I swear, sometimes it’s like google is reading my mind. almost every tweek or change i’ve wished for over the last year or so, has eventually come true. To think, just one year prior to that, i was joking with a few friends that Gmail was like some kind of secret cult. At the time, you could only get in by Beta Invite. Oooh. Then, once you tried it, you never went back. What’s more, you found that you couldn’t stop telling other people about it, “converting” them, so to speak.

Today, i use Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Docs, Reader, Notebook, Groups, Trends, Adsense, Analytics, Adwords, Alerts, and now Co-op.

I’ve always liked custom search engines like Wink and Rollyo. But, even though i’ve enjoyed many of the social aspects that these sites had to offer, somehow they all still seemed quite lacking. it always bothered me that Rollyo puts a limit on the number of sites you can add per topic. And Wink has a “Sync with Del.icio.us” tool which would kick ass if i could get it to work (apparently my 3 week old sync task is still queued somewhere in cyber-hell).

Google Co-op seems to satisfy at least part of the concerns that i had (regarding time wasted and revenue sharing) and so i couldn’t resist creating a couple of my own custom search engines for you all to try out and hopefully help build. I haven’t had a chance to style them yet, but there are a ton of excellent sites in each one already so the results for searchs should be pretty interesting.

I’ll be creating a more permanent place for all of these custom search engines as soon as i figure out where – more will likely come soon – so you can keep an eye out for them or just bookmark this page for later reference. the good thing is, wherever i put them, i can always manage them from one place.

in the meantime, go ahead and try one out.
Dont’ forget to let me know what you think. Enjoy!

In an attempt to wade through all the junk sites that pretend to talk about search engine optimization, i’ve started a small list of sites that actually discuss the topic in an intelligent way, contributing something valuable to the debate, and don’t just try to sell you something. I will try to keep this list short, and up to date, so check back occationally.

• Search Engine Roundtable
• Organic SEO Wiki
• WebmasterWorld
• Digital Point Forum (thanks Martin)
• HighRankings Forum
• Search Engine Watch
• Google Ranking Factors ( Vaughn Aubuchon )
• Search Engine Guide
• SEOmoz
• SEO Blog

Most of these sites monitor (and speculate on) current SEO trends, track changes in search engine policies/algorithms, and explore various marketing theories/techniques. They tend to look at the bigger search engines like google, bing, and yahoo. Many experienced (resisted the urge to say ‘seasoned’) SEO experts cluster around these sites, which makes their forum sections especially valuable for learning about the topic in general.

Additional articles and information:

These sites were once in the “little list” but have fallen from grace..
They remain here mostly because they still have something useful to add, but may not be updated as frequently or as completely dedicated to the subject.

• Internet Search Engine Database (ISEDB)
• Google Page Rank – Tips and Tricks
• Singapore Web Hosting Blog – Category: SEO
• Tracking Organic SEO Benefits
• Search Engine News Review
• HReal SEO.net
• Search Visibility Report
• SEO / SEM Blogs

RSS Search Engine Marketing (RSSEM) is a term i keep reading about, and many sites are using rss technology to boost their site ranking. Listing rss feeds on these types of sites has the dual benefits of, additional visibility (on the rss directory), and increased inbound links (higher overall site ranking).

These are a collection of sites that are either directories themselves or provide useful links to site that will list your weblog or rss feeds. Note: most webmasters caution site owners no to submit to too many directories at once, and this may raise a red flag with major search engines like google, and result in some form of penalty which would utlimately affect your site’s ranking. The best advice seems to be to grow your links slowly, intelligently (because we are not robots), consistently, and over a significant amount of time.

Sites with links to directories:

• RSSTop55 – Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites is a great site, updated regularly.
• Fagan Finder – Blogs and RSS Search Engines has search engines, reference, tools, and more.

List of Directories:

• 2RSS.com – RSS feeds, RSS directory, RSS software, RSS scripts, RSS articles, RSS syndication, XML, RDF, news.
• Blogdex – is a research project of the MIT Media Laboratory tracking the diffusion of information through the weblog community.
• Feed Shark – Submit your RSS feed for free!
• Daypop – a current events/weblog/news search engine
• Syndic8 – is a directory of thousands of syndicated feeds from around the world.

1. Use Permalinks – to improve URLs
A great article on a site called Tom Raftery’s I.T. views explains exactly how to get the most out of this advanced feature. The basic idea is to get the unique keywords – the words people will later use to find you – as close to the beginning of the URL as possible. This usually means trying to get the title of each post to appear right after the first “/” (root folder) in your domain (ie: www.domain.com/reallygoodtitle/)

2. Use the Rewrite Titles plugin – to improve page titles
This plugin for WordPress allows you to dynamically rearrange the order of your page/post titles. Once again the purpose with regards to SEO is that you can get the unique titles of your posts to appear before the name of your blog. For example, instead of your page title being something like: “BlogName >> Blog Archive >> PageTitle”, you could have: “PageTitle >> Blog Archive >> BlogName”. This layout will likely rank higher for those unique words used in all your different posts.

3. Get the HeadMeta plugin -
This plugin allows you to include different meta data for each post. What this means is that you can add stuff like:<meta name="keywords" content="entertainment,movies" /> and <link rel="seealso" href="http://example.com/movies/" /> to the <head> of your html documents. The unique keywords and link relations would then be updated on the fly.

4. Linearize your content – [taken from socialpatterns.com]
“Move your content higher up in your code. Search engines place greater weight on text found near the beginning of your page. Use css to layout your site”. I have also read that search engines only read 1/3 of any given page before moving on to the next.

5. Optimize Dynamically – [taken from socialpatterns.com, again]
“For example, you could create three templates – one for your homepage, one for individual post pages and one for categories. For the homepage template you can optimize for a general set of keywords. For the individual pages template you would optimize using variables generated from the post title. For the categories template you would optimize around the category variable. This way every post in the future is automatically optimized”. They also say to “change your title tag so that it displays relevant keywords (like your post title) before your site name” – another reason to install the Rewrite Titles plugin.

Other useful resources:

- Check you keyword numbers and density using the Ultimate Seo Tool.
- Install the Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress.
- Use either a robots.txt file for each site, or <meta http-equiv=”robots” content=”" /> for each page you put online. For more info read, Robots.txt File Tutorial.
- To prevent robots from following a particular page, use
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
- To prevent robots from following a particular link on a page, use
<a href=http://www.example.com/ rel=”nofollow”> I can’t vouch for this link</a>