bookqueries. But. If you can what pete saying you you know on that archive template or however, you’re building in on your theme and whatever you have that info on there. You put a couple paragraphs some info about the comic book movies coming out and you’ve cemented this as a cornerstone piece of the site here. That’s you know it’s important enough to. Linking to all of these here’s what these are all about it all reinforces each other and it’s you know it’s kind of like we were saying a week or so ago with the um you know, linking to other posts I mean yes, you’re linking to other posts. But you’re also grouping it all together in the same manner too and it’s just seeming its importance.

28:31.18
peteeveritt
Absolutely absolutely and you know you can get creative with the way that you put content on those category pages as well. So you might have an an intro paragraph or 2 at the top make sure that the titles in the H one then an intro paragraph maybe with the subhead in that that’s got an H Two. There’s That’s how you get your keywords in then you might have your group of. Ah, your your list of ah posts. So Whether that’s products or services or whatever the the custom post type is that you’re pulling them from and then you might have underneath that like and frequently asked questions and they might all be in accordions for example or. Um, you know a video about it or whatever it. You know you you can get creative with how you get the content on there. That’s that’s not a problem but people seriously overlook the power of the archive template and how you can use that for categories and post types and. Is so easy to utilize that to demonstrate return back to your clients is is just you know it or if it’s your website to show return back to you? Um, you know it’s it’s It’s just such one of the such untapped areas and I know it doesn’t sound very exciting and I know.

29:27.72
Jeff
Yeah.

29:33.11
Jeff
Yeah.

29:43.30
peteeveritt
Anybody that’s listened to 29 minutes of us talking about archive templates and post types and taxonomies and whatever you you know? if you’re with us. Thank you and but the the point the point really is that there’s such an untapped potential there that allows you to easily.

29:53.80
Jeff
Ah.

30:02.91
peteeveritt
Easily create content that is already knitted into the infrastructure of a website because it sits between posts and content almost it’s it’s like this forgotten layer that is um, you know I’ve got this I’ve got this image in my mind of um I have no idea why this is put in mind. You remember that episode of friends. In fact, it was. We’re recording this. It’s coming up to thanksgiving in the us and there was an episode of friends where Monica made a Thanksgiving dinner and she made ross a leftover sandwich with a moist maker in it I don’t know if you can remember that episode. But.

30:38.13
Jeff
With a with a what in it. Oh okay, that sounds delicious.

30:41.79
peteeveritt
Moist maker basically was an extra bit of bread covered in gravy and Ross took it to work somebody else. Ate it. That’s that’s not the point that the point is this is like the moist maker within wordpress you can you know you you can have all the ask you want.

30:56.35
Jeff
Um, would an obscure reference be to ah.

31:01.97
peteeveritt
I’d love to know how the ai is going to ah is going to figure this one out in the transcription. Ah.

31:07.15
Jeff
So next time you’re building a site just remember that moist maker I’ve got some jokes but I’m not I’m not I’m not not gonna do it. Not gonna say him I know I know that’s what I.

31:09.87
peteeveritt
Remember the moist maker hey that’s.

31:19.52
peteeveritt
Ah, this is gonna this is recording Jeff this is recording anyway. So what? what we now need is a seamless segue to get us out of this hole that I drove us into.

31:25.90
Jeff
Fighting so hard not to make the jokes. But.

31:30.88
Jeff
Well I’ll I’ll do that before I I get side 2 sidetracked I can’t believe I’m still on this but um, a minute ago. You said that this is you know so useful and it’s it’s in infrastructure of wordpress right? well. Might be a bit of a event and a bit of a you know, kind of outside thing but like I said we inherit a lot of sites I can’t tell you how many agencies or developers or whoever whatever out there are never touching these things and I’m not just talking about the Seo setup I’m talking about building the archive templates and.

32:00.91
peteeveritt
Yeah.

32:07.84
Jeff
Pete said it’s built into the infrastructure it is. It’s It’s super basic. Yeah, it’s yeah so I can’t tell you how many times I see sites and this is kind of a page. There’s a fault of page builders in the sense that you know.

32:11.25
peteeveritt
Um, oh it’s as ugly as hell it’s It’s yeah.

32:23.30
Jeff
Page builders have given so many people the power to create websites and that’s great, but they aren’t building the infrastructure they’re just building 5 pages right? and then they they don’t the old client doesn’t have a blog so they don’t build a blog or they don’t have any blog posts yet right. And so I don’t build it and then they launch a site.

