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 #2 out of 448 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.

The future

Centiare developers are currently working on two new "test cases" to explore the dynamic impact of Centiare on Google search engine rankings for small businesses. We will report those results here around the end of January.

What kinds of similar optimization results can you and/or your organization achieve using Centiare's semantic features? If you have an interesting story about SEO, please share it with us.