Search Engine Optimization

practice/service for improving the ranking of one's own pages in (public) Search Engine-s. aka SEO.

a Zero-Sum game

If you want to check your ranking, try tools like http://www.top25web.com/cgi-bin/report.cgi |this Practices:

• figure out what words apply to you that people actually search for

• use those keywords you want to get found for!

  • use them more often per page, and closer to the top of the page?

• using them in the title tag is even better

• using them in MetaTag-s used to help, but Google and increasingly other sites ignore those tags now since they were mis-used by SEO spammers.

  • likewise some people used to use irrelevant-but-popular words in their documents with HTML tags to white them out, so humans wouldn't see them but Search Engine-s would. The engines got smarter.

• supposedly using such words in filenames, hyphen-separated, works for Google. But for how long?

• update/add-to your site more often

• for Google, get other people to link to you, by being noteworthy! see Hugh MacLeod

Services: you pay them to:

• advise on tweaking content and tags for your site

• to get other people to link to you

• to run phony sites to link to you

Anil Dash kicked butt in a Search EngineOptimization contest. My suggestions? Write good content. Develop an audience that cares about what you're doing. Do something that's relevant to people in your field.

warning page on Google

• note confirming one SEO company penalized

Brett Tabke note from 2002.