What is Digg?30 Comments
- sicc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Or just create a worthwhile site, and it will grow on it's own.
- bdickason, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I know that SEO gets a bad wrap on Digg generally, but it's nice to see a site that doesn't delve into black hat techniques and keeps the readers honest.
- DavlD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Very good advice to novel bloggers. My favorite remark on SEO: "Don’t 'over-optimize'; relax, if search engines required webmasters to heavily optimize, they’d be doing a very bad job".
Focus on content, absolutely useful and original content. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's not at all true. I just helped a guy that 'created a worthwhile site', but most content was in iframes for some crazy reason
Not exactly optimized - pondster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Great article but I totally disagree with:
"Don’t invest in a cheap server that won’t be able to cope with your traffic; don’t build your whole site on free website tools only – if you want to have a high-quality site & server, you need to pay for it"
The best servers are run on FREE software ie. freeBSD (or linux if u prefer) / Apache / mysql / php - All free
and running your site on FREE software is great as well ie. Wordpress / osCommerce / Drupal
So if your really gungho, a decent server with FREE software and a good co-location host and your good to go! - pondster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2armbar, I should of expanded on my comment - my suggestion is build your own server, dont look for a host with apache - but build your server and locate a host that allows co-location that way you have full control over your server and site. I am a developer/sys admin for a host / isp and we have many boxes in our data center that are managed by individuals. Im sure you can find a good cheap host but you will always be at the mercy of them and their issues where if you are capable of building / managing your own server, do so.
I am also not saying go free or go home, If you want to have a successful site then you need to invest, but invest in the right places. Dont go out and buy webserver software (IIS / Tenon) because its not free, but choose the free alternatives that work well and invest where your site will need it, like Photoshop if you cant use GIMP, dreamweaver if you cant code, writers if you cant write and so forth. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"Don’t worry about a page’s meta descriptions, meta keywords and such; your time is better spent creating content"
Wrong wrong wrong wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Meta descriptions, in particular, are very important to good SEO. They do not necessarily help you rank for a particular keyword or phrase, but they do this...
1. Improve Click-Through Rate from the Search Engine (if the "snippet" displays your meta-description, it is a great way to sell your page)
2. Prevent Duplicate Content Issues. If you begin the code of every page with a left-hand navigation bar, you are already endangering your site. Using a unique meta description on each page, along with unique title, will go a long way to preventing duplicate content and, ultimately, Supplemental results.
3. Don't litter, but for Godsake, don't be afraid to say what your website is when you leave a legitimate comment. Don't be afraid to put it in your signature. - bigdaddyforums, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would agree that if you make a good site with good content, half the time SEO doesn't matter. I know sites that are fully supplemental but still get thousands of visitors per day....
Someone mentioned Blog SEO, here's some good tips: http://www.earnersblog.com/category/blog-seo/ - camturner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I wrote about the same topic a while ago, and while I know this is a shameless plug, I think it adds to the conversation...
How to Meet New Friends: Traffic Generation Basics:
http://www.camturner.com/archives/how-to-meet-new-friends-traffic-generation-basics/ - armbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think that it's a good idea to build your own server as well, and this makes for good discussion. I agree with what you're saying, except for the GIMP :), but like I said, I don't think that was quite what the author meant. I think he was referring to cheap hosting, not cheap servers.
- randfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Excellent points, Russ. I think Phillip was writing this for a very "new to SEO" audience, but I'd agree that meta descriptions in particular are a critical part of the marketing of a page's content.
Odd that something on SEO made it to Digg. I thought the Digg editors had promised to ban anything SEO-related back in December. Maybe they just haven't had time to get to it, yet. :) - belmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think everyone wants to create a worthwhile site. However, a lot of people have no idea how to get traffic to it. I just helped out a guy who'd been writing a blog for 6 months and he wasn't even in Google. Nice tips, thanks.
- ashokartgallery, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even if blogging is not only for SEO purpose i always remember this quote...
OK, blogs may die out too…one fine day, but content creation never dies, because “thoughts are things.” ---- Napoleon Hill - Philipp_Lenssen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What I meant with that is don't invest in any of those "free website" tools like Geocities. I use Open Source too and think it's great... but I pay for my server.
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think his point was that if you're building your site (not just installing Drupal/Wordpress), you'll probably need to buy decent software to build it, such as a good image editor. Don't bring up that POS, The Gimp, either. Also, the cheaper server hosting is generally less reliable--it doesn't matter whether it's running Apache or IIS, the hardware it's running on is usually overloaded.
- toprank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That Microsoft url is vintage. However, SEO fundamentals that were true in the nineties are still true today.
- se7en11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The simplest thing that I've found that works is to add descriptive page titles. Worry less about people knowing your blog, or company name and use what the page is about.
For example, our company recently took over the work on a small companies web site that had a simple search with a just over 10,000 products. By simply adding the titles and authors on each of the page titles, we nearly tripled our traffic from search engines. - csarven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0For those interested in optimizing a site's internal structure, check this article out instead (more comprehensive):
http://digg.com/tech_news/Internal_SEO_Guidelines - csarven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I agree. Perhaps meta keywords can be left alone since the search engine indexers have their own way of determining the relevancy of a document instead of trusting what the author claims it be.
Meta description on the other hand is quite important (along with page title) as they show up on SERPs.
@randfish:
I agree as well. I was surprised to see this article make it to digg's frontpage. Having personally written one myself fairly recent on internal seo guidelines, I couldn't understand how this article made it but mine didn't. Any input appreciated. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I would have to agree and disagree. Creating a quality resource with useful content is paramount, but it hasn't helped us avoid google hell. :/ We're dying a slow death over here because of Google's supplemental results, and their refusal to look at our specific situation.
Right now my 1,350 relevant articles are getting a massive 300 clicks a day from google.. And our site is an authority on adult sites, and has been nominated for numerous industry awards.. I'll post my link here, you can see for yourself we have an amazing site.. I'd hazard to guess it's one of the best looking adult sites you've seen.
http://www.adultsitesurfer.com (18+ NSFW) - freegovernator, on 02/02/2009, -0/+0These guys have a great seo blog that talks about search engine ranking, online marketing, and seo tools
http://www.yellowseo.com/blog - Webnauts, on 12/13/2007, -0/+0Great intro!
- skwurl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Totally agree.
- sambo357, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Do not use shared OS hosting, ever. I have found the min quality hosting for a blog is $20 / mo. Anything less than that is most likely crap. Go for newer technology like Xen. With a shared OS you will be hacked/defaced sooner or later. Also, shared OS hosts can oversell EVERYTHING to includes bandwidth, disk-space, memory, CPU, etc. . . Absolutely nothing is dedicated for your use on a shared OS. With a Xen host you at least get dedicated memory and the CPU is divided in proportion to your share of memory. Memory and CPU time are key if you want long running processes with fcgi (Rails). Even php sucked on my old shared host. They couldn't figure out exactly how to run php5 and php4 for like a year. That and the mysql access had connection limits. WTF??? Buy a Xen account if you value your sanity.
- davedekker, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3or put Kevin Rose, and Apple in the site... somehow it makes it to the front of digg even if its gibberish...
- markr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1What is the site then? - if it's worthwhile then I'm interested in seeing it!
- bradshawz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I actually found this Microsoft site surprisingly helpful and a bit more detailed than the considered site: http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm
- onreact, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Great introduction. Everyone new to SEO should bookmark it!
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