Yesterday in Part I of our series on five ways to improve an AboutUs page, we gave a tutorial on how to add a Summary. The next step is just as easy.
Part II: Add Some Topics
In adding your Summary, you may have noticed a list of linked tags underneath or green text saying “(add a topic).” This is the new AboutUs tagging system we call Topics. Topics are keywords that are relevant to a site, and are a replacement for the standard MediaWiki system of Categories. If you’re familiar with the tagging systems of Delicious or Flickr, Topics should be a snap for you.
Why Topics and not Categories?
AboutUs began as an installation of MediaWiki, and retains many elements of that software. Why did we decide to implement Topics instead of sticking with Categories? Well, categories are a taxonomy that require a lot of hands-on maintenance, even in small wikis. What’s more, categories are practically hidden at the bottom of pages for both visitors and editors.
These two factors combine to make a system that is both difficult to use and not particularly useful, especially in a wiki pushing 13 million pages. Topics, being front-and-center for visitors and requiring no WikiText to edit, is a folksonomy that gels better with AboutUs.
Topics are important to you in your quest to improve an AboutUs page because they are the primary system of classifying our articles and correct Topics are an important SEO facet to a page.
How to add a Topic
If no topics are present, click the green text below your Summary. On many pages, Topics have been pre-populated from the Categories that were already on the page, or your site’s meta tags. To remove any Topics not applicable, simply click the X symbol on the left end of any individual tag.
The AboutUs page for Shizzow has a great set of Topics
The maxim to remember when adding or removing Topics is that quantity is not quality. Any more than 10 Topics in an AboutUs article may seriously degrade the page’s readability and SEO value; an ideal number is five to eight.
Also important to consider is how targeted your tags are. You may very well be a regional business or located in the U.S., but tagging your AboutUs page with “regional” or “U.S.” doesn’t communicate what your site is about. In general, it’s preferable to be more discerning in choosing Topics than you might choose other types of tags.
Look for the third post in the series tomorrow, where I’ll be giving an overview of writing a painless, effective description section.
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