32:41.88
peteeveritt
Yeah, but have they have they forgotten to disable the this is ah the the hello world post or this is a sample post of.

32:47.46
Jeff
No, and that double That’s the double pob thing because that’s a good way to check if it’s actually set up and looking good leave it there until you know it is then delete it. So yeah, so I’ve seen so many this is more of I Guess a client. Um.

32:52.73
peteeveritt
Absolutely.

33:03.36
Jeff
You know trying to deliver a good product to a client but I can’t tell you how many times the client goes to blog a month or 2 after their new site because they bought a wordpress site’s made for blogging and they can blog and that’s one of the things that they were sold on it. Blah blah and then the blog looks like total crap because nobody set it up nobody bothered and that’s an archive That’s the archive template. You know. Or maybe they set up a blog with the page builder and then a new you know, post type comes into play down the line and that’s got to be done so set that stuff up at a theme level and let it grow with your site.

33:31.40
peteeveritt
Well, and as we’ve mentioned in previous in previous episodes you know, bake some of this stuff into your starter theme into your starter setup. However, you do it like like you would a four zero four template and a like a default text template for like privacy policies and stuff like that just bake some of this stuff in so that you.

33:37.87
Jeff
Um, yeah.

33:51.28
peteeveritt
I’m not saying you can forget about it when you then spoool it up. But at least you’re partway down the journey. You know you’re you’re halfway there. Um and and then you’re just pulling in you pulling in other assets. But um, yeah, you know we we have a client that sells cbd products which I know isn’t legal everywhere in the world. But. Is here and they you you know we did. We did exactly that we they they were trying to get I mean for start as their products were all over the shop in like 5000 categories so we tried did that up a little bit but then the categories that were left. We put people. And we put content right at the top and the bottom and above and beneath the grid of products the the content above was never particularly long. We’re not taught you know we’re talking 2 maybe 3 paragraphs short paragraphs maximum the bulk of the content went underneath the products and using different vices like. Like accordions and things like that in order to get the word count in there but the joy of that was that gave us so much indexable content on the page that had the product on it. You know if you’re if you were then searching certain things about cbd or hemp hemp products. And you found one of these these category pages you not only did you get the information that you wanted but you were 1 click away from buying the flipping stuff we couldn’t get people any closer to the products at a category kind of level. Um, and you know you can do that with products with categories with ah with.

35:22.43
peteeveritt
Different post types for services for your you know for other ah other clients for um, as Jeff mentioned you know if you’re writing night newspaper type articles. We built a website for a um for a fashion magazine here in the Uk and you know they have like 100000 visits a month and. They have everything split into categories. It’s you know it and oh please, please please if you’re going to go down this route or route. Please remove the uncategozed category just just get rid of it.

35:55.69
Jeff
Better tip Rename it to something good but still generic like news I mean it depends on the sir right? But yeah, like news or updates or something like that. But so anything It’s so much better than on categories that way at least if you still forget because it’s going to default I’m the.

35:59.99
peteeveritt
Still all that they’ll do just please don’t launch things with cabinet. Yeah.

36:15.54
Jeff
I’m sure if he can delete young categories 1 actually it might it might be required. But I know you can rename it I know you can rename it? Yeah, ah.

36:19.93
peteeveritt
Ah, it might be required. Yeah well whatever you need to do just do it just just but or or you know call it uncatezed. Do not use this category so that people nobody ever uses it? Um, but yeah, please don’t. Ah, certainly don’t go and leave it active or put the tag on your post here’s the problem with with using that category if particularly if you haven’t renamed it is that if even if you’re not using it right now in a later day if you go and create a new post template and then include the. Slugs of the categories that um are the taxonomies that that post is in and you then go and apply that to all posts anything that doesn’t have a category is instantly going to be put you know is instantly publicly going to be in uncatezed which just looks a bit shady and isn’t isn’t great.

37:09.33
Jeff
Yeah, dehan.

37:15.85
peteeveritt
So yeah, make sure you’re using them properly. Um, but they from an Seo point of view I can’t tell you how many times when we’ve sat down with clients and we’ve been trying to put an Seo strategy together and we’ve then said well. Why don’t we create categories about this and we’ll do x. We’ll do y you know? Maybe we need new post type. We can put this over here that over there use category but insert a category level and that’s what the seo ultimately the seo strategy will look on work on and clients have look bamboozled that us across the table and just said why why have we never heard that before.

37:49.79
Jeff
Huh.

