SEO is kind of a black art of the Intertubes. The idea is that you try to have the right kind of content and links to your site so it appears high up on Google searches for certain terms.
While I think a lot of it is bullshit, since the point of a search engine is to give you relevant results that aren't likely to be gamed, there are a number of things you can do to at least give you a boost. In the last few months that I worked at ICOM, I was lucky enough to get some of those basics down as described by a consulting company. I even got to write a framework that made it somewhat easier to change certain SEO factors quickly.
I also tried to apply a lot of what I learned to CoasterBuzz when I rebuilt it last fall. I figured I'd try to chase down "roller coasters" on Google and see what happened, because the site wasn't even on the radar at the time. Initially, it surfaced in the first page of results, but it only lasted a few days before drifting into the 40's or higher in terms of rank.
I spent a lot of time using Google's Webmaster tools to see how the machines were seeing the site, but I couldn't make all of the compromises it suggested. Ultimately the site still has to be useful to humans first, Google second. And the other thing that seemed to be hurting it was that the content changes constantly, something we had noticed previously on PointBuzz as well.
At some point last week, Google did a refresh of its data and the home page climbed to a page rank of 5, which is up from 4, and it started showing on the first page of results for "roller coasters." I've seen it in the 5th and 6th position. Not bad coming from the depths last year.
But what good is that, exactly? It's fun for bragging rights, I suppose, but it's not like I've seen any huge jump in traffic. Actually, I have seen a huge jump in traffic, but that's because of the timing of the season. That happens every year. Drilling down for visitors who searched for "roller coasters," there are only between 0 and 5 people arriving that way per day.
As it turns out, running a site that doesn't sell anything (not exactly, anyway), your best bet for traffic remains delivering solid content and good community. That's been my standard for nine years, and it has worked remarkably well for me. It still turns out that it's what people want the most, not a lot of goofy features that I think about. Although, I'd still like to add some goofy features now and then. :)
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