If you’re trying to outpaperclip SEO-paperclippers you’ll need a lot better than that.
I doubt LessWrong has any competitors serious enough for SEO.
Yudkowsky.net comes up as #5 on the “rationality” search, and being surrounded by uglier sites it should stand out to anyone who looks past Wikipedia. But LessWrong is only mentioned twice, and not on the twelve virtues page that new users will see first. I think you could snag a lot of people with a third mention on that page, or maybe even a bright green logo-button.
I am an SEO. (Sometimes even we work for the Light, by the way.)
Less Wrong currently isn’t even trying to rank for “rationality”. It’s not even in the frigging home page title!
Who is the best point of contact for doing an SEO audit on Less Wrong? Who, for example, would know if the site was validated on Google Webmaster Console, and have the login details? Who is best positioned to change titles, metadata, implement redirects and so on? Woud EY need to approve changes to promotional language?
Update 2012: First is Wikipedia, second Harry Potter, third a dictionary entry, and forth is yudkowsky.net. Fifth is some philosophy site, and sixth is an article “what_do_we_mean_by_rationality” from here. After that, a lot of other stuff comes.
I agree that getting 100s of people to link to LessWrong with the anchor text “rationality” is unlikely to provide much of a benefit (though, hey, it might—search engines are a big black box), but LessWrong is a reasonably well-trusted site (2k backlinks, most of them quite high quality, see here); having 10s of links (and given how much emphasis Google is meant to place on anchor text at the moment), it could give a substantial boost at the margins.
IMO, I think a better question to ask is how many people are searching for the search term “rationality”? Seems like a weird thing to search for.
I doubt LessWrong has any competitors serious enough for SEO.
Yudkowsky.net comes up as #5 on the “rationality” search, and being surrounded by uglier sites it should stand out to anyone who looks past Wikipedia. But LessWrong is only mentioned twice, and not on the twelve virtues page that new users will see first. I think you could snag a lot of people with a third mention on that page, or maybe even a bright green logo-button.
I am an SEO. (Sometimes even we work for the Light, by the way.) Less Wrong currently isn’t even trying to rank for “rationality”. It’s not even in the frigging home page title!
Who is the best point of contact for doing an SEO audit on Less Wrong? Who, for example, would know if the site was validated on Google Webmaster Console, and have the login details? Who is best positioned to change titles, metadata, implement redirects and so on? Woud EY need to approve changes to promotional language?
I’m who you want to talk to. Just sent you a PM.
Update 2012: First is Wikipedia, second Harry Potter, third a dictionary entry, and forth is yudkowsky.net. Fifth is some philosophy site, and sixth is an article “what_do_we_mean_by_rationality” from here. After that, a lot of other stuff comes.
Not so bad, but it could be better.
SEO paperclipping is result of two forces—websites trying to get better ranks, and search engines which build up their defenses.
We might have little competition for rationality, but getting through search engine filters is not as easy as it used to be a decade ago.
I agree that getting 100s of people to link to LessWrong with the anchor text “rationality” is unlikely to provide much of a benefit (though, hey, it might—search engines are a big black box), but LessWrong is a reasonably well-trusted site (2k backlinks, most of them quite high quality, see here); having 10s of links (and given how much emphasis Google is meant to place on anchor text at the moment), it could give a substantial boost at the margins.
IMO, I think a better question to ask is how many people are searching for the search term “rationality”? Seems like a weird thing to search for.
The search engines have their own incentives to avoid punishing innocent sites.