SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Dear All
As I found out SEO seems not to be a big discussion here, so I would like to start a UNITED Tutorial, that means: each of you with any experience may contribute to make this a really good Tutorial. I will gather all the informations together in this first post, and if it is good enough we may ask a Mod to move it in the Tutorial Section.

So please help us in any way if you know how to improve the Ranking of your website.
IMPORTANT: If you make changes please write what you changed in the Discussion Thread. Please do not modify the Wiki just to get commercial modules inside.
Thanks, GrinGEO

Introduction

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is one of the most popular search subjects on the net.

For a explanation of what SEO is read Wikipedia's introduction:

'Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site.'

There are two aspects of SEO, “On Page” optimisation and “Off Page” optimisation. “On Page” are factors like the title and url, and the correct use of images, headline tags and bolding amongst much else. “Off Page” optimisation primarily refers to the number and quality of incoming links that point to a particular page or site.

Both of these are equally important.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in the 90s, they realised that incoming links was an important factor in a websites credibility. For instance, a website with 1,000 incoming links would be considered by Google to be more worthy than a site with just 10. This is because incoming links means that the rest of the internet community is giving its thumbs up to a particular site. A webmaster is publicly declaring, If you want information on a particular subject then visit this site. They are giving your site the thumbs up.

Nearly ten years since the launch of Google incoming links are still a major part of its calculations.


1. Search Engines
Every SEO begins with, that you need to make search engines know about your site. If you start a new pligg project it make sense to publish it to search engines quiete before you will official launch it. Ok some users will come and see a working in progress, but from my experience it is good to let Google an Co. index your page as soon as possible, cause normally the spiders need 2-4 weeks before your page will be listed. But keep in mind, you need content for that. A blank page does not make sense.

If you have content, list your pligg to those major search engines
Google.com (Google, AOL, Compuserve, MySpace, Mahalo, Netscape, Ripple)
Yahoo.com (Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Earthoid, GoodSearch, Rectifi)
MSN.com & Inktomi Slurp (MSN, Windows Live, A9, Tafiti, MS.Dewey)
Ask.com via sitemap and robots.txt (Ask, iWon, Lycos)
Alexa.com on bottom
Abacho.com
Exalead.com
Gigablast.com
MozDex.com (via Email)

LiveSearching.net
MixCat.com
JDGO.com
IceRocket.com
WebSquash.com
Search-o-Rama.com List???
ScrubtheWeb.com

*Note: while inserting your site some of search engines might ask if you have some newfeed. To make it easy just use your RSS feed, in most times it will work. You can find your RSS Feed under http://www.yoururl.com/rss.php

If you follow these instructions your site could be listed within 2 days, as it happened to mine. My project isn't launched official yet, but I already have 130 users a day... thats strange. ;-)

Sitemaps
Some search engines may add a certain sitemap to their index, this helps to crawl your page faster, especially if there are pages that are content not published on your main site. So with a Sitemap (formerly like an RSS Feed) you keep Search Engines up to date. So submit as Sitemap your RSS Feed http://www.yoururl.com/rss.php or create a new one following Yankidank Instructions in his Wiki.. This Tools can add a Sitemap:
Google Webmaster Tools
Yahoo Siteexplorer

PageRanks and Links
To get a good PageRank you need a lot of links to your website. Every link helps, that your page will be spidered sooner or more often. It is very important to receave links from Websites, that have a similar topic and have a higher PageRank. Many SEO Specialists say that you should aware to have to many links within a few days, caus Google might see it as cheats. So creating backlinks to your page over a wide timewindow is the best thing, better would be if other people talk about your site. Try to geht 5-10 links every month. If in a year you have reached 40-50 that would be good enough. The important aspect of building links is to increase the amount at a steady pace. Don't add hundreds one week followed by hardly any the next.
You could begin with links here in the Signature of the Pligg Forum, maybe than on your own Blog and later on other Blogs. Write about your page in other Social Networking Pages.

Ping Service
A Ping Service will let search engines like google know that you have updated your site. You use the tool after you update your site with new posts. On a site like Pligg, recommended about once or twice a day for a popular site. This will instantly get your post listed on multiple sites, also on Social Networking Pages like Technorati or Feedburner. Posting first on a particular topic is essential because you will rank higher in SERPS, Search Engine Results Page.
There is a good Ping Service called Ping-O-Matic. This Tool will ping different service like google, yahoo, technorati. It might be good to ping your page once a day if you have updates.
Also there is a ping module for Pligg called Plingger and is available in the Pligg Pro section of the site.


