Though Google is not transparent about how it ranks sites, what is known is that a large part of Google’s ranking algorithm is based on the popularity of a Website.  They’ve been doing this based at least in part on links.  Now the truth about links is that they are very, very susceptible to manipulation.  Google has decided to fight people buying links, reciprocal linking and directory links, but in spite of this there remain dozens of ways to get links that have nothing to do with what another Website owner things of the site it is linking to.

At some point if their idea for personalized search takes off and they get a lot of people voting one site up over another it is going to become far to tempting for them not to add or even make this a primary factor in their ranking.  Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily, but many people believe it is an elite group of users who are most likely to use this feature, so an elite group may be determining what all are seeing.

The prudent thing seo is to start using this tool.  Vote your own site up and have your network vote your site up too.  As always be smart about this and how you do it.

SearchWiki for Increasing Visitors

One of the features of the SearchWiki is the ability to make comments about a site.  Those comments are available to anyone else looking at the results for that site.  Thus what you say and how you say it can play a role in getting other to move your site, or a site you comment on, up in their search results.  Obviously, you should comment well on Websites you want to make popular.  Another thing to keep in mind is that people like sites that other people like so more positive comments on your site can only help you in the long run.

Is Personal Search Good for Personal Use

Given the advice above about having your networks vote you up you might think that I am going to say yes, but in reality I don’t think this is the case at all. When you use personal search and the SearchWiki to move a site up or out of the list you move it permenantly for your results.  Do new better sites ever come along?  Yes, everyday and any user using personal search limits what they see. Sure you can log out of your account to see what the world is seeig, or if you’re like me with two screens and three or four browsers on your computer you can easily jump between the results.  The reality for most users is they don’t have two screens and several browsers and signing in and out of accounts is just too much of a bother.

Now that you’ve got my opinions here’s what Google has to say about their new SearchWiki

In their Guide for Designers they state, “I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link “Click here to enter” on their homepage.”

I have no problem with the above. I agree it’s a big mistake, but here’s where things get a little murky. They go on to say, “Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.” The implication is that this has to be from the home page, but it doesn’t.

So why point this out at all? Why not just let the statement stay out there as a warning to Web designers? After all, it’s really a very good warning. The reason is that there’s another party in the design process – the client.

Recently I gained a client who wasn’t showing up in the search engines at all. One look at her Website and I knew exactly what the problem was. Her designer had built her a site that was one .swf file. I groaned and rolled my eyes and let out a big sigh because liek Webdesignerwall I see this all too often, and then I told her what we could do about it. The problem was she was completely attached to her “home page” which really is nothing of the sort in an all flash Website. I talked until I was practically blue in the face about why this was a problem, but she didn’t want to give it up. I suppose I could have just said “Well then I guess you’re stuck not showing up.” This, however, would have done her a disservice. The reality is she could keep her flash home page and show up.

WebDesignerWall makes the assumption, or at least leaves the impression, that the only way a search engine crawler finds your content is to come to the home page, but that isn’t true. If you find yourself in the same situation I did here are some steps to take.

1) Make an xml sitemap. You can have one auto generated at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

2) Add a robots.txt – all search engines look for this first to know what to do so point them to your .xml sitemap

3) Verify your site in Google’s Webmaster Tools

4) Add your sitemap address to Google’s Webmaster Tools

5) Go out and get links to your internal pages

6) Link back to your home page with the phrase you most want to show up for in the link text

I will agree with WebDesignerWall given my druthers I would absolutely swear off the splash page it adds nothing in my opinion, but if you have a client that insists than use the above.

The report said she was not on the first page for the term naturopathic portland. (This wasn’t quite true, but we’ll let that pass for the moment.

My client thought the report which was supposed to tell her how she could do better was rather lame and emailed the marketing consultant to let her know so. Here’s the reply she got that left me an lol state.

“Sorry you are disappointed with the analysis. I did a lot of searches, not just “naturopathic medicine Portland”. That was the only search I did not see you on the first few pages [actually the client has two first page placements for this term, but the author meant "naturopathic Portland"]. I included Portland in the phrase. I agree Naturopathic medicine would be too general and a waste of marketing dollars.

Some people that respond to that email we send out are those that need placement services. Most people are not in the top three spots EVERY time someone searches, so we are able to help them, by placing them there 24/7 . Congratulations for not benefiting from the review.

If I had not responded to your inquiry after seeing you had good placement I would not be doing my job.”

No, I didn’t capitalize all the letters in the word every the author did. Since I am not interested in costing her, her job I am not publishing the name of the company or the marketing consultant, but it does do an SEO heart good to read something like this. Yes, natural search works.

Yes.  At least in Google they can.  Here’s what Google has said about 404 errors and your rankings

“When you’re moving your site, pesky 404 (File Not Found) errors can harm the user experience and negatively impact your site’s performance in Google search results.”*

Of course this doesn’t just apply when you’re moving your site.  If 404 errors can negatively impact your site’s results during a move they can negatively impact them any time.

The solution?  Simple, check your site’s links and make sure they aren’t returning 404’s.
*
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-05-09T14%3A02%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7

One of the improvements will better title tags.  In case you’re unfamiliar with title tags they are what show up as the first  line of text in the search results pages of any search engine page.  One of the factors for many search engines is in terms of how they rank your site is known to be how and where the keywords in title tags are placed.  Up until version 2.5 of word press if you did a standard install and either didn’t use a plugin that changed these for you, or didn’t manipulate the code (this is what I do) your blog/site name would always appear first followed by the title of your page /post.  Now that will be reversed.

This will be a good thing and it will help WordPress be better optimized right from the get go assuming you are smart about the names you give your titles.  I personally will continue to change the code for my WordPress installs because there is more that one can do with the title to improve search engine optimization, but if you don’t have the know how and can’t afford to pay someone to do it for you – what WordPress is offering is much better than what they’ve had before.

You may have noticed that I linked to Michael’s argument with the word post.  As a search engine optimization expert, I know the more SEO friendly thing to do would have been to link the phrase  “domain name doesn’t matter for SEO” to his page making the argument.  This would have helped search engines to determine that the page was about its actual topic and not just about the word “post.”

Not seeing the direct line of reasoning yet?  A great number of the people who eventually link from their site to your site will do so either with www.yourdomain.com or they will hyper link the phrase of your domain.  Either way, if you have chosen a domain name that includes your key search phrase you’ve just won yourself some bonus points.

Michael may be right that it doesn’t matter to the search engine what string of letters show up in the address bar, but that is simply missing the more important point about why they do matter.

So why is my domain name Dew Point Productions?  Who doesn’t like a challenge but perhaps the better question is if it is so insignificant why did Michael choose seo-theory for a url?