Actually, I'm not instructing--I'm asking. SEO is something very new to me. It’s funny, you spend years working on B2C web sites, and many of the changes requested by the marketing group revolved around SEO--somehow, very little sunk in. Anyway, I've been fumbling through the process, trying to get my restaurant guide website up to snuff. Fortunately, there are resources available.
A co-worker and friend of mine has a great mountain bike trail site and I've learned quite a bit from his efforts. Primarily, using URL re-writing to allow search engines to process dynamic pages easily, as well as getting some important keywords into the URL. Apparently search engine bots weight this heavily.
Also, I've subscribed to a service to submit my website to several directories. This creates a pool of back links, which search engines use to determine the value of a website. I've slowly seen my Google page rank jump from zero to a whopping one.
A really cool website that I found on Chris Brogan's blog is the Website Grader from Hubspot They have a tool that analyzes your site's content, features, back links, and a whole bunch of other factors, and then give it a grade. I use this thing every couple of days and try work off their recommendations. I've grown my grade from 55 to 88. I've also created Facebook and Myspace pages.
What should I do next? My Google ranking is growing, but I can't seem to make much progress in Yahoo or MSN. I'd love to hear any advice.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Watching Data Evolve
Is it possible to say "I told you so" to yourself.
When I launched my new restaurant rating site about 2 and a half months ago, I made a decision. I decided to allow users to participate in the site without creating an account or logging in. This was calculated; The site will only come alive and be successful if users participate, so I wanted them to be able to interact without the hurdle of having to create an account. To give them value while asking for little in return. The same reason people can rate a restaurant or menu item without having to write about it.
Of course, this openness has an interesting side effect. I'm finding that some folks are rating restaurants with 10s across the board (the restaurant owners perhaps?). Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind. I'm just glad people are beginning to participate. Of course, this isn't exactly an unbiased view of an establishment's fare.
Eventually, I will implement an IMDB style mechanism so the ratings are only displayed when multiple ratings are collected. For now, thought...it's a free-for-all. It's actually a good play by the owners. A top-ten rated dish for a city appears on the home page giving a little extra exposure.
What do you think? Will people pass the site by if the ratings are obviously skewed? Should I do something to stop this at the risk of collecting less data? What would you do?
When I launched my new restaurant rating site about 2 and a half months ago, I made a decision. I decided to allow users to participate in the site without creating an account or logging in. This was calculated; The site will only come alive and be successful if users participate, so I wanted them to be able to interact without the hurdle of having to create an account. To give them value while asking for little in return. The same reason people can rate a restaurant or menu item without having to write about it.
Of course, this openness has an interesting side effect. I'm finding that some folks are rating restaurants with 10s across the board (the restaurant owners perhaps?). Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind. I'm just glad people are beginning to participate. Of course, this isn't exactly an unbiased view of an establishment's fare.
Eventually, I will implement an IMDB style mechanism so the ratings are only displayed when multiple ratings are collected. For now, thought...it's a free-for-all. It's actually a good play by the owners. A top-ten rated dish for a city appears on the home page giving a little extra exposure.
What do you think? Will people pass the site by if the ratings are obviously skewed? Should I do something to stop this at the risk of collecting less data? What would you do?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)