2. Social Bookmarking
Pligg is a Social News Content Managment System, that means People are contribuiting that your page grows with content. But Pligg is not the only Social News page, there are a lot more out of the world. So in your Pligg people will link interesting content, but you need to link your intereting pligg projekt to other sites. It is a very good idea, and it might boost your page a lot. It could be, that your pages crashes if such many people come... ;-)

Major Social News Pages
Digg.com
Slashdot.org
PlugIM.com

Social Bookmarking Sites
To Bookmark your site to such a services gives you a lot of backlinks. And maybe a lot of users, if they see your page on the front.
Technorati.com
Furl.net
Ma.gnolia.com
Reddit.com
Simpy.com
Netvouz.com
del.icio.us
Newsvine.com
Fark.com
Spurl.net
Diigo.com
StumbleUpon.com

Technorati
Technorati is more than a Social News or Social Bookmark Page. So you can add Bookmarks, you can Add Favorites, but you can also make a search true the probably entire blogosphere. Technorati is like google of blogs. If you login in your UserCP under Blogs you can claim your own Blog (or your website). In Pligg you need to add some code (best do it in the header), that delete your template-c and let Technorati Claim it. Than this website will be yours... ;-) As more Fans as you have, as more you will be pushed in front.
Take a look at our Google &Technorati Experiment


3. Technical Imrovements
more to come


4. Other tweaks
more to come

Press Release

Okay, so you've created your Pligg-based website and you're ready to launch. Obviously, you've spent a lot of time on your site and you want to tell the world about how great it is and why they should visit, join and contribute.

One way of doing this is by releasing a press release.

There are a number of sites that will release your press release for free, some of which are pressbox.co.uk, PR Log and PR Leap.

All of these will offer an upgrade to an advanced publicity feature with prices ranging from a few dollars to fifty.

It is widely considered that in order to receive the full potential of these services then paying a little money will help

But if you don't, a item using these services will still lead to a website launch announcement reaching out to the world wide web.

It may bring you some traffic, it may not. It will certainly give you some inbound links.

As a note, it really isn't worth submitting the same press release to every company and website you can. Google hates duplicate material and is now very good at spotting it. If you want to use more than one press release service then change the text – certainly the title, but as much of the content as you possibly can.

For an example of a recently released press release by a Pligg-based site, then read this here. This was upgraded to their premium account with the modest fee of a few dollars. Positive aspects of paying money to these companies rather than just using their free service is that adverts are removed and it will be placed as a feature item on their home page.

Tools to help monitor your SEO campaign

There are a number of free tools that are widely used by webmasters.

The first is Google Webmaster Tools.

It's easy to join but you have to verify your site by placing a meta tag in your header. For Pligg, you can add this with the other meta commands in the meta.tpl file

Google Webmaster Tools offers a number of useful functions such as top search queries, a list of incoming links and how Google views the anchor text of those incoming links.

This isn't really the place for a detailed breakdown for all that Google Webmaster Tools offers, but if you want further information please flick through their own introduction:

Webmaster Tools Tour

Yahoo also offers the similar service for webmasters here:

www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

Like Google Webmaster Tools you have to place a meta tag in your meta.tpl file for this service to work.

Yahoo Site Explorer is more basic than what Google offers but is worth signing up for nevertheless.

Every webmaster likes to monitor their site closely. For instance, the most basic need is to know just how many people are visiting your site on a daily basis. It is also useful to know where they are coming from. Some of you visitors (also called traffic) will be coming from search engines, others will be coming through links to your site that have been placed on other websites. In order to increase the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, then you need to have a full and detailed breakdown of these sorts of statistics.

This is where Google's Analytics Tools comes in handy.

Like their Webmaster Tools, this is free to use and is activated by placing code into your website.

For Google Analytic Tools you need to place the code, which Google provides, into your footer.

As it happens, you can place the code in your header, but the reason why it should be placed in your footer is because it will decrease the load time of your page.

Google's Analytic Tools are now considered so advanced that it is used by professionals in the SEO and webdesign industry over other paid options.

It offers many advanced features. As an example, it will tell you the screen resolution of your visitors such as 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 or even just what type of browser a visitor is using.

Analytics Tools will also give you information such as what keywords visitors are using in search engines when they came across your website.

For an introduction to Google's Analytics Tools read their guide here.

The best way of understanding what Google Analytics offers is by joining yourself and exploring its many complex features.

If you do have any questions regarding this tool, then post it up in this forum and others will be able to assist.

Im looking at moment for more informations concenring
Tags & Meta Keywords, RSS Feed Usage (like Feedburner), general Improvement

Footnote

A SEO campaign can take between one and two years for it to come to full fruition. There are SEO companies that offer promises of guaranteed top ten search engine placements. Avoid them like the plague. No company is in a position to fulfill such promises, and, if they are, it may be that they make changes to your website or they instigate a link building programme that Google would consider cheating - unethical in SEO speak. If this is the case then your website may be banned by Google completely, or suffer infractions to its SERPs.

This guide is only ever intended as a brief introduction to the subject. It is worth reading the threads on the main internet marketing forum Digital Point for further ideas and suggestions to help you with your SEO. You will find that users on Digital Point are friendly and willing to offer advice.

A popular purchase is Aaron Wall's SEO Book. This is a good introduction to basic SEO, but to be honest, at $79, you can find all the same information on Digital Point or similar forums for free.

Remember, there are no secrets to SEO – all the information you need is out there

IF YOU WANT TO TRY A EXPERIMENTAL SEO BOOST TO YOUR SITE PLEASE VISIT
SEO (Google, Yahoo, Technorati Experiment)