Blind Ape Seo

At 1 click without any impressions… Man… I wonder how this will scale

Javascript, CSS, PHP…you name it. All can be found here.

I just stumbled across SeoMike’s take on Google’s CSEs.

While the article I wrote about using Google’s Custom Search Engines is still valid, here are some more points to ponder.

Pattern limits and the way around them

A normal CSE has a 500 entry limit for every contributor. That means you can add 500 URL patterns. Those patterns might be one page, a site or the subtraction of a site. (Yes, subtractions count against the limit)

Needless to say, you might run into this limit easily, especially with the CSE directory I have outlined in my earlier post.

Possible Solutions

• Add more contibutors to your CSEs, thus lifting the limit.
• Use a hosted CSE.

The CSE creation process is tedious

Well, yes. Lots of clicking and copy and paste does not make this a nice experience

Possible Solutions

• Use the XML specification to create your CSE.

…..

How can I react to a user coming from a Search Engine?

There is no “normal” way to do this with a CSE.

Possible solution

• Using the Hosted CSE approach, you can use dynamic variables to cater to your visitors. This is outlined in the Custom Search documentation provided by google.

To make this short(er):

Host the CSE and use the Google CSE XML to create your search engine.

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To measure the effects of volume, I am adding volume (and SE readable content) to 3 sites of mine.

Two blogs and 1 content site.

The blogs yould be updated more often and the content site was (is) in a miserable state.

I am setting the monthly Adsense and Visitor averages from 17th of July to 17th of August as absolute zero.

At the end of one month you will see a pretty graph showing the changes. This will be updated one month later as well.

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PS: Someone over at wickedfire complained that “content should be user readable, not SE readable”… well, next time read more carefully. What I wanted to point out was the fallacy of only user readable content (images, flash, navigation, etc..)

Coincidentally, the SE-readable content (text, text, text) turns out to be user-readable as well. What a nice surprise, eh?

Everyone in the industry knows the old adage

“Content is King” .

Well, for this to hold true, let me add a bit to it:

Search engine readable content is king

Sadly, this does not include your images (see my posts on how to change that here and here) or your flash games or your pretty videos.

It DOES however include everything you can do to describe them.
Working on that will bring you good and stable Search Engine traffic and is always on my list for SEO techniques.

Why would this be valuable?

For this article, I will present 1 example for a type of site that can make use of that.

Flash Game Arcades

Seriously almost NONE of them provide a written, clearly readable description of their games.

If this is you, here is a small calculation.
Say you have 200 hand-picked games (small, I know) and you provide only the title at about roughly 3 words per game.
Leaving all the navigational gibberisch aside, that leaves 3 words per game that a search engine can find and rate.
Not even necessary to mention that those 3 words won’t help a lot, cause they are ALL over the net, on every site that has that game. (600 for your WHOLE site)
If you just write a 50 word description for the game, you will have (50+3*200) 10600 words.
Now, most of those will probably not be relevant, but the visibility of your content will be much, much improved.

A lot of work? Yes.
Worth it? You bet.

Aside from the increased SE visibility, you will also differentiate your site from the pack and give valuable information to your users.
Hey, they might even bookmark your site because they like the snide comments and cheat codes you provide.
If you use adsense or another “intelligent” ad system, this will help targeting.

Take this to other endeavors and you’ll see immediate advantages over a lot of the competition.

Search engine readable content is king

I still can not believe how many webmasters ignore this.

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I just read the article on doshdosh about volume blogging.

Although I tend to agree with some of the comments, stating that quality is key and volume blogging might also fit some blogs more than others, it has been my experience that volume will indeed drive traffic.

That said, the old simian should get to writing some more articles.

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For those of you who are tired of bickering around with Excel, come along and learn some PHP.

http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/627

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A new kind of link can be found over at http://www.scrollovers.com/

Needs Javascript, but might be a nice eyecatcher for some sites.

Enjoy.
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