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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Remember your happy face. He's probably just inexperienced, not evil. Jehochman (^Talk/_Contrib) 18:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

One requires the other IMO. SEO is for the most part a number of specific things you have "to do". Those things you should do and the priority of them are changing constantly, because of the always changing algorithms and other methods used by search engine to collect, aggregate, return and rank references to websites on the internet in their search result pages. I believe that what you have in mind is what is called "Search Engine Marketing". SEO might not be as technically as it used to be and gets better integrated into other internet marketing strategies and affords by webmasters, but at it's core is it nothing else then "Do this" and "do it this much" and "do it this way" for optimal results. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 10:10, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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 The information in the directory (at least in many of the obsolete categories) is out of date and some does not even exist any longer.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).[reply]

• 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)[reply]

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.

Did I miss the coverage of this in the article? What is this, entertainment for Wikipedians? Wolfline: Did you check first how much traffic this talk page gets, who is coming here, how long the content will stay on the page before being move to the archive and if this page and other archive pages are indexed by Search Engines such as Google at all? No? mmmh... --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 10:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Okay, when did you write that? 10 years ago? You sound like that there are as diverse choices, even initial choices as there used to be back in the days when the SE landscape looked a bit dufferent than today.

"on which search engine they are trying to get high ranking or visiblity",

"Google" and then everything else that makes the time spent on it worthwhile. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 10:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Scraping the SE results? Sure, SE's love that and help you with support in case you run into some issue or have some question. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 10:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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.

good luck finding V3.5. But this narrows down the probable time window down of when the article was written, between March 15, 2005 and September 12, 2005 . From the sound of it, would I gesss early 2005 rather than towards the end in september. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 10:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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 Wolfline 20:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

I took the liberty to remove the link to the site in this "article", even with nofollow in place.

Hey Wolfline, are you offering 2005 SEO retro packages? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 10:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Header: Getting into search engines' databases has a link to a Blogspot blog. I don't think this is appropriate!217.194.34.103 12:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)jasonjnoble[reply]

Then delete it. If that is the case, it may be sneaky vandalism. Jehochman (^talk/_contrib) 13:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Michael, there was a specific request from one of the featured article reviewers to replace "some experts" with a specific list of names, with a source. That's what was done, and it represents the consensus. You've now twice reverted against the consensus. Please don't make the same edit twice without discussing first. I will gladly discuss this with you. If we can't substantiate the statement with names and a source, we may have to remove the statement completely. See WP:WEASEL. Jehochman ^Talk 18:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any leading non-profit organizations related to SEO we could cite instead of a collection of people? But, I say, if it's sourced, keep it in. If we don't name names, we have to take it out. --Ceas webmaster 19:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The way it is now is the way it started. AnonEMouse requested naming names to satisfy WP:WEASEL. I complied. Now another editor comes along and requests the opposite. I'm caught in the middle and could be happy either way. Which is best? My inclination is to follow AnonEMouse since he seems to be more familiar with Wikipedia policy. Jehochman ^Talk 19:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article is about Search Engine Optimization. Mentioning SEO experts is par for the course. Our article on Chess mentions dozens of important chess players, our article on Baseball mentions important baseball players, our article on Physics mentions important physicists. That's beside the WP:WEASEL point that we shouldn't just say "Some SEOs" or even "Many SEOs", since that naturally begs the question - "like whom?" We should say whom. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 20:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do you quantify something that was not exactly measured but becomes apparent if you look to places where it is debated or an opinion is expressed without the option to discuss it? If you look at lets say 100 places and 95 support it and 5 do not. How do you refer to either of the two things. You can't refer to all 100 to enforce "some" if you are referring to the 5 and "many" if you are referring to the 95. Well you could refer to all the 100, but you do that with a few of such cases and Dmoz Editors might become jealous of your collection of links (that's meant as a joke). Seriously, how do you solve that problem, if you can't find a source that did the aggregation and quantification for you (by counting the opinions or doing a survey)? A lot of people (WEASEL) don't like to have an accident. Does there exist a reliable statistic or survey that confirms that? Probably not. That makes it tough to write about safety features and why they were developed. It created jobs, I am sure that there is a statistic that shows that. Does this make sense? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 20:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

