The Moveable Type blogging platform has been one of the most flexible and easy to install platforms for some time.
And soon there will be an open source version which means that even more people can begin to realize the power of Moveable Type. Therefore I thought it would be timely and prudent to write a “how-to” on optimizing a Moveable Type blog so that more of your content can be found easier through the search engines.
The method I describe here is what has worked for me, however the system is flexible enough that you can play with it to find something that works for you should you find these instructions not complete enough.
Customizing the new entry display
The first thing you need to do is change the new entry display so that you can see more fields. That is because there are other fields which you can use for things like article keywords and a meta description, so that each and every page has unique head tags.
On the bottom of your Moveable Type installation you will see a link that says “customize the look of this page” below the save button:
A pop-up window should appear showing you the fields you can make visible in your editor window. For now, just select all and hit save. As you become more familiar with the system you can always go back, using the link above, and select custom, and then the fields you do want to see.
Now you will see all fields, such as “title”, “category” and more. Here is where optmizing your blog posts begin.
At the bottom of your new entry window you will see the following fields: Excerpt, Keywords and Tags. For the purposes of this article we’ll focus on Expert and Keywords as these are the fields you will use as the meta description and meta keywords tag.
Whenever you create a new post on Moveable Type it uses a bunch of tags within templates to display the entry. They are usually wrapped in “<$MT” and “$>”. For example, the entry title tag is <$MTEntryTitle$> while the entry keywords tag is <$MTEntryKeywords$>. These are used to tell the publishing platform to insert the title or keywords whenver it sees these special fields.
What is needed now is to edit your individual entry template. This is the template that displays a single entry. It can be found under “Templates” and then under the “Archives” tab:
Now, optimizing your Moveable Type blog is going to mean editting this template. However if you are comfortable with HTML then it shouldn’t be a problem. And the best part is, you can do it however you like.
For example, on my blog I have the following <head> tags:
<title><$MTEntryTitle$> from <$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$></title>
<meta name="Description" content="<$MTEntryExcerpt$>">
<meta name="keywords" content="<$MTEntryKeywords$> <$MTEntryCategory$>">
Let me explain what happens. The <$MTEntryTitle$> gets replaced with the blog entry title I give it while <$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$> puts in my blog name. This makes up my title tag for each individual post. <$MTEntryExcerpt$> is the field you just added to your new entry page, and this becomes the meta description while <$MTEntryKeywords$> and <$MTEntryCategory$> are the keywords and category chosen for the post.
What this does is give each individual entry a unique enought set of head tags that the search engines will have no choice but to index each page. Plus this gives your pages the ability to rank for more individual terms.
So what next?
While I’ve illustrated above how to optimize your individual entries there is still a lot more you can do.
For example, you can insert fields into alt tags (should you wish to) as well as inserting the above fields, and other fields directly into your posts. Not to mention that there are other tweaks and hacks you can make to your templates to make them more search engine and user friendly. These same tactics can be used on all your templates including date based archives and category archives.
Keep in mind that when you make these changes you’ll need to rebuild your site to make them visible.
And, if you decide to go even further and add plugins such as the RightFields plugin you can add even more fields. Then you can work these fields into your optimization plan as well by again editting the templates to add the field names where you want.
