Search Engine Optimization - I need your help

[Mike1]

Ah, I see you're beginning to catch the method to my madness. Why yes, the reason I moved some links off the NavBar and into the Quick Links dropdown, was so I could fit some more links into their place.


See that new link, called Tags?

If you were to click on that link, you would be whisked away (almost as if by magic) to a new page -


This is the tags page and located in the center is a tag cloud.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Will the other members of the Mod Squad please confine Panache to his seat? And stuff a piece of tartan in his mouth, so he'll not be interrupting again!

See the keywords in the tag cloud? As I mentioned earlier, I tagged a handful of posts. Someone was getting a new kilt in Ancient Cameron of Erracht tartan from the Frugal Corner. In another thread, someone was talking about sgian dubhs. In yet another, The Wizard was talking about X Marks tartan and making kilts.

The Thread Tags script could see that I only entered the word 'sgian dubh' once, so that font is rather small. The phrase is a keyword, but it doesn't have much "weight"

Now look at the words 'kilt' and 'x marks'. They have been tagged in a couple of threads, so that font is larger and the words carry more "weight".

And the word 'tartan' was tagged in 3 or 4 threads, so it is even heavier yet.

(Before I forget, in my tyrannical, jack-booted omnipotence, I can sometimes see some things on the forum that mere mortals cannot see. When you look at the tag cloud, you will not see all those X's. I have the incredicle power to smite keywords that are inappropriate, by clicking on the X next to a word.)

OK, someone please loosen Panache's gag, he's going to choke to death, laughing the way he is.

Now, it's time to start pulling all this together.

[Mike1]

When we were discussing the addition of the Thread Tag system, Panache asked what the real bonus would be. I used the analogy of a gold prospector.

If you want to prospect gold, you have some options. You can go to a likely river and start panning for dust and maybe even a small speck nugget. Or, you can go to a gold mine, with an exposed vein of gold ore and start cutting out what you want.

Which option will provide the most benefit in the least amount of time?

The search engine spiders visit this forum, prospecting keywords. They can sift through each and every word in each and every file, trying to find like words to assign keyword "weight". Or, we can take them to a keyword goldmine, a.k.a the tag cloud, where they can spend their time devouring words that thread authors have specifically identified as being keywords.

Here is one page of the tag cloud on one of my own forums -


And this is one page from a forum with 1/10th the number of posts we have here at X Marks.

1. The tag cloud provides one-stop shopping for the keyword-hungry spiders.

2. The tags are all links, which we can use to locate threads containing those keywords. In the example above, if you were to click on the trossachs tag, you would see the thread/s that have been tagged with that keyword. So we humans can benefit from all of these tag links as well.

3. The more times we can get these tagged keywords in front of the search engine spiders, the faster the words will be indexed. If someone mentions an obscure word in a post and it is tagged, that keyword will have a much better chance of appearing in the search engine results with a link back to this forum.

Remember back in that first post, when I said to remember what Goober page this forum appeared on, whilst searching for the word 'kilt'? What page was it?

Yes, yes, yes, Panache, you are correct, it was page three.

Now let me ask you - don't you believe this is the largest and more authoritative kilt site on the Web? Then why are we hidden all the way back on page three? Aren't we worthy of something more like page one?

Fact - when the average individual uses a search engine, the odds are that he will never journey any deeper into the SERPS than that first page. (SERPS - search engine results pages) If someone Goobers 'kilts', the odds are they will never locate us by that method, as we are listed waaaaaay back there on page three.

Forums grow when people find them and register. And we want this forum to grow. So we want to make ourselves easier to find.

So, I'm asking for your help. You can show your support for your forum community by simply adding some keyword tags to all of your new posts. It doesn't cost a thing and you can enter a half-dozen words in two shakes of a puppy dog's tail. But I want to make on point very clear -

Entering tags on your threads is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.

You will not be required to ever enter a single tag. Ever.

Before you go, let me tell you about the forum staff members. We care about this forum and we want to see it grow and become even better than it already is. We're not complacent and we're not resting on any laurels. We all smiled and offered congratulations to one another when we reached the 250,000 post mark. Then, we rolled our sleeves up and went back to work, because we have our eyes on much bigger numbers than that.

If you prefer not to tag a new threads, you certainly don't have to do it. But I want to tell you the forum staff will be adding tags to un-tagged threads. It would sure make like a bit easier for us, if we can count on you to pull on this oar with us. We're looking for partners to help us grow this forum. Your forum.

We would like you to tag your new threads. We're already some 17,700+ threads behind you. Yes, there is a lot of rich content in those old posts, so we'll be digging through those and tagging them.

Thanks for taking the time to read these posts. I know they were long-winded, but we wanted the explanation to be as simple as we could make it.

Besides, Panache got confused when I told him we could more efficiently SEO the forum with deeper indexing and produce better SERPS by doing this.

[Mike1]

You know, if we can keep growing this forum, there just might be some more positive changes coming.

Not to say there are definite changes on the horizon, but neither is it an outright denial of the same.

You'll just have to stay tuned.

[Mike1]

I forgot to mention the Thread Tag system is very easily customized, so I've decided to leave out forums like the Newbie forum and the Forum Issues forum. We're looking for content centered on the purpose for this forum's existence, so there's no need to tag threads saying welcome or asking how something works.

Tags will be graciously accepted in all forums requesting them however.

Will somebody please wake Panache up, so he can get back to work!!

No rest for the wicked...