nope. --Rebent 20:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We are talking about emotions and believes here, because the problem with the subject is that the facts are not known to the public in a lot of cases. "Your guess is as good as mine." is a saying that fits the description. If a lot of people have the same feeling or believe (based on incomplete facts), chances are good that it is true. This can not be applied to everything, but I think it can be applied to things that are scientific to some degree and only the "last few pieces" of facts are missing and have to be replaced by believes and feelings. Without an acknowledged genius or guru available is it pretty inaccurate if you pick only a few people's believes and feelings. You probably end up picking the ones that feel and believe as you do. Does this make sense? :) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 20:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These happen to be four SEOs who have Wikipedia pages, some even tested by AfD. I believe they are clearly notable, and probably the most prominent names in the industry. If somebody wants to change the names, the burden should be on them to come up with a justification. Deleting the names was wrong, probably POV pushing, and could be reverted if we have a consensus. I am not going to revert Michael Martinez again myself, but another editor could. Jehochman ^Talk 21:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Including the names is wrong for the very same reason so many other SEOs have been deleted from various articles. Whether they have Wikipedia articles is really not germaine to the issue. These people are no more expert in SEO than anyone else who runs a popular blog or forum and they certainly don't publish the results of "controlled experiments". I've been involved with the SEO world since 1998 and I have yet to come across anyone who publishes credible research on the topic. You're asking the Wikipedia community to promote this article to featured status and you're dropping in names on the basis of who has a Wikipedia article. Sorry, Jonathan, but that doesn't qualify anyone (in my opinion) to be deemed representative of the SEO community.

Wikipedia is loaded with biased, misleading content as it is. Choosing names on the basis of who won the Wikipedia Celebrity Contest doesn't improve the quality of an article that still has errors of fact.Michael Martinez 21:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

comment'. I have to agree with Michael Martinez regarding the use of names in this context. They are irrelevant and replaceable. You can find the voices out there and then make up your own mind or own research. I was for this reason argueing about the WP:WEASEL critism and that there are cases where general quanitifications like "some", "few", "many" or "most" are a better choice than names that mean nothing. If a statistic or survey result can be found to support the statement, perfect, use it. Only reliable and representative statistics and surveys though. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 08:56, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please sign your posts on talk pages. Also, avoid using multiple account identities in the same discussion as that could be construed as sock puppetry. Jehochman ^Talk 21:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jonathan, please give me a little credit for knowing how to do the basics. My boss came by and wanted to talk so I closed the browser window.

Please focus on the issues and stop nit-picking over small stuff. Michael Martinez 21:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Let's not nit pick. I've spent a lot of time going over this article with several editors who have a huge amount of experience with Wikipedia. Do you want to help improve the article? You've made edits that went against a consensus that was carefully developed, including this specific issue of naming SEOs. There are many ways to improve this article, and there are related articles such as Internet marketing that are in desperate need of attention. If you want to suggest changes or make edits, that's fine, but please don't cause disruption just to make a point. Jehochman ^Talk 22:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who has contributed to this article and related topics in the past, I appreciate the amount of time and effort you have invested, Jonathan. However, the consensus of Wikipedians means nothing with respect to accuracy and bias. It could fairly be said that you and I have implemented extreme bias in the SEO article because we have cleaned out alternative points of view that you and I know are not sensible.

In my opinion, the article is too brief and as written relies too much on sweeping generalizations. But the reason why I picked on the four names is the lack of standards in our industry. The article does not even address the issue. Therefore, to hold forth anyone as an expert or authority is misleading. There are no authorities in the industry. For certain related topics, such as Google's quality guidelines, people like Matt Cutts are certainly highly authoritative. For documenting the history of the field, Danny Sullivan is a very credible source of information. Even Barry Schwartz is a very credible source of information with respect to the history of popular topics in the SEO discussion communities.

But I draw the line there. No one else needs to be mentioned, certainly not in the context provided. Just consider for a moment the negative impact additional names will have on the way the article will be perceived. People will say it's extremely biased toward "your friends" -- a very common complaint made about who gets selected for certain SEO events. There are no exceptional qualifications that people like Aaron Wall, Jill Whalen, and Rand Fishkin bring to the table. They blog. They run SEO communities. Big deal. A lot of other people do, too.

