Any SEOers in here?
- Thread starter RandomChat.ca
- Start date
I do a little.
Lately, however, it has really lost its appeal. I am starting to wonder if it is just a waste of time: trying to suck up to the search engines, whose algorithms are not known and could change overnight, whose high PR does not translate into traffic, etc.
My SEO efforts have really decreased lately; instead, I am going to focus on other aspects: content, gaining traffic, and (perhaps) article submission.
Regards,
David
Lately, however, it has really lost its appeal. I am starting to wonder if it is just a waste of time: trying to suck up to the search engines, whose algorithms are not known and could change overnight, whose high PR does not translate into traffic, etc.
My SEO efforts have really decreased lately; instead, I am going to focus on other aspects: content, gaining traffic, and (perhaps) article submission.
Regards,
David
I've been doing a little SEO with my site lately (see sig) I find it's best not to put too much effort into it, and just do simple things like making sure you don't have too many keywords, and making sure that the keywords you have in the meta tags are actually on the page. It's generally a good idea to use words in your site's title that appear in the keywords and content, you'll most likely want to use some words that not only describe what your site is about, but also ones that will likely be used in a search engine. You can view the source of my site for an example.
From Wikipedia:
The following factors are speculation on some of the considerations search engines may presently be using or which could be built into their algorithms. A number of these are taken from one of Google's patent applications [4], and may give some indication as to what is in the pipeline. Some are pure speculation. It's also good to keep in mind that Google has over 180 patents and patent applications assigned to them at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and a number of those include possible insights into other factors, and other directions that the search engine may follow, some of which may not be consistent with this list.
-Age of site
-Length of time the domain has been registered
-Age of content
-Frequency of content: regularity with which new content is added
-Text size: number of words above 200-250 (not affecting Google in 2005)
-Age of link and reputation of linking site
-Standard on-site factors
-Negative scoring for on-site factors (for example, a dampening for websites with extensive keyword meta-tags indicative of having been optimized [^SEO-ed])
-Uniqueness of content
-Related terms used in content (the terms that the search engine associates as being related to the main content of the page)
-Google Pagerank (Only used in Google's algorithm)
-External links, the anchor text in those external links and in the sites/pages containing those links
-Citations and research sources (indicating the content is of research quality)
-Stem-related terms in the search engine's database (for example, finance/financing)
-Incoming backlinks and anchor text of incoming backlinks
-Negative scoring for some incoming backlinks (perhaps those coming from low value pages, reciprocated backlinks, etc.)
-Rate of acquisition of backlinks: too many too fast could indicate "unnatural" link buying activity
-Text surrounding outward links and incoming backlinks. A link following the words "Sponsored Links" could be ignored
-Use of "rel=nofollow" to suggest that the search engine should ignore the link
-Depth of document in site
-Metrics collected from other sources, such as monitoring how frequently users hit the back button when SERPs send them to a particular page
-Metrics collected from sources like the Google Toolbar, Google Analytics, Google AdWords/Adsense programs, etc.
-Metrics collected in data-sharing arrangements with third parties (like providers of statistical programs used to monitor site traffic)
-Rate of removal of incoming links to the site
-Use of sub-domains, use of keywords in sub-domains and volume of content on sub-domains… and negative scoring for such activity
-Semantic connections of hosted documents
-Rate of document addition or change
-IP of hosting service and the number/quality of other sites hosted on that IP
-Other affiliations of linking site with the linked site (do they share an IP? have a common postal address on the "contact us" page?)
-Technical matters like use of 301 or 302 to redirect moved pages, showing a 404 server header rather than a 200 server header for pages that don't exist, proper use of robots.txt
-Hosting uptime
-Whether the site serves different content to different categories of users (cloaking)
-Broken outgoing links not rectified promptly
-Unsafe or illegal content
-Quality of HTML coding, presence of coding errors
-Actual click-through rates observed by the search engines for listings displayed on their SERPs
-Hand ranking by humans of the most frequently accessed SERPs
Personally, I just focus on content and am listed in the top 10 (often 1 or 2) on most search engines. I have a few keywords and that's it.
The following factors are speculation on some of the considerations search engines may presently be using or which could be built into their algorithms. A number of these are taken from one of Google's patent applications [4], and may give some indication as to what is in the pipeline. Some are pure speculation. It's also good to keep in mind that Google has over 180 patents and patent applications assigned to them at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and a number of those include possible insights into other factors, and other directions that the search engine may follow, some of which may not be consistent with this list.
-Age of site
-Length of time the domain has been registered
-Age of content
-Frequency of content: regularity with which new content is added
-Text size: number of words above 200-250 (not affecting Google in 2005)
-Age of link and reputation of linking site
-Standard on-site factors
-Negative scoring for on-site factors (for example, a dampening for websites with extensive keyword meta-tags indicative of having been optimized [^SEO-ed])
-Uniqueness of content
-Related terms used in content (the terms that the search engine associates as being related to the main content of the page)
-Google Pagerank (Only used in Google's algorithm)
-External links, the anchor text in those external links and in the sites/pages containing those links
-Citations and research sources (indicating the content is of research quality)
-Stem-related terms in the search engine's database (for example, finance/financing)
-Incoming backlinks and anchor text of incoming backlinks
-Negative scoring for some incoming backlinks (perhaps those coming from low value pages, reciprocated backlinks, etc.)
-Rate of acquisition of backlinks: too many too fast could indicate "unnatural" link buying activity
-Text surrounding outward links and incoming backlinks. A link following the words "Sponsored Links" could be ignored
-Use of "rel=nofollow" to suggest that the search engine should ignore the link
-Depth of document in site
-Metrics collected from other sources, such as monitoring how frequently users hit the back button when SERPs send them to a particular page
-Metrics collected from sources like the Google Toolbar, Google Analytics, Google AdWords/Adsense programs, etc.
-Metrics collected in data-sharing arrangements with third parties (like providers of statistical programs used to monitor site traffic)
-Rate of removal of incoming links to the site
-Use of sub-domains, use of keywords in sub-domains and volume of content on sub-domains… and negative scoring for such activity
-Semantic connections of hosted documents
-Rate of document addition or change
-IP of hosting service and the number/quality of other sites hosted on that IP
-Other affiliations of linking site with the linked site (do they share an IP? have a common postal address on the "contact us" page?)
-Technical matters like use of 301 or 302 to redirect moved pages, showing a 404 server header rather than a 200 server header for pages that don't exist, proper use of robots.txt
-Hosting uptime
-Whether the site serves different content to different categories of users (cloaking)
-Broken outgoing links not rectified promptly
-Unsafe or illegal content
-Quality of HTML coding, presence of coding errors
-Actual click-through rates observed by the search engines for listings displayed on their SERPs
-Hand ranking by humans of the most frequently accessed SERPs
Personally, I just focus on content and am listed in the top 10 (often 1 or 2) on most search engines. I have a few keywords and that's it.