Best Way to Leverage Custom Post Type Related Content and Consider SEO

Using custom post type is great… From an SEO point of view the only
thing you need to think of when talking about the URL is that it would
“Tell a story” and wont have any ->> & symbols in it…

What you should have is the main “custom post type page”, then the taxomonies
inside it then the posts / singles…

That means you should have three additional files in your theme structure

1. CUSTOM_POST_TYPE_NAME-page.php
2. single-CUSTOM_POST_TYPE_NAME.php
3. taxonomy.php

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EXAMPLE:
i have a jewelry site where each jewelry type has a custom post type…
This example would use engagement rings…

Here is my custom post type page Url:
http://www.example.com/?engagement_cat

Here is my taxonomy Url:
http://www.example.com/?engagement_cat=prestige

Here is my product Url:
http://www.example.com/?engagement_ring=18k-gold-ladies-engagement-ring

.
In my (humble) opinion this is gr8 since its clear, short & tell’s a story
to the search engine while keeping the desired keyword in the URL…

You can achive this by simply using ‘rewrite’ => true, When registering a taxonomy… the rest is automated by wordpress.

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As far as taxonomies “pages”…
its all a matter of showing as much related information as possible right?
so why not just do a check for the “post type” that lead to that taxonomy
and design the page to fit that information…

Here is an example:

global $wp_query;
$term = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
$taxomonyTitle = $term->name;

    $post_type = get_post_type( $post->ID );

        if ($post_type == 'engagement_ring') {
            echo 'Engagement Rings Stuff here'
        } elseif ($post_type == 'wedding_ring') {
            echo 'Wedding Rings Stuff here'
        } elseif ($post_type == 'pendants') {       
            echo 'Pendatns Stuff here'
        } elseif ($post_type == 'earrings') {
            echo 'Earrings Stuff here'
        } elseif ($post_type == 'bracelets') {
            echo 'Bracelets Stuff here'         
        }   

.
Now you got the taxonomy title and the post type and you can assign variables..
get meta box values and so on..

Hope this helps,
Sagive SEO