Forum:Primer in search engine optimization

If you are looking for a tutorial/primer/guide to search engine optimization (SEO) then I am sorry to disappoint. This is not it!

There are some very old threads dating back to 2006 that speak to this subject but there is currently no Help: article on SEO. The following lists in no particular order some possibly useful resources on the subject. I'd welcome a contemporary expert in SEO to review the list below and sort the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps from that effort a Help:Search Engine Optimization article will evolve as a reference for those of us who just want to create content and don't have the bandwidth to learn the nitty gritty details of SEO tips and tricks.

Wikia resources: Non-Wikia resources:
 * Project:About
 * MediaWiki:About
 * MediaWiki:Aboutsite
 * MediaWiki:Description
 * MediaWiki:Pagetitle
 * MediaWiki:Pagetitle-view-mainpage
 * MediaWiki:Mainpage
 * MediaWiki:Tagline
 * .wikia.com ( being your primary domain name)
 * .wikia.com (some wikis have a secondary domain name that redirects to the primary domain name)
 * www.wikia.com/wiki/
 * gaming.wikia.com/wiki/ (replace gaming with some other broad category of wiki from Wikia)
 * http://seo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
 * w:c:help:Advice:Raising your wiki's Google ranking
 * https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
 * http://www.seochat.com/
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikia (use on Wikipedia articles, helps draw contributors)

If this is a Help: article you would also like to read then, please show your support.
 * If you know where such an article already exists then please share a link here.

--najevi 10:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * We do have Advice:Raising your wiki's Google ranking on Wikia Help, but is a bit more general than that list. I'll bring it up with Toughpigs, he's our resident SEO guru :) 13:21, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, that was a helpful article by Danny. I just added it to the list above.

The thing that started me down this path was an invitation from a staff member to change the primary domain name of a wiki. This prompted me to investigate where on the pages of Google search results based on various keywords the first reference to a ###.wikia.com wiki appears. I then discovered that the Google hit listing for a Wikia hosted wiki displays the MediaWiki:Description message. So that got me wondering what role other MediaWiki messages play in this search engine indexing/optimization/ranking/whatever game. ... For gaming related wiki's I just remembered that there's also a page at gaming.wikia.com/wiki/ so no doubt other categories of wiki have similar "portal" pages.

The list above shows only those pages that _I_ am aware of. (I don't know what I don't know.)

Of the 14 Wikia hosted resources, I learned about only one third of them during the first 6-12 months of being an active contributor. So for the complete newcomer to Wikia I suspect a walk through of which are useful and which are not might prove helpful. Danny's (toughpigs's) article is the right tone, it's just ironic that it was not returned when I searched Shared Help (w:c:help:Special:Search) (and then later on Central Wikia Help and Central Wikia Forums) for the keywords "search engine optimization". A case of the cobblers children having no shoes ... or so it seemed at the time!

Ah-ha!
 * The problem with searching Shared Help is that the search page a user is taken to is not the advertised w:c:help:Special:Search but rather it is merely Special:Search on your local wiki. (You can verify this at vsk.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contents)
 * w:c:help:Special:Search shows up as the tooltip but .wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search is where the link takes you
 * It cracked me up just now to discover the small print tip (randomly generated) directly under the Help:Contents page bold font banner title: Welcome to Wikia Help! It reads:
 * Tip: Learn all about how to raise your Google ranking!
 * It just goes to show that when you know what keyword you need to be scanning for ("google ranking" and not "search engine optimization") then it jumps right out at you!

--najevi 16:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)