Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
Actually, besides the changes of the Ringlink program that this thread
gives cause for, I think it would be great if a new page with SEO tips
for ringmasters could be added to the Ringlink site (and probably also
the World of Webrings site). Pete, if I take care of the former, could
you think of writing such an SEO tips page? ;-)
That would be a good idea, but maybe we could edit here what these SEO
tips pages should contain, and then post them (seeing that no one ever
edits content once posted to a website...)!
To get started:
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SEO Tips for Ringmasters
The heart of any webring is the navpanel or navbar. However, a search
engine when spidering a webring's navpanel doesn't find much of
anything, if it has not been optimized for a search engine! With most
navpanels a search engine just finds allot of nexts and prevs, some very
long urls, and not much else. Just think, you've got your webring's
navpanel on many other websites, and they are doing absolutly nothing
for you as far as most search engines are concerned.... :-(
The use of ALT (within the 'img' tag), TITLE (within the 'a' tag) and
SUMMARY (within the 'table' tag) attributes is a great way to improve
the search engine rank for your webring's website, and especially the
webring's navpanel (when displayed on member websites). Doing so makes
webring navigation easier, increases accessibility to disabled ring
surfers, and will obtain for your webring the most relevant ranking
possible with most search engines.
Seeing that most navpanels are usually a bunch of nested tables, using
the 'summary' attribute within the "table" tag is the perfect place to
enter a short description of your webring. If using 'next' and
'previous' images within your navpanel, then using the 'alt' attribute
within the "img" tag is a simple way to elaborate on what clicking
'next' and 'previous' accomplishes (for example alt="Takes you to the
next site in the Garden webring"). If using just text within your
navpanel, then you would use the 'title' attribute within the "a" tags
to elaborate on what clicking these various text links (Next, Prev,
Random, List, and...) accomplishes.
If using a image map for your webring's navpanel, then you could use the
'alt' attribute within the "img" tag for the description of the webring,
and the 'title' attribute within the "area" tags to elaborate on what
clicking these various areas within the image map navpanel accomplishes.
Some webring systems such as Ringlink use 301 re-direct to help you get
your navpanel and webring website optimized for a search engine.
~~~Someone could enter a short description of 301 re-direct~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just a matter of copying the above, editing it, and then posting your
updated version in the reply.
Pete