[University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

[Xayphon]

Hello, I came here today to ask you guys a little favor regarding a Search Engine Optimization project.

We are required to make a small website with arbitrary content and then optimize it to have a higher PageRank value in Google in order to let it appear higher in the search result rankings upon searching for "Informetricity" specifically as part of our Information Science studies.

I wanted to ask if any of you mind putting the following link in your forum signature here on FFR or somewhere else or even share it on FaceBook/Twitter/Tumblr/etc. until the semester is over and we get our grade. Link to the website: http://seo.inf-d.de/seo1521/

If you are to, then please let me know in this thread the location of the link or the website name you put it in because I need to documentate every single link we put this on the internet in order to be graded. If you do not want to, then of course I completely understand.

I will try to remember to let you guys know when the semester is over so you can remove the link.

Thanks for your time

[Rapta]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

I'll put it in my sig and my YouTube channel's About Me and on my Whirled Profile.

I will also put it here if that counts http://seo.inf-d.de/seo1521/

Whirled Account: http://www.whirled.com/#people-1086151 It is in my status and under Activities and I put it as my Homepage

[TC_Halogen]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

We are required to make a small website with arbitrary content and then optimize it to have a higher PageRank value in Google in order to let it appear higher in the search result rankings upon searching for "Informetricity" specifically as part of our Information Science studies.

I wanted to ask if any of you mind putting the following link in your forum signature here on FFR or somewhere else or even share it on FaceBook/Twitter/Tumblr/etc. until the semester is over and we get our grade. Link to the website: http://seo.inf-d.de/seo1521/

Edit: The link does not have to be visible as long as it's in the source code Google's crawlers can read it off of, so feel free to hide it or put it in a spoiler tab

Pulling backlinks from forum sources is a really smart idea, Xayphon -- however, I would highly advise against telling people that the link does not have to be visible: Google considers actions like hiding links and changing them around with formatting to be somewhat deceptive, and you may be doing yourself more harm than good. Google likes natural linking, haha. I'll put this in my signature with some actual content about what you're doing to give it a bit more context/content a bit later -- if you haven't learned already from your studies or independent research: content is king.

(also I work as a SEO, ask me some questions if you have any!)

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

Oh I see, thanks for the input, sir

Thanks for linking to the website as well, both of you

[TC_Halogen]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

Were you given instructions or tips on how you should try to make the site rank?

- have you established central content for your website? Your content should be strong enough for Google to understand it semantically with its crawler. I'm not exactly proficient in the language that is used on the website, but you'll do better at establishing yourself as some sort of authority if you've got your central content.

It seems like there's a lot, but be sure that you're structuring it to be human friendly and not search-engine friendly: if you have a lot of content that is semantically related to the cause of your site and those using search queries related to your site stay on it without bouncing, Google uses that as a strong signal that the information is useful.

Unrelated note: if you intend on building content on your website, do it now. Rumblings are going around that Google is going to be updating the Panda algorithm, which hunts sites down for thin and keyword-optimized content. You could reap some serious benefits if you have really strong content and Google indexes your website. If you haven't done so yet, get all of your content together. If you have access to do so, get into Google's Webmaster tools and take actionable steps to get a sitemap setup so that Google can index it fully and quickly.

Another note: PR takes a long time to build -- don't get discouraged and just push through as best as you can.

EDIT: one more thing, be very careful with how you build links back to your site... it's not an easy process at all.

[Rapta]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

I hope you don't mind me using that sig link description of Xayphon's project idea of yours Halogen.

"Xayphon's doing a university-level academic project regarding Google's process of assigning page rank and search engine optimization; check out the details here: http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...d.php?t=142144"

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

Were you given instructions or tips on how you should try to make the site rank?

We haven't gotten much of an intro into SEO or PR, we only got quick instructions and requirements that we need to fulfill by the deadline (which is on July 6th). I can give you a broad overview about what I've been dealing with concerning PR/Google/Crawling:

- Google has a PR and several dozens of variables that influence it, on the top being a deep linktopological network your website is engaged in.

- Crawlers have an order they parse source code in and are "feeling more at home" when we have structured elements in our source code that HTML5 provides, which I still need to add (e.g. <section>, <nav>, <footer>). Crawlers also follow any links on a website recursively until it has reached the bottom (or top depending on top-down or bottom-up Crawlers), hence why I thought hiding a link as long as it is in the source code is no problem.

