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Catalyst Theme and SEO Options

From time to time I mention the theme I like de jour – but my most abiding love affair with a theme is Frugal Theme – now replaced with Catalyst Theme – and I like them both! (Well sort of replaced I haven’t got around to doing this site yet – its still in the “not broken – haven’t fixed it yet”) pile. But with the release of Catalyst v1.1 I am pretty darn impressed and even WordPress 3.1 is appearing to be stable enough to upgrade to – so here’s my first Catalyst Theme Tutorial.

So how is Catalyst for SEO – well its pretty good – its flexible, it won’t do it for you – but you can set and forget it. First if you are already using a plugin such as All-In-One-SEO or Platinum SEO – then you can keep on using them, they play happily with Catalyst 1.1. However if you are starting a new site – you can probably skip the plugins and just use Catalyst’s built in SEO.

Once you’ve installed Catalyst and the Dynamik child theme – you will have a Catalyst Sub Menu on your main WordPress menu and under that three options: Core Options, Dynamik Options and Advanced Options.

Go to Core Options and Chose SEO (if you are using a SEO plugin at the top of the page will be a warning telling you that anything you do will be ignore).

Setup Site Wide SEO Options in Catalyst

That’s how I do – it but you have got some options:

Title Tag SEO

Title Tag: – you probably want to append the  site description to your title tag – but on the right – (words nearer the left are considered to have more weight in SEO)

If you have a keyword rich site name then you should probably append it  on inner pages – if however you have a general brand name then don’t bother.

You only want ONE H1 tag on the front page – your choice whether its title or tagline.

Robots Meta SEO Options

I  vary on this but I never check NOINDEX on tags or archives – I find them in the SERPS too often. The author page is irrelevant on a single author blog –  so I do check NOINDEX on it and sometimes on Category.

If you want to have comments do-followed you can uncheck this option rather than installing the do-follow option.

I don’t Noarchive anything.

HomePage SEO Options

Generally I use this blank and use the site title (under Settings/General menu)

Homepage metadescription – is helpful friendly, something that may make someone click thru – but has lots of keywords in it too!

Obviously put your keywords in the homepage meta – it probably doesn’t do anything but…

Homepage Robots Meta – all unticked.

Canonical paginated archives sounds like a good idea – to be honest I’m not exactly sure what they are though!

Up to now these options will apply site wide.

In addiition on every page and post in Catalyst you have another bunch of SEO options (under the main editing screen) these include

Catalyst page title

Catalyst description

Catalyst keywords

You can also noindex, nofollow and/or noarchive the post or page.

 

Interested in learning more about Catalyst – HONKING BIG AFFILIATE LINK HERE

13 replies on “Catalyst Theme and SEO Options”

Yep, as soon as I have $100 extra in one of my accounts again, I’ll be setting up Catalyst on all of my blogs.

Great article. I must give Catalyst a trial and soon, I hope.

Have you lost your enthusiasm for Thesis?

Lis,

As you may know already, I am a perennial newbie in the blogging world-I just can’t quite get my mental arms around it all for some dumb reason. So, my question in a nutshell is why Catalyst over Thesis? Translated: Is there plenty of help available with Catalyst or is it simply easier to navigate and you don’t need as much help?

I think I know that answer to that, so I will be buying it, using your “HONKING BIG AFFILIATE LINK” when I buy. That will be in a couple of months ’cause I have some heavy expenses coming up this month and next.

You do a good job here, Lis. Thanks.

Hi Lawrence – basically Catalyst out of the box is way easier to use than Thesis – I’m going to a series of posts on Catalyst over the next few weeks. Thesis has been around longer at there are heaps of Thesis resources around – but basically I found it pretty daunting asking questions on their forums (and as you know I don’t daunt easily LOL) – the Catalyst is brand new (and Frugal wasn’t old – which it replaced) – but what I see in Catalyst is not just a good product but a person behind it who not only has a vision and technical ability – but I also like the way he does business and the way he has expanded his business (he’s no longer a one man band – which is recipe for disaster if you are doing support and development at the same time)

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Lisa,

You are free to delete this comment.

I am just trying to figure out how to get my website and my face to show here.

I promise I won’t take advantage of your hospitality anymore whether this works or not.

oops sorry (super SEO plugin if you are wondering but I have to add sites manually) – but repeat after me 10X – her name is Lis or Lissie not Lisa LOL. Your face is showing for me nope its gone – that’s based on the photo associated with the email you used and is controlled at gravatar.com

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Hi,
My question is for each individual post, how do you include your keywords with the Catalyst theme? I have in the past used All in one SEO but it looks like I don’t need that plugin with Catalyst. Maybe you could include a screenshot of how you include your keywords, etc for each individual post under the Catalyst Post Options. Anything you could provide would be helpful.

Best,
Bob

You can set overall keywords in the SEO tab of Catalyst – or you can do the same for individual posts/ page – or you can continue to use all-in-one – though I’ve stopped doing so and Catalyst seems just fine with it

By Post Author

Hi Lis,

Great site, bookmarked.

Do you know how to populate Catalyst page title, Catalyst description and Catalyst keywords on individual posts via custom fields at all?

Thanks.

Every post and page have optional individual title/description/ keywords

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