Would you tell just one secret?

Marcia · #1 07-31-2006

Would you share just one little SEO secret you've discovered, about any search engine out there? I will:

It takes a bit of work, but MSN Search likes "minty fresh" websites.

How about you? Got a secret for us?

SuperZu · #2 07-31-2006

Excellent question, Marcia!

Something I did that worked really well in Google was adding a CSS drop-down sitemap-like menu to the home page, in addition to the regular navigation menu. After I made this change, one of my web sites went from #28 to #5 (and styed there) for a very popular 2-word keyword phrase with 100,000,000 + results in Google.

idahoguy · #3 07-31-2006

Not to say much... BUT, I have noticed quite a few, I repeat... quite a few referrals from various Wikipedia pages lately

Gotta love the "external links" feature! Enough said...

F. Tomasetti

AussieWebmaster · #4 07-31-2006

Sacrificing a goat seems to work for us.....

but that just means I have hours worth of work to do.... seems I am the goat and my time is being sacrificed to the gods of search!

rockcoastmedia · #5 07-31-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by idahoguy

Not to say much... BUT, I have noticed quite a few, I repeat... quite a few referrals from various Wikipedia pages lately

Gotta love the "external links" feature! Enough said...

F. Tomasetti

Could you eleberate a bit more on what exactly you did to gain links from Wikipedia other than just submitting an article?

caseyturton · #6 07-31-2006

I build very basic sites. I research the keywords and descriptions for many weeks BEFORE I worry about design. I use graphic images sparingly. I write the site copy (text) in Word first and test keyword density and relevancy. I choose my site title for the pages and the descriptions very carefully. Often, I do different titles and descriptions for different pages. I don't get hung up in keywords. They are almost irrelevant anymore. I make sure I link to my internal pages in my body text. I guess that's more than one secret

MrMackin · #7 07-31-2006

>>>Sacrificing a goat seems to work for us.....

We have made a little doll that looks like a GOO engineer "of note"
We rub it with feces and drop it in hot oil while chanting "don't be evil"
Gets us in the top 3 in most cases on Y! & M$N

fulton savage · #8 07-31-2006

We buy domains and run sites on them for decades without ever changing the registration info. We make sure to renew for many years, but we're not sure if that works yet.

abbottsys · #9 07-31-2006

One thing I discovered is that there is a new breed of engines under development that will make SEO redundant.. because they let you add your site *and* get it seen instantly. Do you really want to be fiddling with SEO 5 years from now? Please. You gotta love the future ;-)

randfish · #10 08-01-2006

Once featured on the homepage of Digg.com, in a study of almost 400 sites, more than half gained 1000 or more links over the next 2 weeks. Not very secret, but very, very powerful :-)

Marcia · #11 08-01-2006

Quote:

We have made a little doll that looks like a GOO engineer "of note"
We rub it with feces and drop it in hot oil while chanting "don't be evil"
Gets us in the top 3 in most cases on Y! & M$N

See now, a white hat kitchen witch would have rubbed the little doll that looks like a GOO engineer "of note" with olive oil and dropped it into a simmering pot of white rice and herbs for purification while chanting "do no evil" and made the Supplemental Index disappear.

Quote:

I am the goat and my time is being sacrificed to the gods of search!

That is nice, because it's not all old goats that will admit to their aged status.

AussieWebmaster · #12 08-01-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcia

That is nice, because it's not all old goats that will admit to their aged status.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.... I am like Greg Brady - a long way from the high school grad he was on the show!

And have not aged gracefully!

g7submit · #13 08-01-2006

For a new site, once domain is registered, I never wait for the whole design and development to be ready before I start working. Instead, I write a copy and put it on the main page as a holding page instead of the usual common and boring stuff.

After this, I "excite" the spiders with some good food (spicy links and wholesome articles) and the website get noted quickly and once the website's development is completed and launched, it's not that new to the SEs spiders, except that they see "new" content.

Brian M · #14 08-01-2006

Late one night, I removed the CR and LF characters in keyword META tags (which the client liked because it was easier for him to read the lists vertically), and I removed keywords that did not appear on the page. Those keyword META tags were the only thing that I changed that night, then I got distracted by other paying clients and left his site alone.

He called a few weeks later to thank me profusely because his site had magically appeared as # 1 in Google, Yahoo, and MSN for all of his keywords.

So, despite all the proclamations that Google does not use the keywords META tag, I always include a SHORT list of unique META keywords on every page and make sure that they also appear visibly on the page. Even if Google no longer looks at the keywords META tag, it doesn't seem to hurt that those related keywords are there.

Besides - I'm an old goat too, so it's hard to teach me new tricks...

Brian M

shor · #15 08-02-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by randfish

Once featured on the homepage of Digg.com, in a study of almost 400 sites, more than half gained 1000 or more links over the next 2 weeks. Not very secret, but very, very powerful :-)

Digg, delicious and RSS, the holy trinity of link generation through content

Chris Boggs · #16 08-02-2006

All my SEO secrets can be found within my posts here and elsewhere. there's a little secret.

oh and also: internal links are all you need to rank well for new terms, as long as they are somehow related and the rest of your site ranks well.

rcjordan · #17 08-02-2006

buy top quality domains within your verticals. think investment grade. lock them away and age them. when it's time to develop pull out a 2 or 3 year old killer domain for the job.

#18 08-02-2006

For content and community sites, it works well to focus on the long tail terms more than the top traffic terms.

The reason is the quality of the potential community members you attract. For example, someone who searches for "audio software" is not likely to be as knowledgeable and as strong a community member as someone who searches for "vst synthesizer plugin." The folks with expertise have moved well beyond the entry terms and into the long tail terms, and those are the ones that make the community work.

vayapues · #19 08-02-2006

1. Preheat oven too 350 degrees.

2. Build your website for your users, not for the search engines. Okay, wait...

Don't be stupid. Practice good SEO, but don't base your design, copy, link structure and everything else on what will get you the best position in the search engines. Intead base all these decisions on what is best for your users experience.

3. Next add a dash of good marketing. Get the word out about you any way you can. Email marketing is a great way. Pick a really cool feature on your site, and send a 'Check out this feature' email to all your friends and family. Many of them will forward it on, and before you know it, your site will be the stuff of urban legend.

4. Cook for about 1 year. Then stand back, and watch your natural in bound links take on a life of their own. and before you know it, you are to the top of your keywords in the SEs. Not because your site was the best optimized, but because its usefullness lead to a lot of solid IBLs.

1EightT · #20 08-02-2006

sure, regardless of what people say software drives tons of traffic from google, yahoo, and msn.

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