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Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization
isharq writes to tell us that SEOmoz has an interesting writeup regarding search engine optimization. The article has quite a bit of info and is geared so that even the inexperienced used can learn the basics of search engine optimization. From the article: "It is our goal to improve your ability to drive search traffic to your site and debunk major myths about SEO. We share this knowledge to help businesses, government, educational and non-profit organizations benefit from being listed in the major search engines."
Step 1: Write better content.
seriously.
Step 1: Write better content.
Step 2: ?????
In the land of blind, the one eyed man is king.
However if everybody has night vision goggle, wouldn't everything back to the usual again?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
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77Punker.com
Your #1 search source!
...but I couldn't find anything.
That's in there. I think it's page four of TFA. They hit all the key points:
Accessiblity
Valid HTML/CSS
Good, Well written content
This article seems to know what it's talking about, and doubles as a decent guide to good web design principle. Awesome.
We share this knowledge to help businesses, government, educational and non-profit organizations benefit from being listed in the major search engines
Yes, I'm sure their motives are just that pure. I bet they would be shocked - shocked! - to learn that some less-than-scrupulous people were using their techniques to cause money to change hands. *rolls eyes*
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Does the guide contain anything else but "try to make your site's content the best there is of its kind"?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
These guys wrote a search ranking factors article a month or two ago that is also a worthy read.
Content, Content, Content... And a little help for the search engines such as ALT tags and relevant TITLE tags. When setting up pages, I often look at the page in Lynx to see what the crawler should see. After all, it is a little hard for the search engine to describe an image without any tag data. Unless, of course, you are amazon and you have a turk at your disposal. Amazon's Mechanical Turk
<meta http-equiv="Keywords" name="Keywords" content="lol this is not a search engine optimization">
Where's **Beatles-Beatles when you need him!!!
This is totally his game. He lives for Search Engine Optimization.
Scuttlemonkey... How could you post a story about SEO without **Beatles-Beatles???
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Another good resource is this old but still very applicable guide, 26 steps to 15k a Day.
If you're interested in Search Engine Optimization, the tool can be used like the Overture Keyword Selector Tool. Similar results are obtained with both, which is interesting all in itself. A guy built an interface similar to Overture to use with Google Suggest.
:)
Other than that I can't think of a real use... I usually know what I want to search for on Google. It could help optimize queries I guess (see the "number" of results before hitting submit, but not the quality...)
Happy Holidays to all Slashdotters, by the way
Honestly, I don't need a website telling me to put out media articles to get traffic to my site. Duh. "Hey! If you want traffic people have to know your website address!". Thanks for the help. What the hell do you really want?
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
I remember the time when your ranking in searches was actually based on how well the content on your page matched the words in the search, and not on how well you optimized it.
So now I find the guy with more time on his hands and a superior knowledge about webdesign instead of the guy with the answers to my question?
It may help for your site/business to have a unique title. Having a .net domain, I imagine that some friends may forget and assume I am a .com, and not be able to reach my site. However, a Google search for my handle returns my site as #1. This is all because I have a unique name for my site (and for all my other online activities).
Why would the "inexperienced used" want to optimize a search engine?
OH, You meant optimizing content for search engine indexing, didn't you.
Just judging the quality of the submission, NO DIGG!
Oops, wrong site.
rule #1 for search engine optimization:
write an article and submit it to slashdot. once on slashdot, it will rank higher on google.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
SEO is bullshit.
I rank #1, or in top 5 on Google for lots of things, and all I did was write about stuff that interested me.
This article was nothing more than abstractions. How about some real meat, like exactly how to get your site ranked up there? I've been curious for a long time how to get sites to rank up in Google, Yahoo, etc., and while I admit I haven't done my homework, this article didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. When I saw the summary here, I really thought I was going to dive into some good material.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
The problem is that the SEO spammers reset the game for the rest of the people over time by flooding out the methods that people can used to get ranked with their crap, meaning everyone has to keep changing to stay ahead, and obviously the way to do this is fresh, good quality, unique content. That's not to say that SEO spammers won't eventually see this and begin stealing/outsourcing content production in order to screw this up too
Business Voyeur
Fear not my friend, the grammar nazis are on the way to correct this problem.
They would be better off reading the "Beginners guide to surviving slashdotting !"
