Help:Search Engine Optimization

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See also Search engine optimization (SEO) for a general discussion of SEO.

This page in a nutshell:

Content created in Centiare has a way of showing up toward the top of search engine results.

Centiare contributors enjoy the effects of Centiare Search Engine Optimization. Centiare listings that utilize semantic tags achieve higher rankings in search results, through a combination of relevance and linkage.

One amazing example

Here's an example we've noticed in December 2006:

CLS window depicting "Wisdom"

The Church of the Loving Shepherd is located in West Chester, PA. Assume that you were driving by the church one day, but you only caught a glimpse of the church's full name. Later that day, you might search Google using a pretty common method: entering city + name fragments, which in this case might be the stream-of-thought keyword phrase West Chester church shepherd (because that's all you remembered from your drive-by observation). Click the following link to see the actual result you would get on Google:

Google search for West Chester church shepherd

See how the semantic tags recorded in the Church's Centiare Directory listing improve not only Google's search term relevance, but also trigger the correct address and contact information to be displayed?

In addition to context and relevance, semantic tags also improve overall rankings through the effect of Centiare's internal cross-linking. That is, the combination of Centiare listings, automatically-generated summary reports (at the end of each listing), cross-referenced ASK queries, and (probably) our tolerance of Google AdSense ads, all serve to improve overall search rankings by providing multiple reference points.

The Church's listing on Centiare was authored only as recently as December 9, 2006. We noticed that the Centiare listing had jumped to #1 or #2 for the Google search results above, as soon as January 4, 2007 -- less than one month for the Power of Centiare to impact the Church's SEO. Note, also, that the Church's own website comes up much lower in the search results.

Other fun examples

Additional proof of these search engine optimization (SEO) results can be found by trying these search queries at Google:

• “heating oil” Hunterdon Somerset NJ -- -- A Centiare listing ranks #5 out of 351 results
• Littleton graphics stationery -- -- A Centiare listing ranks #1 out of 25,600 results
• largest commercial printers Orlando -- -- A Centiare listing ranks #4 out of 1,340,000 results, and Google even "omits" a nearly identical page from Wikipedia. To see Wikipedia's page, you have to click "repeat the search with the omitted results included", and it still comes up nine spots lower than Centiare's listing!
• Florida stone crab scientific video -- -- A Centiare listing ranks #1 out of 121,000 results

The stone crab article in Centiare took its author about 10 minutes to create, and it now comes up first out of 121,000 Google search results. Imagine what careful, dedicated authors of encyclopedic content on Centiare could achieve.

Two test cases

At the end of the first week of January 2007, Centiare developers created two new "test cases" to explore the dynamic impact of Centiare on Google search engine rankings for small businesses. We selected two real-life businesses in competitive trades -- plumbing and real estate -- and settled on Superior Plumbing & Heating of Rochester, Minnesota, and Pinnacle Realty Services of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

We drew up what we thought might be some common search engine queries that potential customers of these businesses might input on Google. We checked where each of the companies' own web sites (Superior and Pinnacle) emerged on these hypothetical Google searches. Then, we created Centiare Directory pages for each company, including no more data or information than could be derived from these companies' existing web sites. Finally, we waited a little more than a month for Google's spiders to crawl Centiare and appropriately rank these new Directory pages.

Honestly, some of the results were enticingly good, while others were a bit of a disappointment for our very high expectations. Here is the data from the Superior Plumbing & Heating test:

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS	Rank of corporate web site before Centiare	Rank of Centiare Directory page after 5 weeks
plumber zip 55901	None of 152 results	2nd
plumber 55901	11th	8th
"hot water" company Rochester MN	175th	41st
"drain cleaning" Rochester MN	16th	20th
superior plumbing	4th	9th
superior plumber	2nd	6th
superior plumbing & heating	2nd	11th

And here is the data from the Pinnacle Realty Services test:

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS	Rank of corporate web site before Centiare	Rank of Centiare Directory page after 5 weeks
realtors 02740	69th	6th
realtors zip 02740	Not in top 300 results	13th
"se habla espanol" "real estate" "New Bedford"	15th	2nd
pinnacle realty services	3rd	13th
realty Bristol Plymouth counties	53rd	160th

As one can see from these tables, Centiare (even in its formative stages of content-building) has the capability of giving small businesses another "chance" within Google searches to be found by prospective customers. This is especially true if one carefully targets some highly-specialized searches that might be taking place (as in the "se habla espanol" example). Why would Pinnacle Realty Services settle for a 15th-place ranking of their home page on that search, when they could achieve a 2nd place ranking with an equivalent Centiare listing?