Comments on: Climate Progress is #1, but why?

By: Daniel Haran

Daniel Haran — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:16:14 +0000

Yikes - speaking of search engine optimization: that link to the original article is broken

# of people linking to you will increase pagerank. having the keywords in the URL is probably useful because more people click on the search result.

I’ll add that linking to other articles helps ’situate’ your article in the broader conversation and marks you as more authoritative. Rather than a dead end, it makes your page more useful as a starting point for someone researching the topic.

This is all mostly voodoo though: only the google engineers know what the algos really do. The best strategy is just to keep writing great focused content that people will want to link to and read.

Congratulations on being #1. Is there heavy search traffic on that term?

By: Jill B

Jill B — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:06:32 +0000

Well, the blog is #12 now on Google. The list you were given (#1-4) is pretty accurate for Google, in my experience. But each search engine is different.

In the end, the content, the URL and the readers matter - both for usefulness and ranking, so keep up the good posts.

By: paulm

paulm — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:17:10 +0000

In fact if you goggle :

You are still king.

The term expert associated with Palin does not seem to be common on the internet (…mmm ), therefore you float to the top when one does a search with these terms.

Of course it could just be the guys at Google giving it a boost because you are associating Palin and Pork.

By: Bunty

Bunty — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:28:01 +0000

It could just be a bit of a natural Google Bomb effect.

Caused by people linking to your article, using the text: Palin && ‘energy expert’.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:39:50 +0000

By now I expec6t the algorithm is so complex that not even the Google engineeers understand what it does.

Peter Norvig has a new motto: “Don’t do original work, search!”

By: Kathy Nockels

Kathy Nockels — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:17:08 +0000

Good job! I had read it here first, but in honor of the #1 spot and because I like “Truth Be Told” I read it again on google

By: Earl Killian

Earl Killian — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:07:53 +0000

When the Climate Progress Plug-in hybrid FAQ went live, it quickly became #1 if you searched for it. Now it is only #3. Perhaps timeliness is a factor?

By: Ronald

Ronald — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:05:52 +0000

When you plug in ‘Palin earmark expert’, Climate Progress comes first and most.

By: Ed Bachta

Ed Bachta — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:28:24 +0000

Even SEO experts admit to not knowing exactly how Google indexing works. From what I’ve learned I would say that the major factors would be having the keywords in the page title and URL, and perhaps the frequency with which they appear in the article. The number of links in helps as well, as does having relevant links out.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:22:43 +0000

The ‘Palin energy expert’ and ‘Palin eramark expert’ aren’t that hard. It’s when you can get somebodies name next to a word that takes some work. I remember some groups trying to get ‘G. Bush’ to come up when someone typed in ‘failure’ or ‘absolute failure.’ Some groups have tried to get Hillary Clinton to come up with other words (you can imagine.)

The search engines are written to try to avoid getting gamed by people with other motives, but it can make a real difference to a business or other program to get their website bumped up from 100 to top 10.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:46:59 +0000

The thing that makes my posts pop up on google the most is keywords in the title that match the search term. I can’t tell what the second thing is exactly but the keywords in the post seem to mean less than the text in the post. I try to duplicate my title string in the post as well and this seems to help.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:46:14 +0000

Ed Bachta — SEO?