User blog comment:Cnoteboat/The Importance of Search Engine Optimization/@comment-5973717-20150131051939

I've got a plethora of SEO techniques that I use on my regular wikis. I'll save a few of my techniques if I ever need to defeat y'all in an SEO battle. Regardless, here's a few easy ones:


 * Redirects: Mediawiki, the software that powers Wikia, allows redirect pages. For example, I could have a page named "Ford" that redirects to "Ford Motor Company". This allows people who are searching for either to more easily find your content. The documentation pages explain this better than I can.
 * Multi-script support: Sometimes it makes sense to support multiple writing systems for your redirect pages. For example, on the Code Lyoko Wiki, we have a page on Hiroki Shimowoda, who worked on the Japanese dub. This page is titled and written in the Latin alphabet. But what if a Japanese person, who will be typing in Hiragana, is looking for information about Mr. Shimowoda? They wouldn't be looking for "Hiroki Shimowada". They would be looking for "ひろきしもわだ", it's equivalent. For that reason, on all Japanese voice actor pages on the Code Lyoko Wiki have Hiragana and Katakana redirects. So we support all scripts that would apply. This makes international searching easier for your users. It also makes the page being redirected to more reputable. By adding those redirects in native scripts, our page on Mr. Shimowoda is more reputable in the minds of search engines. As a result, our page on him is on the first page of Google when you Google him in English. Got a lot of Japanese names? Hello Hiragana! Got some episode titles in an original dub? Multilingual redirects!
 * Be the best at your wiki's topic. Ultimately, the best way to get people to come to your wiki, and come back, is to be the best source of information about your wiki's topic. For example, if you Google "Laurent Turner", the Code Lyoko wiki is on the first page, even though Code Lyoko was some of his less noteworthy work. That's because we try our best to provide the most about Code Lyoko. That means we include information about the writers, and thus we have a page about Laurent Turner. This provides us with search traffic. The best way to get people to find and come back to your wiki is for your wiki's job: provide the most and highest quality information about your wiki's chosen topic. There's a reason Wikipedia is so frequent in Google results: it has a page for EVERYTHING! Do that with your topic, and you will do well.
 * Plural redirects: search engines usually understand plurals, but the more linked-to a page is, the more reputable it's considered by both search engines and people. Got a page named "Hot Dogs"? Make a redirect page named "Hot Dog" that redirects to "Hot Dogs". This makes your pages more reputable in a very simple way that takes less than 30 seconds.
 * Good Categorization: Good categorization makes your pages more reputable, makes your wiki more reputable, makes internal searching easier, and it's good for keeping track of your pages, which can be a problem on a larger wiki.
 * Categorize the redirect pages: You can go to a redirect page with the parameter ?redirect=no . Categorize these pages properly. This is a cheap, easy, "and tacky"; way to inflate your pages' reputability from search engines.
 * Categorize and Describe Your Images: each image you upload to your wiki gets a technical page for information about the image. Go to these pages and give them descriptions. Give them categories. This makes your images easier to search for "search engines have issues with images, so this is a courteous way to help", helps blind people "who appreciate people providing even basic support", and bumps up your reputability by having more reliable internal links.
 * Multi-lingual wikis: if your wiki exists in multiple languages, set up links between the equivalent wikis. This makes it easier for international users to find content, and it improves page reputability.
 * Unique pages: it's frequent that a person remember something from your wiki, but forget the exact name, so you should have a phrase that's easy to remember but rare. A noteworthy case is "Nebacular Drop", the game "Portal" was based on. The word "Nebacular" was invented as a means of SEO. Have a unique or bizarre phrase on your wiki. Someone will remember it, and search for it, and your wiki will be one of the top results.

These actions will improve your search engine results, and will improve your number of readers and thus editors!