Java Ranch - SEO exercise

[Vikas Kapoor]

I have some confusion regarding SEO stuff which is going on right now in JR. If somebody can clarify.

- Paul and other members are working on SEO so that JR website comes at the top (or first few results) while searching. Once that happens site would have more traffic. That would lead to more work for moderators. Moderators are volunteers. Now, Couple of months before someone mentioned that JR has X thousand of unique users/month and X milions of hits/month. Is JR doing SEO because the traffic went down or something?

- I have came across one video related to SEO (google channel on youtube ) where that guy (from google) mentioned that "do not worry about SEO just concentrate on your web site contents and it will automatically come at the top". I am just wondering does Wikipedia do SEO too? As it does not have any specific domain though it comes at the top (more often) for many search terms. How does SEO logic fit for Wikipedia?

PS :- I did not use 'We' anywhere because there is no participation from my side but that does not mean I do not consider myself part of this community.

[Henry Wong]

One way to think of it is like Feng Shui. On the surface it looks like superstition. However, it has it basis on common sense. For example, the living room should face south because that gets the most sunlight.

SEO does seem to be bunk, with the goal to get higher ratings, but it too seems to have some common sense. And while content is king, there is no harm is giving a more pleasant experience too.

Henry

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Vikas Kapoor wrote:Now, Couple of months before someone mentioned that JR has X thousand of unique users/month and X milions of hits/month. Is JR doing SEO because the traffic went down or something?

It hasn't gone down. At least not noticeably. I look at the results once a quarter and hadn't noticed a drop. I think we just realized we could do better.

And we've been on this software long enough now to be able to do some "less critical" activities.

[paul wheaton]

I think some of our traffic has slipped. I think other organizations - professional sites where everybody is paid to maintain it - have been working the seo aspect and we haven't. So we're trying to catch up a little.

(mmmm ..... catchup)

[kev grant]

Henry Wong wrote:
SEO does seem to be bunk, with the goal to get higher ratings, but it too seems to have some common sense.

seo is generally common sense plus sorting out shoddy web design by developers who should know better.

Henry Wong wrote:
and while content is king, there is no harm is giving a more pleasant experience too.

Henry

this is the most misunderstood cliche in the whole seo world. do not ever believe that content with no promotion is king, it is not, and will languish way too far down in the charts to ever see the light of day.

what Google actually mean by that phrase is that if your content is good enough, then enough people will link to it naturally to make it rank well.

and its utter b*****ks for 99.9999999% of sites out there.

anyone setting up a business website that needs to sell online for their business viability and listening to Google's propaganda will be bust in 6 months or forced onto spending a fortune on Adwords (Google's PRIME PURPOSE remember)

for the cost of 4-6 months worth of adwords a good SEO company can often rank a website for those terms organically, on an ongoing basis. whereas adwords stop the moment your budget does.

seo for business these days is not optional, it is essential or youre just one of the also-rans before you even start.