'How to Conduct Keyword Research' http://www.seomoz.org/articles/bg3.php
"1. Brainstorming - Thinking of what your customers/potential visitors would be likely to type in to search engines in an attempt to find the information/services your site offers (including alternate spellings, wordings, synonyms, etc). "
Hmm...thinking of something that people would mistype in a search engine...
got it - bobos ttis bresats!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Meta tags is still part of the very basic stuff that everyone already knows (hardly worth mentionning). In fact, too much people worry only about that. Worrying about meta tags before ensuring their content is good enough or that it can be indexed easily (especially if they use frames)! And when that proves to be insufficient, they hire some SEO-"guru", often the shady/not-so-ethical kind that makes pages with nothing but keywords (doorway pages) and such. Meta tags are so over-abused that search engines almost disregard them, they're just not THAT important anymore.
Often overlooked are small things like page titles, having your keywords in the article/page itself and perhaps in the URL (rewriting can come in handy), regular content updates, clean/semantic/valid/accessible markup - and use CSS (content to markup ratio helps), good links (in/out), etc.
SEO is easy for the most part. I've brought up the ranking of several sites rather easily - mostly by looking at the top results for the keywords we'd like to be found under and our main competitors... Find out what they do better/why they come ahead of you, and make up a strategy based on that (new content to include, and other basic stuff - not just blindly copying their meta tags).
Great content is paramount. It will also make others (eventually some big sites) link to you, and it will help a great deal.
///<sig
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Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
i had no problem finding his stite with it just now using googlem ozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&cl ient=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
http://www.google.com/search?q=gullible&sourceid=
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Malware authors have been doing Search engine optimiztion for years, this guide isn't useful...
If you want to get lots of Search engine hits...
Free Auto, Free Doom 3, Free Online Poker, Texas Hold em, Free Online Dating, Free Mp3, Free Movies, Free Celebrities, Pr0n, Spyware, Free Scan, Free PS3, Free Xbox 360, Free Crack, Free Serial, Free Cereal, pr0n, Free debt reduction, Free Cash, Free Search Assistant, Free Slashdot, and pR0n
Shots: A Populist Parable
Quick ! Someone patents it before Google reads it !
Well done on getting a mention in slashdot seomoz! Who would have thought an article on SEO would get this much traffic to your site, maybe you need to put a slashdot part in the article lol :)
ken,
lsblogs
http://www.lsblogs.com/
Free Blog submission, find blogs, tools and more at LS Blogs
+1, Didn't Get The Joke
If you want to figure out how to boost your ratings, why not get the advice from the horse's mouth?
Brin and Page's original paper about PageRank (Google) : the original Google paper
Another PageRank paper Inside PageRank
For those with a taste for Yahoo, search for Kleinberg's original 1998 paper on HITS. I seriously doubt that these authors have anything more to contribute than the two papers I listed, unless of course they worked for Google/Yahoo and are violating some SERIOUS NDAs.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
specialization. Want to be #1 in the industry? Find a niche. Then adapt your webpage content / headers / etc to that niche.
Other than that, I still don't get what's the big deal with "SEO", like if it was some kind of keyword hacking crap.
why did this guy get modded down? thats the best article on SEO available. slashdot sucks.
rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.
rule #2 is deliberately seeding MSN and Yahoo! (Google is immune) with keyword-laden articles - I once managed to accidentally (yeah right!) end up as the top site for "Japanese teen sex" on both these engines, but that's another story.
I appreciate the link gang. It's quite an honor. Sorry about the site's slowness. We've fixed that and everyone should be able to browse it, no problem now. For those who are wondering, the guide contains a lot of information about how link popularity and the many, many metrics associated with it function. SEs like Google, Yahoo! and MSN have moved beyond pure content analysis and beyond simple link algorithms like HITS and PageRank - for an understanding of these more in-depth topics, I'd recommend looking elsewhere, though. This guide is really for newcomers to the subject.
Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz.org
Anyone else find it ironic that they used an unordered list and then stuck letters on each list element instead of using a ordered list?
Okay, I'm just an HTML dork.
If you want to figure out how to boost your ratings, why not get the advice from the horse's mouth?
Brin and Page's original paper about PageRank (Google) : the original Google paper
Another PageRank paper Inside PageRank
The problem is that PageRank isn't the end-all-and-be-all of Google. Allow me to quote from this SIAM News article
Any doofus can look up the details of PageRank; therefore, that information is useless if you want to do better than everyone else. Trying to figure out those "hundred other metrics" is where SEO comes in. Trying to discern hidden logic is a tough problem and that's why those SEO companies can charge an arm and a leg. I have been told that the mathematics involved in SEO algorithms is non-trival.
