[thelist] More on Search Engines

[Diane Soini]

On Wednesday, December 10, 2003, at 04:27 AM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:

> when it comes to search engine ranking, imo, it comes down to the same 
> old
> thing that's the draw for real-live viewers, content, content, content.
> look at evolt.org.  zero search engine promotion.  yet there are 
> numerous
> search terms that we come up in the top 5 results.

I have to agree, but not because I have any special knowledge. I had no 
idea Google was making any kind of change. I recently redesigned my 
personal web site. I took special care to ensure that it was nearly 
100% navigable in a text-only browser. (It almost looks better in a 
text only browser.)  I put good, descriptive titles on every page, put 
relevant and keyword/description tags on most pages (relevant as in 
they weren't designed with SEO in mind, they simply describe the page), 
used <h1> tags, and the like etc. Nothing else. I do have the advantage 
that the subject matter is narrow and the content is good (according to 
people who email me), however I see that I come up much higher on 
Google than I did before with zero effort on my part. Put in something 
even quite generic like "sierra club hikes" and I'm number one. You'd 
think sierraclub.org would be number one for that. And I'm in a small 
town.

Merry Christmas to me!

D