37:51.45
peteeveritt
Um, and maybe it’s because my background came from learning Seo through e-commerce agencies and that’s that’s just the way it was ingrained into me and therefore that’s the way I think about it but tddy it works.

38:01.54
Jeff
Well I think I mean I think like the ideal experience from from the visitor standpoint if we’re looking at Ecommerce right? would be to land on a category page that doesn’t feel like what we as wordpress people think is a category page. You know it’s just as useful as any other shopping page on their site and it tells you what it is. It has the info its got all the products you can you know I mean if if you land on that as a customer and you don’t even realize that you’re digging through their categories. That’s a good example of a you know.

38:16.51
peteeveritt
Um.

38:32.95
Jeff
Of of a qualityity I know page not a page. It’s category. But from the visitor they’re looking at a page you know so think it’s a good way hey I was just deking Back. Do you remember? Um I can’t even think how long ago this was common practice. But when everybody just used tags and blog posts to like. Is like keywords.

38:51.92
peteeveritt
Here here and you had used to have your tag Cloud on the side of your sidebar. Ah, ah it was truly awful. Yeah yeah.

38:54.40
Jeff
The tag cloud I forgot about that Widget. It was like 1 of the built-in widgets with wordpress and the more you used to tag it would get bigger font in this cloud. Oh what? a pointless pointless pointless thing pointless pointless pointless thing

39:11.89
peteeveritt
Somebody developed that and was exceptionally proud of it and not only that they then managed to convince somebody at Automatic to include it within the ah within the the wordpress theme or the wordpress install in the core the tag Cloud. Ah.

39:22.17
Jeff
Yeah I thought you were talking about tags. But you mean the tag Cloud Yeah I can’t imagine what the tag how useful the tag Cloud would really be these days but but you know tags still I see them more like I don’t want to say abuse but I still see that quite often and and it’s just pointless and especially when you get creative on everyone and they’re different. You know, like at least if you use them if you if you use tags consistently across you know posts or products or however, whatever you’re doing. You know you can create the same type of thing we’re talking about categories or tags they have an archive page same same concept so you can use them well but like I would almost suggest.

39:53.52
peteeveritt
Um, yeah.

40:00.27
Jeff
I’re almost you’d rather not use tags unless you’re going to use that strategy or you’re not. You know you’re not having archives indexed if if they’re just all over the place. So like if you go to a category or an an archive page of any type it needs to be useful. It needs to have more than like 1 post or product in it or whatnot unless that’s all.

40:14.32
peteeveritt
Um, yeah, ah well, but if if it’s only got one in there then why aren’t you using that one as the indexable target as the indexable item. Um.

40:19.27
Jeff
Sell will note product. But.

40:25.40
Jeff
True, Yeah, true.

40:28.67
peteeveritt
Yeah, you don’t want a category of 1 but the and you know maybe 2 wo’s a bit skinny as well. But by the time you start getting up to you know 3 four five half a dozen different things that you can group together then all of a sudden that you you know that’s that works now that said the caveat I would put on that is you know what? if you’ve got. If you’re in a scenario whereby you’re grouping together posts and you do end up with one that is a bit of a legacy one that just does only have 1 or 2 items in it then run with it. Don’t you know don’t not do the strategy just because you might only you might have 1 page that only has one post within a category if if it’s but I think what this really comes down to and.

40:58.90
Jeff
Yeah.

41:05.23
peteeveritt
I Know we’ve all done this I know we all do this but in an ideal world before you get anywhere near development. This stuff would have all been thought through and you know oh yeah, absolutely I know I know it sounds like.

41:16.79
Jeff
Um, know what pre-planning no content before the sites. No.

41:25.15
peteeveritt
Exceptionally boring but you know what a developer shouldn’t make these decisions and here’s why developers aren’t normal people I’m sorry to break that to you Developers have a very specific way of thinking about things and that’s brilliant.

41:35.25
Jeff
No.

41:43.42
peteeveritt
That’s that’s exactly what they should have. That’s what makes them good developers but their logic isn’t always I’m going to say they’re like it’s like I’m talking about a type of people my background was in development before I started with Seo so I’m I’m kind of yeah.

41:49.57
Jeff
I bet.

41:55.50
Jeff
Um, yeah I identify as a developer.