GMD
watch this
...is to run websites and/or give lectures on how to make money with SEO. It's sorta like no-money-down real estate infomercials...
A search for search engine optimization does not even list them on their first page. Why take advice from him, when you can find who is first in their own business with a quick google search?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yeah, something like that. When I read the headline in my RSS reader, I thought "Cool! I've always wanted to write a search engine!" but then it turns out that it's just about making your site more popular.
:)
Here's a way to make your site more popular: Ambiguous article titles
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
is to find a high ranking site, such as slashdot, and post links to the website you're trying to boost the pagerank of. Not that I would ever do that, of course. :-)
If you're a unix user and can't use google's toolbar to check pagerank, you can check the pagerank of a url here: http://www.only999.com/google_page_rank.php
SecureThe.Net - Practical Resources for Securing Systems
I'm curious what anyone out there who would consider themselves to be pretty expert at optimising for search engines thinks of this article. Are there some things that have been left out? Have some things been overplayed? It's alright if you don't want to actually disclose any secrets you know that were not mentioned, but if you could just signal how complete the article is.
Parent Spoils The Joke
My website has a PR6 in google since I put some content on it. The start content was 6 links, and some under construction text, total size about 1kB. My conclusion based on that is:
Avoid lots of images & complex pieces of html/javascript which only do little.
Have a high content to HTML code ratio apparently is good for search engines. Google & MSN visit my site with now about 5kB of content several times a day, and I get lots of search hits. It is fun though if people really read your content and hopefully have some benefit from it (-:
It is also fun if you enter the search queries with which the visitors find you, gets your ranked in the top 10 a lot, and sometimes even before major sites like Novell or McAfee.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
What if I don't want search engines to find me ? (Is writting poor, uninteresting content enough ? :)) Is it possible to avoid crawlers ?
Seb the anonymous coward
Posting your hard earned methods of seo to slashdot is a sure fire way to have search engines change their algorithms to remove any vulnerabilitys to bad search results. Anyone who would do that would be a fool as they would stop themselves from earning from their scarce knowledge, and would be in effect working for the search engines for free. The only circumstances where this may be done is when new unknown methods become available and ones competitors can be eliminated by publishing the old methods that they use making them ineffective, whilst only you have new methods that make the value of your knowledge vastly higher.
I don't want to give anyhing away but google currently has 12 vulnerabilitys and msn 9 these are the only engines we currently research.
Still you also always need 'some' content but once you have something reasonable, certain seo methods can boost its rank way above the others.
Oh i may give a clue about something that maybe coming to the end of its useful life, cache!
embedded linux
good above board SEO and bad SEO which may get your site banned from search engines if caught.
good SEO is about running a good site that a bot can navigate and index without knowlage of advanced technologies, not moving shit arround all the time and providing good enough content that people wan't to link to you. A while back i'd have included honest meta tags here too but they are pretty much worthless now afaict. Basically all the stuff you should be doing anyway to make a good quality accessible site.
bad SEO is about finding ways to manipulate the search engine to your own ends without generally improving the site. Spamming your link arround is one way so are some tricks that exploit the alorithm (sometimes involving lots of domains and shit like that). Taking highly ranked domains that have been inadvertantly left to expire regardless of if they have anything to do with your subject matter is another way.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
- making the content more interesting to humans
- making it easier for robots to find your content, or
- lying to the robots so they'll tell the humans that your uninteresting page is interesting. This is how most SEOs promise to raise your ranking.
TFA was mostly about how to make your content interesting, though to some extent that was "make it interesting to people so they link to your pages", but that's at least halfway fair. And it was also mostly about how to make your pages accessible to the robots, which is good advice, and many SEOs pretend that that's what they're really telling you how to do. But when TFA was talking about whether to work with a pro, it was somewhat friendly to the kinds of unethical SEO scum who lie to robots by building link farms and similar abuse, though it did mostly emphasize working with people about your content.What really irks me about SEO stuff? It's when I'm looking for medical information on the web, and get zillions of robo-generated links that are pointing to sites that sell medicines, drowning out the sites that have really good information. Sure, sometimes you'll see the government websites first, but they're mostly the NIH ones with advice about dosage and insisting you follow your doctor's orders and what not to take along with that drug, not the more interesting ones about how the drugs work and what advantages or disadvantages they have compared to other drugs.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Another quality piece of work Rand. Way to go!