Talk:Search engine optimization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good articles Search engine optimization (reviewed version) has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do.
If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.
This article is a frequent source of heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Search engine optimization article.
This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
Article policies
To-do list for Search engine optimization: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh


Here are some tasks you can do:
    Peer review A request has been made for this article to be peer reviewed to receive a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of this article.

    Contents

    [edit] Archives

    Archive 1 , Archive 2 , Archive 3 , Archive 4 , Archive 5

    [edit] Spamdex / "Black hat" -- Isn't Spamdex a subset of Black hat?

    My understanding of Spamdex, and the Wiki page on it, are very specifically define what it is, while Black hat as defined here includes Spamdexing. Subtitle should be Black hat only. Libertate 18:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

    Feel free to edit this article to make it better. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 21:07, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] SEO related email spam

    The way that this is written seems to draw the connotation that SEO is spam: "By 1996, SEO related email spam was commonplace.[2][3]" By 1996, all kinds of spam, on all kinds of subjects were commonplace. You can find spam from 1995 from people selling Valentine's Day candy through unsolicited bulk commercial emails. A good percentage of the email spam I receive these days involve stock tips, but that doesn't mean that stock brokers are spammers. I understand that this statement supports the next sentence, which states that the first place people can find a public statement referring to the use of the phrase "search engine optimization" was in a spam message on usenet. But, I think that this is misleading.Bill Slawski 10:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] Glossary?

    Reading this page I was struck by the number of Acronyms and web-related terminology that could do with clarification. E.g. "PPC" (Pay per click), "organic search results", SERPs, etc. Blibbka 10:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

    Anyone can feel free to hit my talk page if they would like a SEO related clarification in any article on WP. NetOracle 01:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

    The section that was just added by Searchbliss and then deleted by Jehochman was pretty huge. It should probably be a separate article titled Search engine glossary similar to the E-learning glossary article. That way the search engine article could link it as well. After all, search engines and search engine optimizers are two factors in the same equation. This article shouldn't be written exclusively for SEOs. Oicumayberight 21:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] Practical SEO

    Let's discuss whether the following material is necessary. My concerns are that the material is unsourced, we don't know if it's correct, and it seems like it may be redundant with other sections already in the article. Wikipedia is not meant to be a how-to manual. The material appears to be unique. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 01:39, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Practical SEO marketing

    To improve a website's page ranking and ultimately increase traffic, the basic rules and logic of search engine ranking need to be taken into consideration, namely the relevancy and form of the content, and the number of visitors and links, which indicate the site's popularity. However, a gentle balance is required in order to optimize your position in search engine results, because the search engine's algorithms and crawlers have become so sophisticated that they can detect even the very subtle methods of "spamming" a website with content and links. The most efficient "white hat" method of getting around this problem seems to be complying with the search engine's requirements, i.e. writing and linking a website which truly serves the visitors. These are a few of the basic guidelines to successful SEO:

    • New content is one of the most valuable resources in the web. The content of the website must be relevant, coherent and exclusive to its location.
    • The website's interface must be usable and convenient, including helpful features such a site index, a Q&A page and means of contacting the administrators for tech support.
    • The links to and from the site must be of reasonable quantity and high quality, meaning they link to and from sites with similar relevancy and high page ranking.
    • Web crawlers also analyze the site's design and graphical aids, evaluating the work put into the website as a part of its relevancy.
    • The actual traffic to the website is also calculated into the page ranking, so unless the site offers unprecedented content and/or service, successful advertisement of the site is also an important part of successful SEO.

    Since links between sites are what actually make up the internet, and are the means of search engine's crawlers of exploring and noticing new websites, smart and careful linking can be the key to dramatically boosting a site's traffic and page ranking. In 2006 Google revised the way their algorithm evaluates links, and many sites with high ranking which were actually "link dumpsters", plummeted in the search engine results. The location of a link within a body of text, the relevance of the surrounding text, the title of the link word, and the location to which the link word points, now have more influence on page ranking. This has prompted the creation of many link directories and article directories, which are content-based websites, to which any visitor with a website may submit articles and link words or phrases from the article to his/her website, either for free or for money. For example, a person who owns a site that supplies gardening equipment can post an article about gardening, and link the word "water" from the article to an inner-page on his/her website which discusses irrigation systems. When done properly, this method has a good chance of increasing page ranking by following the SEO guidelines: quality, hand-picked, relevant link words, surrounded by relevant text, linking to relevant content in the target website.


