[wp-hackers] Some Thoughts/Enhancement Ideas In And Around The Category Side Of Things

[mark waterous]

> From: wp-hackers-bounces at lists.automattic.com [mailto:wp-hackers-
> bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Mike Schinkel
> Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 2:20 PM
> To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> 
> Who said it's my only SEO strategy? Please don't put words in someone
> else's mouth.

Who's putting words in whose mouth? If you read it that way, I apologize but
I meant 'you' and 'your' in the sense of anybody who is relying on their URL
to be their primary SEO strategy. It's one factor out of many, and it's not
even one of the highest ranking factors. So what I was saying is that it
simply doesn't affect your SEO enough that it should merit being a concern
of the core developers. Especially when you have every ability to change
this via plugin, or rewrite rules.


> That's your opinion but I disagree with it.  There are many other
> contexts where URLs are useful besides simply navigating a site.
> Viewing links in an email, having the confidence in links to post them
> on blogs and in social networks, having people see links in Google
> search results, seeing links mentioned on sites where autolinking is
> used with user generated content, and more.

And out of all these contexts, where does /category/ hurt you?

> Well designed URLs also help browser autocomplete work better, especially
> for sites where visitor visit frequently (in my case Meetup.com is one
> such site, and for those most part their URLs are well designed, thank
> goodness.)

When somebody is searching, for example, for a 'WordPress' category (url:
http://yoursite.com/category/wordpress/, entitled: 'My Blog - Posts on
Wordpress' ), how again is /category/ hurting you?

> 
> A friend of mine disagreed with me about the importance of URLs as you
> did. But he recently agreed to try well designed URLs.

I didn't say that URL design isn't an important part of an overall strategy.
What I said, and I quote, is: "My site URLs could be all written in a dead
language, and it shouldn't matter to my visitors." and I am 100% right about
that, you can't prove me wrong. I didn't say it wouldn't help with
marketing, SEO or any number of other subjects, what I said is that I could
do as mentioned, and it shouldn't matter to my visitors once they are on my
site. They don't navigate via URL. They navigate via the user interface
provided by the site.

--
Mark Waterous
http://mark.watero.us/
(mark at watero.us)