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    • SEO for tiki

    Posted by viviennef posts: 30

    Hi everyone
    I was wondering if anyone has any SEO tips for tiki? I want to improve my rank and was interested in the following:

    >> Can I change my page title for each wiki page so that in google results it has a meaningful short description - kind of like I have on the pages on this site http://www.naturalvetcompany.com/Arthritis-c-504.html

    >> I got a very cool mod for that site that converts all URLs to search engine friendly versions - is something similar available for tiki or is it just the rewrite option (which is too hard for me!)

    >> Anyone got a tool generating a site map for them - I tried the pcaudit one but it just gives me the homepage

    >> Anyone in pet related industries want to swap links or contribute a pet based article?

    >> Is there a tool that generates a "html catalogue" of a site so like at a press of a button you generate a copy of each page then you can run it via a cron job or something to get a friendly version site.

    >> Is there a page detailing people offering paid tiki customisation services.
    Or any other SEO topics that you think are helpful - I would be happy to write them up then as a factsheet and put it in the documentation (or wherever it should go if someone points me in the right direction 😊

    thanks!
    Vivienne

    Reads: 1668
    Posted by Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties posts: 3665 United States

    > Hi everyone
    > I was wondering if anyone has any SEO tips for tiki? I want to improve my rank and was interested in the following:
    >

    The #1 way to improve your search ranking is to buy placement.
    The #2 way is to have better quality incoming links.

    But if you're looking for ways to improve your rankings from within Tiki....


    >
    > >> Can I change my page title for each wiki page so that in google results it has a meaningful short description - kind of like I have on the pages on this site http://www.naturalvetcompany.com/Arthritis-c-504.html
    >

    Most pages should do this already. Notice how the name "Sydney" is added to the title element here

    Article titles are also automatically added, as shown here.



    > >> I got a very cool mod for that site that converts all URLs to search engine friendly versions - is something similar available for tiki or is it just the rewrite option (which is too hard for me!)
    >


    Tiki installation includes an .htaccess file that does this for you. See the docs for details.


    > >> Anyone got a tool generating a site map for them - I tried the pcaudit one but it just gives me the homepage
    >

    I use the Sitemap Generator from auditmypc.com. It works well and is easy to use.


    > >> Anyone in pet related industries want to swap links or contribute a pet based article?
    >
    > >> Is there a tool that generates a "html catalogue" of a site so like at a press of a button you generate a copy of each page then you can run it via a cron job or something to get a friendly version site.

    What do you mean by "friendly version"? Do you mean printer-pretty pages? Or do you want to create a "dump" of your website for offline use?


    >
    > >> Is there a page detailing people offering paid tiki customisation services.
    > Or any other SEO topics that you think are helpful - I would be happy to write them up then as a factsheet and put it in the documentation (or wherever it should go if someone points me in the right direction 😊
    >

    My personal top 3:

    1. Make sure your site is valid (including CSS and RSS).
    2. Make sure your site is accessible.
    3. Generate as many useful incoming links from social sites (http://del.icio.us, http://www.digg.com, etc.) as possible.


    HTH


    -Rick
    My Tiki Blog: Help, Hints, and Hacks


    Posted by typeamom posts: 67 United States

    > Hi everyone
    > I was wondering if anyone has any SEO tips for tiki? I want to improve my rank and was interested in the following:
    >

    I love tikiwiki, but if I had to point to one disappointment it would be the SEO capabilities. Not a minor factor indeed. You must have global meta information. I know that meta titles, keywords and descriptions aren't a big deal anymore in SEO, but every available tool should be used for the best SEO practices. I also with it had friendly URLs for all pages and content.

    I think the number 1 factor (or, at worst, number 2) in SEO is the URL text. While tikiwiki includes the page name in the URL for wiki pages, it doesn't for articles. Does anyone know... Is there a way to make it do so for both? Maybe in .htaccess, but I've never played with that and I'm not really sure how to. Also, do you know if there is any way to workaround so you get meta description for every article and wiki page individually? I also wish I could rework the automatic page titles so that I could have site name show last, not first, and page title show first, not last.

    As far as working within tikiwiki, I would recommend using wiki pages for most of your content. That should help, since it uses the page title as the URL. Also, be sure in your site identity that you keep the site name as short as possible. Anything long will bump your page title, and Google only reads a short length of title.

    I haven't been too bothered by the lack of page title for some pages. They aren't really crucial pages (I want to say things like the message read page, etc.). Most important pages (blog posts, article pages, wiki pages, etc.) all have the page title as the meta title.

    As far as a site map, I used SOFTplus GSiteCrawler. It worked very well.

