SEO – A lesson learned

Hello again misfits. Again, I would like to point out that this is content from the old slackstuff site. I am trying to get some of the posts from there out of storage so that they can be found again. I have had a request for a couple of them recently. I have made some updates to them so that the links work so… on to SEO.

The conversation

I had quite an interesting conversation about search engine optimization today. I was lead to a recent post by a friend of mine, Mr-Snick. Who can be found over at isnick.net and, journalfive We discussed the various results of a spider bot that was created and released in a testing environment.

The reason for the conversation was of course, to discuss varios methods and myths on search engine optimization.

My Findings

I had, in the past spoke with someone who had said that the lower number of keywords used in the meta tags would increase your ranking. Also, it was told to me that arranging the keywords alphabetically would help. These turned out to be a myth. From the findings of tests done privately, the keywords are indexed in any number and regaurdless of order.

Further results showed that content is king. Write, Write Write and write frequntly. Mainly on your front page. When the google bot reaches your home page and finds the content is unchanged, then re-indexing is not necessary. The bot moves on to the next site. Find a way to fill your site with fresh, relavent content every few days at a minimum.

Some tools

I have also been introduced to Googles webmaster tools. These are analytic tools that can be placed on your custom iGoogle page. These tools help you to see what types of information that the google bot retrieves from your site for you to evaluate. This is an excellent way to have this information all in one place.

What about all of those ads?

Actually, well placed, non-obtrusive ads that rotate content that is rela\event to the content of your site, can help your ranking because the spider bot will see the ads as fresh content to be indexed. Now nobody likes a site that is loaded with ads. That being said, ads are useful in two ways to the developer. The provide income (hopefully) and they provide an additional step in the climb to the top of hte search engine ladder.

Feel free to stop into #linuxmisfits on irc.liquidbabble.com to ask questions or to join in any conversation pretaining to any of the posts here or start a new chat subject if you wish. I hope that this information is helpful to you and all.
Happy Slacking!!
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