- All of my knowledge about HTML5 and CSS is extremely rusty and I had to spend the first few weeks getting back into it and reading up on meta elements. I do not know javascript at all as well if that makes any difference to PR.

- About the instructions we got:
> Place content in a readable way (for Search Engines)
> Flat and logical internal link structure (User needs to know where he is)
> Use In-Text-Links to pass related content (though do not overuse them)
> Use internal links to guide crawler through your website
> Use natural keywords as link-text or alt-attributes, not something like "here" or "more"
> Use semantical annotations that can be extracted by Crawlers and enable them to understand the meaning of our content more (Meta Tags, Microdata with Schema.org)
> Use In- and Out-Links wisely, while In-Links from strong websites are worth much more than a dozen weak links
> Place important links at top, with falling importance to the bottom of your source code

have you established central content for your website? Your content should be strong enough for Google to understand it semantically with its crawler. I'm not exactly proficient in the language that is used on the website, but you'll do better at establishing yourself as some sort of authority if you've got your central content.

The content of this site is to provide a small "edutaining" advertisement source about our Major Information Science and Language Technology at our University, with videos and links to related pages (though we are not sure what we can use in our links section due to not having enough time to contact the respective owners). We were thinking about putting Google Scholar links, or any other link that offers books with a previewing function, to the books we have used so far in our lectures and provide a small taste of what the user might get himself into if he decides to actually study our major. Maybe I should also add an In-Depth overview of each of the courses in our major, having more content-heavy things for Google to crawl (Keywords would be e.g. Java, Python, Information Retrieval, Knowledge Organization, Informetrics, Bibliometrics, ...). Not entirely sure if I will have enough time for this though, since a lot of my free time goes towards my current programming internship course, where we have to program a Terraria clone.

It seems like there's a lot, but be sure that you're structuring it to be human friendly and not search-engine friendly: if you have a lot of content that is semantically related to the cause of your site and those using search queries related to your site stay on it without bouncing, Google uses that as a strong signal that the information is useful.

I think it is relatively hard to find a good balance between a good machine-readable code and a user-friendly website environment, so I'll just take what I get...

Unrelated note: if you intend on building content on your website, do it now. Rumblings are going around that Google is going to be updating the Panda algorithm, which hunts sites down for thin and keyword-optimized content. You could reap some serious benefits if you have really strong content and Google indexes your website. If you haven't done so yet, get all of your content together. If you have access to do so, get into Google's Webmaster tools and take actionable steps to get a sitemap setup so that Google can index it fully and quickly.

No idea what Panda is, we never talked about this anywhere in a lecture. I'll look into it.

Another note: PR takes a long time to build -- don't get discouraged and just push through as best as you can.

I got around to finally starting making this thing around last week or so, just yesterday I finished all the stuff I wanted to achieve. I guess now I have some more ideas to implement, but I need to watch out not to get into trouble with time... I also need to prepare a presentation for this.

EDIT: one more thing, be very careful with how you build links back to your site... it's not an easy process at all.

Again, I'm not a professional, and I'll take what I can get for my mid-ranged level of dedication towards this so far.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

[QUOTE=Xayphon;4327711]


Stick to that up top for sure; this covers everything you'll want to do at a broad scope with on-site SEO for what you know right now. Everything for the most part that you listed in that top part of the post is correct, although the way you worded things about ALT attributes is a bit weird to me in that you typically only use ALT attributes for images in the event that they don't display properly (ALT tags are considered incorrectly used on links according to the HTML standard).

> Use In- and Out-Links wisely, while In-Links from strong websites are worth much more than a dozen weak links

The one I quoted is exceptionally important and you'll likely get information about this, but the power of a link exponentially increases based off of the power of PR. It is often said that a link from a domain that has PR(x) is more powerful than numerous links from PR(x-1). I'm not sure what you've learned about PR and how it's judged, but you'll colloquially see PR referred to as a 10 point scale if you do some research, even though there's a more internally complex formula that is very obviously hidden within Google's patents and other complex documentation, haha.

