Posted by finelinebob on January 27, 2006, at 7:11:55
In reply to Re: Babble's relevance for search engines, posted by Dr. Bob on January 27, 2006, at 2:41:01
> Sorry, I don't see how not indexing some pages increases the value of other pages...
I'd actually need to see if Google does this, but it's easy enough for them to track what URLs are targetted when people exit their site. Matching exit URLs with the search terms that generated the results can tell them which pages were better matches for those terms. The more different pages from which people arrive at Babble, the more diluted those scores become ... especially if a search returns multiple hits on Babble instead of one or two particular pages.
> What do you think would be some good terms for meta tags?No idea. If most people land here by searching for fairly specific terms like brand names of meds, that would be much harder to target. This can be one of those things about which what people THINK would be good doesn't match with what they actually DO. Some keywords might be "obvious", but others might be surprising.
You might be able to find out some of this from your server logs. If the metrics software you have access to allows you to see the most common referring URLS, not just domains, you may be able to pull some terms out of query strings from search engine redirects ... if any score high enough for the metrics software to display.
> But isn't that kind of putting all your eggs in that one basket?Yeah, and that can actually be a Very Good Thing. If that one basket provides a clear vision of what new visitors can expect from this site, you can better establish the "value" of your "brand".
If all people want is some very specific information on a narrow topic and then they want to leave, then this wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. If you expect that people would want to stay and check out a broader range of what the site has to offer, then having them drop off on a page of some discussion that took place 18 months ago isn't going to help them see the big picture right away.
poster:finelinebob
thread:593798
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060111/msgs/603358.html