    [edit] Big Edit

    The following edit isn't sourced, and reads like a strong POV defense of SEO, likely a response to the recent article by Jason Calacanis that claims SEO is 90% snakeoil. I think the content needs to be put in perspective, have references, and be recast to be more encyclopedic. We've raised the standard of this article significantly. Let's not backslide. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 19:20, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

    This was not just a response to the article from Jason Calacanis. This is building up for months and Jason Calcanis post, Digg Response and ProBlogger post and comments did only provide the last little bit of motivation to do something. I was busy with the Affiliate Marketing article. Yesterday did I check the SEO article and discovered some serious flaws and missing items and missing references (not just the top section of the article, but throughout the article). The Social media aspect and that it is not SEO is missing in the article. Complaints from people about the quality and accuracy of the article mounted as well. Yesterday did I finally had it and sat down to work on the article and extended it, modified some parts that are simply misleading and cleaned up references. Did you check some of the references? There was a "Blog Comment"!!!! used as reference which was 2 sentences. Search Engine Watch (the homepage) was used as reference for the ranking factors. The article also does not include any clarification what the technical and for non technical folks "mysterious" changes to a site are that make it suddenly rank better. Also the clarification that SEO consists of two segments, the optimization of the target website (on-site) or everything in direct control of the site owner AND the factors the website owner does not control, the Off-site factors.
    My additions were not meant as 100% perfect and tweaking was necessary. A complete reversal to the old version is the wrong action and I strongly suggest that you revert it back and have us together tweak it to get it right. You have to admit that the points I made clear in this comment (which are basically the point made in the additions to the article) can not simply be ignored. I am looking forward to your answers. Thank you. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 02:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    Can someone summarize the dispute? I'd like to weigh in on it as a professional in this field. (Don't worry, I'm not here to promote anything of mine) NetOracle 04:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    I don't think there's a dispute. We need to go through the material below and do a bit of cleanup, and then add it to the article. I'd like to make sure the material has an encyclopedic tone and reliable sources. Right now it reads a little like a how to article. That should be easy to fix. I don't disagree with the substance. NetOracle, do you want to tell us your real world identity? Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 05:15, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    At this point, no. I've seen enough other notable people suffer grief for their contributions here, and I'd just like to operate here in an uneventful manner. I enjoy learning and writing, especially about deep subjects, and so I will continue on here out of recreation and constructive purpose, but not as part of a commercial endeavor. NetOracle 18:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    Jehochman is right, it's not a dispute but a matter how to incorporate the suggested changes into the article. Thanks NetOracle. Jehochman, how about you rephrase my content as you see it fit, put it here at the talk page and then I will go over it and double-check that everything I believe should come across is still in there and then take it from there? --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 08:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
    Hyphens as a penalty - the evidence of that is too flimsy to include here, too variable by search engine, and if it was included there would need to be a huge amount of clarification.--AndrzejBroda 20:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
    I saw something that provided strong circumstancial evidence that too much hyphens are triggering either a penalty or at least manual review. We are not talking about one or two hyphens here, but more than that. Regarding the Clickthrough Rate. I read somewhere, but need to find the source, that hyphen in the name reduce clickthrough rates by US users, but not europeans, especially non-english speaking countries, like germany. A hyphen in the name makes it easier to identify and translate the words. Being a German who lives in the states for almost 7 years, I have to agree to that. I have to admit, that my first site was a two word domain with a hyphen as separator, on purpose. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

    In a broad sense, SEO is marketing by appealing first to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and secondly to human visitors. SEO, however, does not necessarily imply that the content itself is favorable to algorithms at the expense of human visitors; a subfield within SEO concerns itself with optimizing a site's presentation and structure, without making noticeable changes to human visitors.

    SEO is often very technical and not transparent for the average person. Some of the work of SEO's is not even visible to the human eyes (see Metadata for example), which supports the misconception that SEO is a way of "gaming" the search engines, which gives this young and mostly misunderstood industry sometimes a bad name.[1].