Our industry has no universally accepted certifications of quality. No one has earned the right to be used in a feature article as an example of "notable" SEO this or that. I guarantee you that Aaron, Rand, and Jill are not cutting edge SEO theorists. They certainly don't publish credible research results. I have no objection to the article saying that many SEOs share their opinions through newsletters, white papers, blogs, forums, and freelance artilces but I cannot accept any sweeping generalizations about people who are chosen because they have Wikipedia pages or because they may be popular. That's a total disservice to the SEO community and to the Wikipedia community, which is struggling with a huge credibility issue.Michael Martinez 02:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Michael, I'm willing to hear a better suggestion. Until then, we have to live with the imperfections of both the SEO community and Wikipedia consensus and "popularity contests" (I assume you mean Wikipedia:Notability). It's like arguing whether Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth or Pete Rose or Ty Cobb should be mentioned in the Baseball article. Each have their boosters and their detractors, we can probably have a fine article without mentioning any one of the (it looks like we don't mention Rose right now for example), but we really can't live without mentioning any of them. The perfect is the enemy of the good - Voltaire. If you can make it better, do so. If you can find SEOs that are somehow even more worthy of mention by objective criteria, mention them as well or instead. Just deleting all the names because you can't find better ones, makes it worse. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 16:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am enjoying this discussion, so let's see if it goes somewhere productive. Here are some possible choices for namable SEOs.

We've covered the first, second and third ranking blogs, and the top two ranking experts (evidence that they know their stuff), plus Danny, who is considered the godfather of this industry. If you want to name others, please make a list with evidence. Jehochman ^Talk 16:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Michael, you think SEO is a messy industry? Affiliate marketing is worse and "no universally accepted certifications of quality" is only one of the smaller issues there. Anyhow, that can't be changed, but is an important point. I would suggest to add a paragraph to the article that explains the state of the industry to make sure that readers will be able to see the remaining content of the article in the right context. I did that in the affiliate marketing article. It's not perfect, but explains some of the other things pretty well. It also allows the addition of some names, if you can't do without, without to much problems that those names will be credited with something they should not be credited for. This kind of "disclaimer" might be something that could be stardardized, because SEO and Affiliate marketing are not the only industries that lack standards, regulations, organization and generally accepted certifications.--roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:13, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

nofollow is not mentioned anywhere. I thought it was. No need to go into full details since I extended the article to nofollow quite a bit. Any comments? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 05:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We could expand the article to discuss ways of controlling indexing, and then mention nofollow, and robots.txt briefly. Jehochman ^Talk 06:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

another option would be to do something like I did at the affiliate marketing article. See the "see also" section. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 08:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just extended and structured the "see also" section of the article where I also included the robots.txt, meta elements and nofollow amoung a bunch of other articles that I believe to be relevant. You might be able to think of more, but those were the ones I could think of, right out of my head. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 11:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Both of these article have been nominated for deletion. Please consider volunteering your time to make improvements. Jehochman ^Talk 06:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article seems to be biased towards PC search, with Mobile Search being completely ignored. Mathiastck 15:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add mobile search to the article using appropriate references. Jehochman ^Talk 22:23, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to feature this article on the main page, but it lacks a copyleft image. I leave it up to your collective imaginations to think of a suitable copyleft image. Raul654 04:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We'll come up with something, even if we have to convince somebody to donate an image. GFDL works too, eh. Jehochman ^Talk 05:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like the sort of topic that might benefit from a diagram or two.--Pharos 07:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree. The challenge is that the diagram would have to be semi-legible at 100px wide for it to be useful on the main page. Jehochman ^Talk 12:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In hacking, "black hat" always implies unethical, and it sounds suspiciously self-serving of that source to say the word doesn't carry the same meaning in the SEO context. Black hat SEO attempts to pollute search engine indexes to give less valuable results, for the sake of personal gain. If left unchecked it can make searches almost useless. It's pretty clearly unethical behavior by my lights, and I don't like the way this article seems to minimize it. First, by not mentioning in the lead (in my circles, "SEO" is often a shorthand for spammy tactics), and then by claiming it's not so much unethical as a difference in "business model". Yeah, in the same way that insider trading and options backdating is a different "business model" in the financial industry. I edited the lead to mention spamdexing and removed the line claiming it's not unethical. Redquark 02:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I've edited for brevity to prevent the lead from growing too long. Jehochman ^Hablar 03:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I found this sentence rather interesting, considering this is a featured article. "Human visitors"? As opposed to what? I don't think there are many animals or aliens visiting search engines. Just something I thought I should point out. I'll leave it to up to other people whether or not they want to edit it, as it is a minor detail. --Mathew Williams 09:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bots are visitors too. They aren't human. Jehochman