41:59.56
peteeveritt
Ah, you go. So I’m talking about us as much as anybody else that logic doesn’t always work that way in the real world and we could spend hours talking about examples of. Ridiculous scenarios that we’ve got into because something made sense to a developer in the room on their own when they were developing it listening to some kind of weird punk rock stuff in the in the background while they were you know. And it made sense because they were not only were they coding that particular thing but they were holding in in their mind all of the ah css classes that they were needing to use Orcss classes. They were needing to use and all of the functions they were having to pull and how the object- oriented stuff was working yadda ya it developers were insanely intelligent people. But that intelligence there’s a difference. My dad always used to tell me there’s a difference between intelligence and wisdom. You know you can find some exceptionally intelligent people that doesn’t necessarily mean you want them to wire a plug and that’s that’s that’s basically what I’m getting at.

42:54.17
Jeff
Ah.

43:04.94
peteeveritt
And that’s why there should be this planning level. That’s why you should have the client involved If you’re an agency because you really need their logic and how you can best apply what wordpress can do what the website can do back into their business and so really, That’s all this stuff should really be Planned. I Know that doesn’t always work in practice don’t ever I’m I’m not kind of I’m I’m mentioning like the unicon product here a unicon project but in theory it does work a lot more seamlessly if you can consider it from the start going forward. So.

43:37.45
Jeff
Yeah I like how you started that by saying I know you do I know we do it because I mean we just found ourselves in that situation where we we we put the emphasis on the design before project project started and then content. Was reshaped quite a bit throughout the project and that meant various design elements. You know, kind of kind of fell off and things and because they just didn’t fit anymore and then that created a bit of a jarring initial response like what was wasn’t what I was expecting. And that’s like well yeah I guess we probably should have planned the content out first and and built around that and not only from design from structure from Seo from everything. It can really help you.

44:20.83
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. But you know we’ve all been there. We’ve all done it and don’t you don’t kill yourself if if that’s ah you know, ah to to try and fit it into a process if it’s if you’ve already started and it hasn’t been done you sometimes you just got to live with these things but in the in a ideal world that would be the way it would work.

44:33.61
Jeff
Yeah.

44:38.68
peteeveritt
And it becomes seamless again from from that point onwards um I often think it’s it’s worthwhile thinking about the unicon projects and how your ideal process would work because if you have that mapped out from start to finish then when you get a project. And you get partway through it and you realize something hasn’t hasn’t happened kind of oh it needs to happen out of sync. It’s then not that difficult to sort of mentally backtrack and say okay, right? Well at that point if we discussed this then we might have thought about that and if we’d done that then this would have happened and you can. You can sort of almost expedite the process back to where you are so to to make the best of the situation if you know what I mean? Um, but yeah, it’s really good to think about that process from start to finish before if you know so you have it mapped out even if most projects don’t follow it to the letter.

45:19.96
Jeff
Yeah.

45:31.96
Jeff
Yeah, pre-planning usually usually helps there hey you know one thing I just kind of popped my head. We didn’t mention but I think well I think we alluded to at the beginning but was authors and author archives. These are just as these are another aspect of of archives that you know are kind of default and.

45:46.45
peteeveritt
Yeah.

45:51.11
Jeff
Ah, again, kind of going back to my initial looking at it from a Usability standpoint standpoint and you know I generally think and see and apply that author pages are not or author archives are not useful for most sites. Um. But my example of like a newspaper or magazine or things where they’re very very Content. You know, heavy and multiauthors and the author itself is important an an author archive makes sense. Um.

46:22.28
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah.

46:24.55
Jeff
On a plumber’s website that that might have an Seo team and then a developer then maybe the client login and put and things just just hide the authors. Ah.

46:33.14
peteeveritt
Yeah, no, you’re right I mean this this all does get contextual but there is that there’s there’s ah the Google algorithm isn’t structured in the way I’m about to talk about it but the yet but the way that.

46:50.83
peteeveritt
Ah, ah, the way that Seo topics or strategy has been structured in the last sort of two or three years originally was to do with e at which was experience authority and trust no, it wasn’t it was expertise authority and trust and then. About a year ago start 2023 it became e e a t which was experience expertise authority and trust and one of the ways that so the the be the the expertise part I need to get this right around because I always get it confused.

47:27.00
Jeff
This does my head in I’m not going to lie.