    [edit] The Service

    The term SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.

    [edit] On Site Factors and Off Site Factors

    The work of SEO can be broken down into two major categories, "on site factors" and "off site factors".

    "On site factors" are everything regarding the website that is being optimized itself, the content (text, images, multimedia), the html code, the hidden content (Meta Tags, page title (not headline), use of proper HTML elements), robots.txt (also invisible to humans), site structure, which includes internal linking, site navigation, URL format, error pages, duplicate content etc.

    "Off site factors" are usually not or only in limited form controllable by the owner of the website. The most important off site factor are the type, location and target of links from other websites to "your" website. The importance of links from other websites did cause the development of complete business models around this. Examples are services like TextLinkAds or ReviewMe. A popular form of gaining links became what is now called Linkbaiting.

    On site factors used to be the only factors in the early days of search engines, but off site factors gained more and more importance over the years. Google's PageRank and Inktomi's HITS algorithm (now owned by Ask.com) are good examples and demonstrate the importance of links from other sites to your own today.d

    [edit] Social Media Optimization (SMO)

    With the rise of social media and networking was a whole new form of marketing created as a side effect of that, called "social media optimization" (SMO) or "social media marketing" (SMM). SMO gets often confused with SEO. [2] SMO is related to SEO, but are not the same. A complete different skill set is needed for SEO than it is for SMO. SMO is more related to Buzz Marketing or Word of mouth marketing, with some positive SEO side-effects.

    part of the article --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] The Service

    The term SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.</nowiki>


    ....

    SEOs widely agree that the signals that influence a page's rankings include:[3]

    SEOs widely agree that the signals that influence a page's rankings include:[3][4][5]

    implemented in article --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    ....

    [edit] More than Just Rankings

    Factors that may improve search listing quality include: an attention-grabbing title, an interesting description,[6] and a domain and URL that reinforce the legitimacy of the site. Some commentators have noted that domains with lots of hyphens look spammy and may discourage click throughs.[citation needed]</stike>

    Factors that may improve search listing quality include: an attention-grabbing title, an interesting description, and a domain and URL that reinforce the legitimacy of the site. Some commentators have noted that domains with lots of hyphens look spammy and may discourage click throughs and even cause penalties by search engines.[7][8]

    references added to article and blog post comment references (6) removed from article. I also did not add the phrase "... and even cause penalties by search engines" due to the lack of substantial evidence. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] References

    1. ^ Diggers Can't Handle The Truth (About SEO) and Why The SEO Folks Were Mad At You, Jason by Danny Sullivan, 2/8/2007 SearchEngineLand.com
    2. ^ Social Media Marketers Need to Accept Some Responsibility by Greg Boser, 2/7/2007, WebGuerrilla.com
    3. ^ a b Search Engine Watch - Search Engine News and Forums. Organizer of SES (Search Engine Strategies) Conferences.
    4. ^ Search Engine Ranking Factors frequently updated by Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz.org
    5. ^ Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist updated frequently, Vaughn's One-Page Summaries
    6. ^ SEOmoz
    7. ^ How URLs Can Affect Top Search Engine Rankings by John Heard, April 24, 2006, MarketPosition.com
    8. ^ Using Meta Tags in Web Pages Hyphen Filter SEOChat Thread, May 2004

    The best use of page titles SEO'Brien, December 2006 Paul 17:37, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] Adding a link to an article

    Hello, I'd like to add a link to an interesting article about SEO and branding. The link is: http://www.easynet.co.il/sem_articles/seoing_a_brand.php

    The article does appear in a commercial site, but I think it has an added value for the readers of this wiki entry. What do you think?