The content of this site is to provide a small "edutaining" advertisement source about our Major Information Science and Language Technology at our University, with videos and links to related pages (though we are not sure what we can use in our links section due to not having enough time to contact the respective owners). We were thinking about putting Google Scholar links, or any other link that offers books with a previewing function, to the books we have used so far in our lectures and provide a small taste of what the user might get himself into if he decides to actually study our major. Maybe I should also add an In-Depth overview of each of the courses in our major, having more content-heavy things for Google to crawl (Keywords would be e.g. Java, Python, Information Retrieval, Knowledge Organization, Informetrics, Bibliometrics, ...). Not entirely sure if I will have enough time for this though, since a lot of my free time goes towards my current programming internship course, where we have to program a Terraria clone.

This seems like a pretty goddamn tall task given the time situation you've got, my god.

No idea what Panda is, we never talked about this anywhere in a lecture. I'll look into it.

In an academic setting, you don't have to worry all that much about Panda. The reason why I mentioned it to you is because it is one of the prominent Google algorithms that is used in the calculation of search engine rank placements, and with a refresh on the horizon, you might see better results for your page if you get them onto Google's index. It's not extremely vital for the purpose of your project, but it's more of an inside tip, I guess.

I got around to finally starting making this thing around last week or so, just yesterday I finished all the stuff I wanted to achieve. I guess now I have some more ideas to implement, but I need to watch out not to get into trouble with time... I also need to prepare a presentation for this. Again, I'm not a professional, and I'll take what I can get for my mid-ranged level of dedication towards this so far.

Absolutely! You sound like you've got your head on pretty well with most of the basics. Keep doing what you're doing!

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

This seems like a pretty goddamn tall task given the time situation you've got, my god.

I did forget to mention that it's in groups of 4, but it's still quite a load considering I didn't know what Objective Oriented Programming was about half a year ago. (Plus all the other classes I'm taking)

Absolutely! You sound like you've got your head on pretty well with most of the basics. Keep doing what you're doing!

Thanks for the help, I didn't expect this thread to last for that long so I'm quite happy.

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

Hey, a little update

I've searched for the term "Informetricitiy" in Google (clicked on show duplicates as well) and looked for our site, and it's on page 5. Counted every other SEO website from our course that is ahead of us, and it turns out our website ranks 10th out of around 25 SEO project groups

[TC_Halogen]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

Hey, a little update

I've searched for the term "Informetricitiy" in Google (clicked on show duplicates as well) and looked for our site, and it's on page 5. Counted every other SEO website from our course that is ahead of us, and it turns out our website ranks 10th out of around 25 SEO project groups

Not too shabby given how little time it seems you've spent on it! Keep working on that optimization and follow best practices.

Keep working on solidifying your internal site structure, linking, and content flow!

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

rip page 5

I managed to get it indexed

Thanks again to those linking it, I think I can prepare my presentation now

edit: keep your links though, semester's not over yet !!

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

Second last update

Held the presentation today, went ok. I put the main focus on all the problems I've encountered and how I solved them because otherwise my presentation would have been the same as everyone else's in class. I think it was a good decision.

Either way, thanks again to those few people linking it here, you're probably the main reason why the website is ranked 8 on the first page on Google if you look for "informetricity".

Yes, I was surprised at the amount of links I got, but it really shouldn't be considering AJ just has that many posts on FFR xd. I'm just happy I didn't need to make hundreds of spam accounts on millions of random forums or all the main stream stuff (tumblr, facebook, ...) like others, namely the people ranked higher than my website did, just to achieve a higher PageRank. Someone even went to wikipedia and edited random pages with a link to his website...

I'll start working on the documentation really soon which will include information about links and how I constructed the website from start to finish. I'll let you guys know here when you can remove the links.

Thanks again

P.S.: The guy who placed first on Google is a total douchebag and instead of holding a presentation about his website he held a 20 min lecture about how to properly SEO. I legit asked him after the presentation where he knew all that stuff, like having pre made google analytics java script in your source code, and he said he did this before already, rip...

[Rapta]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

does that mean i can remove the link now?

[Xayphon]

Re: [University - Search Engine Optimization] Help With SEO Project

I got a mail from my tutors saying that I passed and will recieve credit, which means you can remove the link.

Thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it !!