47:29.16
peteeveritt
The expertise part I know why? Why we can come up with better words and the expertise part is very much about the individual. So what is their qualification. Why are they an authority on the whatever it is. That’s been spoken about now you’re right if you’re. If you’re writing a site or you’re building a site that is for a tradesman a plumber an electrician a joiner. Whatever it might be a dentist then your website basically becomes that tool that is demonstrating that. Expertise their experience so you don’t you therefore don’t need an author’s page quite as readily because the website is kind of structured in that way please have an about page where you detail who there are and their qualifications and this that and the other but you don’t need you don’t necessarily need an author page. So yeah, switch them off d index them get rid of them. Absolutely. If however, you fast forward and you you, we’re talking about the newspaper web website. For example where you’ve got multiple authors well then the you know you might have a specialist that is in 1 particular area. You know, maybe that’s health and safety or a particular part of law or a particular part of. Ah, medical practice or whatever it might be. That’s where author pages become really valuable because then you can tags ah relevant content to that person which builds up their profile of expertise to the search engines. So it’s all contextual. Ah it all depends on.

49:00.80
peteeveritt
Who the target site is for the size of it. Ah what the structure of the client is etc etc but author play pages definitely have a massive place in so for some people and are also basically irrelevant for others.

49:12.53
Jeff
I mean I think it really is as simple as just asking asking yourself will anybody care who wrote this article and if the answer is yes I’m being serious so and if the answer is yes, then probably so then searching will matter and if no then yeah, there’s no point to it.

49:22.45
peteeveritt
Um.

49:31.10
Jeff
And then you know the reason the reason that we’re even talking about this is because we’re trying to avoid duplicate content and you know in this in this sense. It’s not always you know, totally like a penalty. In fact, having it having duplicate content like this isn’t a penalty or else. You wouldn’t use these at all. But if it’s just bouncing around on a. You know a generic anonymous Author’s page or an Uncategalizedce page. It’s not doing anybody he favors.

49:55.22
peteeveritt
Absolutely absolutely essentially this entire episode has been like I mentioned earlier about making sure you’re using the existing content on your website to maximum Messio effect and that’s that’s really, that’s really the crux of this. No.

50:10.69
Jeff
Yeah, no tricks. No no, no secrets. It’s just good old fashioned hard work and a little I don’t want to say common sense kind of but.

50:14.92
peteeveritt
Not at all none at all.

50:23.65
peteeveritt
I Thought you were going to say Spit grit and a whole load of duct tape. Um anyway I think that I think that but wraps us up for this. Ah, this week’s episode. So I hope you find it useful Um, and that you got some nuggets of information from it. Um.

50:24.82
Jeff
Now now.

50:41.12
peteeveritt
And you know I’d love to know if you’ve got any other interesting ways that you are using archive pages because if you are then I if you do have them then I definitely want to talk to you because the vast majority of people I speak to in my life barely know they exist. Um, so so yeah.

50:57.64
Jeff
Yeah, ah yeah I think we just barely kind of really even crack the surface of what you can do on on a page like that I mean we’re just you know we’re really just kind of looking at the the bare minimum. You know the basics and and and getting that in there because that’s how you should.

50:58.80
peteeveritt
It’d be great. Great to ah great for you to reach out feel free to. Thanks.

51:14.72
Jeff
That’s that’s the foot you need to launch sites on That’s the you know that’s where you need to come in and and get a site to and and then let it grow from there.

51:22.63
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely well look. It’s it’s been a blast as always? Um, ah well I guess if we don’t see you in the comments we will see you in the next episode. But if you’re watching on Youtube and you are. Ah, you know you’ve enjoyed this episode. You want to know more about what we do and get notifications of future episodes. Make sure you subscribe and hit that notification icon and if you’re listening in your in a podcast player make sure you subscribe in your podcast per player of choice. Um.

51:52.91
Jeff
Yes, yes, please please do both. We are extremely blown away and kind of I guess honored and kind of you know, really? Ah, really really surprised by the reaction and the the downloads and subscribers and stuff.

52:06.81
Jeff
But if I’m being honest I’m a little little disappointed. How few people are liking subscribing on Youtube so come on help us out.

52:13.90
peteeveritt
Ah, absolutely absolutely yeah, make sure you did do every really is this unfortunate Actually this is where somebody gets so so it’s extra work.

52:14.20
Jeff
I It really is disproportionate. The numbers are disproportionate and we’re putting so much work into the videos I mean not really, it’s so much work. But it says a little extra work.

52:26.78
peteeveritt
And and yeah somebody will’ll go and see that we have like 17 subscribers on Youtube and ah yeah, yeah, you’re talking about. Um, but yeah, no seriously do do 2 brothers are solid and ah go and find us on Youtube that’d be that’d be awesome. Seo hive.co forward slash Youtube will get you directly to the channel.

52:28.98
Jeff
Um, yeah, ah.

52:45.90
peteeveritt
Cool right? Well that’s it for another show and we will see you next week