Hablar 10:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Like User:Jehochman says, humans aren't the only things that browse the internet. See Web crawler and Internet bot, for example.--Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 11:10, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted to the last good version before an editor added some diagrams. Problems with the diagrams include:

1. Improper licenses. The images contain a copyright notice.
2. Unsourced statements. Controversial assertions are presented as fact, and aren't supported by a reliable source.

Feel free to discuss, but please do not re-add these materials until there is a consensus. Jehochman ^Hablar 05:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made the addition below, after spending a considerable amount of time gathering the data involved in this research. It is an important survey for the international section that can be informative to both international companies considering SEO and for compines wishing to target these markets and wanting some cold hard data to either justify it or not. Please let me know if you can come up with better wording or if you believe the referenced article should have more detail.

As a result, an increasing number of international companies are contacting U.S. based firms to help market their services or products.[45]

Semnews 06:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC) semnews[reply]

Your own blog doesn't meet Wikipedia's requirement for verifiability. I suggest you publish this study in a third party journal, and then post a link to it on this talk page. - Jehochman ^Talk 14:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers." This does not exclude my information from inclusion." ClickZ footnote 49 and many other sites do not meet this guideline. The mere fact that it is not in a university Journal does not make this study unverifiable. I have marketed websites for over ten years back before Goto changed its name to overture. I have data backing up the study and all information is verifiable. Did I have PWHC audit the information? No, of course not, but the fact that it is my own blog does not take away the credibility or verifiability of the study. I am happy to publish more of the much of the actual data used in the study if you believe this to be necessary. However, unless thre are objections from other members of the wiki community over the next few days, then I will and have every right to publish this information on the page.

Semnews 22:34, 24 August 2007 (UTC)Semnews[reply]

It's a conflict of interest to add links to one's own work into Wikipedia, especially when others are opposed. I strongly recommend that you avoid doing that. - Jehochman ^Talk 00:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind that this is a featured article, and that the references have been reviewed extensively. Wikipedia doesn't treat paper references as more valuable than online sources. The distinction between your own site and ClickZ is that ClickZ has editorial staff who review submissions and decide what to publish. They also provide independent fact checking. Really, believe me, your best course of action is to publish your study on a third party site that has editorial review. Then I'd be happy for somebody (but not the author) to cite your study as a source. I might even cite it myself. - Jehochman ^Talk 11:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the advice. That sounds fair enough. I understand the concerns with credibility. Do you have suggestions on where I might be able to publish the information? One problem is that I do not want the study on my own site to be viewed as duplicate content by the search engines. Thank you for the guidance.

Semnews 19:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)semnews[reply]

I would try some of the sources listed in the article, such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, and WebProNews. As for duplicate content, I wouldn't worry about it. You want to get your name out there and spread your ideas. It's not necessary to drive people to your own site. If they see that you've written a useful article or study, that will help you more. Best wishes - Jehochman ^Talk 20:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SEMPO does it need to be there?ceo 10:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's the leading SEO professional organization. Yes, I think it belongs, even though I don't particularly like them. I grudgingly pay my membership dues. - Jehochman ^Talk 14:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are many more similar organizations. But, I think it is not good to include them. It will be a problem adding all of those. It is like authorizing unnecessary importance. Again Paid membership is always a problem. ceo 09:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, SEMPO is the organization within this industry that meets Wikipedia's notability requirement. If any others qualify and have articles, they can be listed too. SEMPO operates worldwide too. - Jehochman ^Talk 13:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Listings exist in directories. Search engines have rankings. We should change the language to be more accurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gabriel Goldenberg (talk • contribs) 19:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I made a few adjustments to the article. Btw. search engines have indexes that either include or not include content from your site. That is the equivalent of a "listing" in a directory. search engines and directories both have rankings (directories rank often simply alphabetically, but some rank also by importance or popularity). Just FYI :) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]