    I would also recommend, as someone here did to me, signing up your site for Google Analytics if you don't have stats by page title. I had awstats, and it didn't read the dynamic pages, as in it counted all articles pages as one page. Pretty useless, and I wish I'd installed Google stats right off the bat. Great, free stats.


    Posted by viviennef posts: 30

    That was really helpful both - yes its tiki specific tips I was looking for. I did a search on google and found my pages were not indexed the way I would like at all - that hint re: articles vs wiki pages helped. e.g.

    MY OTHER PAGES

    the Doggipedia - collaborative dog encyclopedia : Do you think all ...About Us. About Us >>. FAQs >>. Forums >>. Pages. Pages >>. Pet Directory. Contribute >>. Galleries >>. Login/Register >> ...
    www.doggipedia.org/tiki-poll_results.php?pollId=4 - 29k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

    MY WIKI PAGES
    the Doggipedia - collaborative dog encyclopedia : Animal LiberationOnline dog information resource - a dogmatch initiative.

    www.doggipedia.org/tiki-index.php?page=Animal+Liberation - 36k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this


    I set my site up as articles for non collaborative content and wiki pages for collaborations as I was concerned taht wiki pages werent very intuitive for my naive users - I just liked the articles submission form. Now that looks like it may cause problems. I would love the facility to edit the meta and auto generated data for pages - that would be so cool.

    The search engine friendly urls are a big disapointment for me too as I am not really so good with .htaccess etc although I am going to get onto that.

    By a html catalogue I sort of meant a html version of my site - I have one for another site I have and although ti doesnt stay current it is loved by search engines and then presents the live page if you can understand what I mean.

    I read about the auditpc tool in one of your blogs but it doesnt seem to be working for me. I am just trying to download the other one now.

    I will put all this together somewhere

    thanks so much guys!
    Vivienne

    Posted by typeamom posts: 67 United States

    > I set my site up as articles for non collaborative content and wiki pages for collaborations as I was concerned taht wiki pages werent very intuitive for my naive users - I just liked the articles submission form. Now that looks like it may cause problems. I would love the facility to edit the meta and auto generated data for pages - that would be so cool.
    >
    > The search engine friendly urls are a big disapointment for me too as I am not really so good with .htaccess etc although I am going to get onto that.
    >


    I set them up that way for the same reason... I wanted finished articles, and I think the article submit page is much easier for beginners. What I've done to help with that is to create wiki pages that are hubs leading to content under various categories. Then, I have those categories as two navigations along my side, Topics and Stages. I use a module to automatically pull all recent articles under a category, and then I have a blurb at the top with links to key wiki pages on the subject. I also categorize that wiki page under the category so that, at the bottom, links to all content in that category appears.

    This probably sounds confusing, but it's pretty simple. You can see an example of a wiki page as category hub here:

    http://www.typeamom.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=recipes

    These pages should do well for SEO because of the concentration of keywords. You'll have the keyword in the URL, since it's a wiki page. You'll have it show for the category link. The articles probably have keywords in many titles and descriptions. And you'll reinforce the keywords in the category links at the bottom, and the nav titles.

    You also might want to lock these wiki pages so people can't tinker with them.

    HTH.

    Oh, and if anyone knows where a good tutorial is on editing the tikiwiki .htaccess file, I would love to know! That might help me modify it to my tastes. Shoot, if you could even have a rewrite in there that automatically pulled the page title as the meta title, and the first graph of content as the meta description, that would really be cool. I have no idea if that is doable. It would also save people having to enter it separately.

    Thanks!


    Posted by viviennef posts: 30

    Hi there

    Your site is really good - it gave me some great ideas! I will set wiki pages up as you suggested, that will make a difference.
    I have another site talkingcp.info that I am developing - I have two young children under 3 and the first has mild cerebral palsy and so I am creating a site for that. I will link to your site there.

    So the category menus down the side - how did you add those modules - did you enter them by hand or did you get it to use your categories? If you got it to use your categories how did you do that?

    thanks!


    Vivienne

    Posted by typeamom posts: 67 United States

    > Hi there
    >
    > Your site is really good - it gave me some great ideas! I will set wiki pages up as you suggested, that will make a difference.
    > I have another site talkingcp.info that I am developing - I have two young children under 3 and the first has mild cerebral palsy and so I am creating a site for that. I will link to your site there.
    >
    > So the category menus down the side - how did you add those modules - did you enter them by hand or did you get it to use your categories? If you got it to use your categories how did you do that?
    >
    > thanks!
    >
    >
    > Vivienne

    Thanks for the link on your site you are developing! Be sure you follow the top menu link "directory" and submit your site to mine, too, when you're ready to publicize it.

    As far as how I did that, I created categories, then I created wiki pages with the automatic article pull like I mentioned above. Then I created a menu, and each menu item links to those wiki pages. Does that make sense?