    Davidoff 13:04, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

    No. Forget it. There will be no links to any articles located at websites of search marketing firms like yours. Futurix 13:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
    Remember your happy face. He's probably just inexperienced, not evil. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 18:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Davidoff, feel free to add content to the article, but make sure you look at Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Reliable sources before adding links. This article wouldn't be appropriate because it's self-published, so it hasn't been subjected to editorial control or independent fact checking. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 13:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] Cleanup

    Sorry, but this article is a mess. It rambles, is redunant, and often off-topic. Please help me clean it up. In short, this should be an encyclopedia article explaining what SEO is, not how to do it. Not a dog 06:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] DMOZ - Directory Made (itself) ObZolite

    Professional Web Site Design

    Anyone working in the SEO field must have realized that DMOZ has self desctructed over the last few years. There seems to still be so much talk about the directory and Google has even built a directory around it. WHY? The information in the directory (at least in many of the obsolete categories) is out of date and some does not even exist any longer. What is worse than that is that it is near impossible to get any new information into it!

    So, why does Google still have a directory that uses dead information if they are the half baked Wikipedia of the internet. If anyone can offer insight to the continued existence of the DMOZ then please share it with us. If anyone has any influence on the DMOZ please flex your muscle and get it back online and up to date so we all can enjoy a real time internet and not an antique shop of outdated links and information. --President Subnetconsulting.com 11:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)CraigSeverance—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cseverance (talk • contribs) 11:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC).

    • I don't think this is the proper forum to discuss this question. Maybe you want to go post at Webmaster World, HighRankings, or Search Engine Watch. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 13:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] Web Reporting for Search Engine Visibility

    Most people who are trying to find out if their site shows up on search engines do not understand the processes involved. First the site must be indexed. Then, if it was built or optimized correctly, the site might show up for searches intended by the site owner. More about that later...

    Indexing of your site simply means having the site recognized by a search engine. This happens when the search engine spiders go through the pages of the site, starting with the index, or main page. Spiders are robots operated by search engines whose purpose is to find out what content a site has in the form of text and images.

    Once spiders have read each page from top to bottom of a site, the information is gathered into a database and an algorithm computes the site's relevancy. Search engine algorithms are the holy grail of search engine optimization. Their function, for obvious reasons, are a tightly guarded secret. The major search engine's algorythm differ in their ranking technique, giving each of them a kind of personality.

    How one optimized their site should depend on which search engine they are trying to get high ranking or visiblity. Once the optimization process has been implemented, search engines can take anywhere from a few days to recognize a site's content to several months. Search engine algorithms are always being tweaked and adjusted as the engineers who operate them learn more and more about web sites. This process can appear as an ebb and flow of ranking and visibility to all sites.

    The best way to stay on top of a particular site's visibility is to run a regularly scheduled report that performs automated searches. Using an automated report generator can remove the painstaking and time consuming process of hunting for a site's search engine ranking and position. The report can be set up to use a list of search phrases, or "search strings", that the owner wants their site to show up for. It can also track the visibility of competitor's site.

    The author of this article employs such a report generator, WebPosition Gold 3.5. Another useful aspect of this program is its ability to upload the finished report to a web site for online viewing. This can be valuable to a search engine optimization company that shares the report's results with its clients. Almost always customers of SEO firms want to know if the service they paid for is actually panning out.

    Visibility will not always translate to sales for a web site owner. Just because a site shows up high for a search result does not mean that site will necessarily get the desired result. Many factors play a part; demand for the product, econony, etc. An SEO firm can protect itself by supplying the report to its customers for proof of work performed. That way, if the desired result was not obtained, the SEO firm can point to the search engine visibility for success.

    The author of this article provides search engine optimization service as well as reporting. The report is an integral part of the service. Clients feel a level of comfort knowing they will get a report on the performance of the services they paid good money for.

    More information about this service can be found by visiting MyWebReporter.com [1]

    Wolfline 20:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

    Yawn *cough* promo *cough* Wit 14:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] GA

    Congratulations, the article is now a GA. The article is quite well written delving fairly deep but maintaining accessibility to laymen; while being broad in coverage of topics as well. It is mostly properly and verifiably referenced and overall not much PoV.

    But, there is a bit lacking as well, mainly the More sophisticated ranking algorithms section, which focusses too deply on one approach to appear evanelizing it and appearing like an editorial rather than an encyclopedia article. That is compounded with lack of references with that. It needs to be fixed before the article can get to the FA status. --soum (0_o) 19:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

    Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/e/a/Talk%7ESearch_engine_optimization_edab.html"