Posted on: 04/10/08 07:03pm
By: garfy
First I must say, my most 2 successful sites are built in geeklog, because it was the first cms that I used, I made many sites in Joomla and Drupal and wordpress so I know the difference.
Geeklog could be one of the best out there, but it is not. It is barely holding on, on other forums people are switching to Drupal or Joomla.
I know it takes a lot oF time, money to take care of it.
But Geeklog is so different than other CMS. It is a small self sufficent package. YOu only need to install forum and that is it.
THat is the beauty of geeklog.
But the biggest issues are, and I don't know why they are not addressed:
1) Urls are not SEO friendly (some are, but most of them are not)
2) You can't set the custom meta tags (description and keywords), SO geeklog looks funny compared to rival CMS
I mean every freaking CMS has SEO option solved, not geeklog.
3) phpbb bridge was wonderful and nobody is taking care of that.
4) installation is clumsy and difficult
If somebody would address these 4 issues, the geeklog would be my inner. I would use it for many sites, but now I use rather drupal or Joomla.
Only 4 issues are preventing geeklog to catch up the competittion. I mean is it so hard to do it?
I know Dirk is working like 24/7, I don't know how he manages that, but somebody should address these issues.
BECAUSE GEEKLOG IS A CUTE LITTLE PACKAGE THAT HAS POTENTIAL!!! :doh:
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/11/08 01:57am
By: Dirk
Quote by: garfy4) installation is clumsy and difficult
:rtfm:
Patience, please.[*1]
bye, Dirk
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/11/08 12:05pm
By: Anonymous (Chase)
If any one can help me with URL rewrite that would be great.
2 months back i started a citizen journalism site. Its been a hit. NOthing would have made it possible other then geeklog.
what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/11/08 12:36pm
By: 1000ideen
Quote by: Chasewhat do i need to do to put the topic in the url?
Just change the topic ID when editing the story, that`s all. Try to do that in Drupal!
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/23/08 07:56pm
By: winnerdk
I would like to echo the original concerns voiced in this post. I have several friends who run successful websites using other CMS platforms, and all of them are constantly trying to get me to drop Geeklog in favor of something else. So far I have resisted, but I am constantly frustrated, basically every time I have to interface with the "guts" of the Geeklog CMS.
Geeklog has always been a major pain in the butt to install, and the same thing goes for most of the plugins. As a simple user and not a programmer I see this as an issue of technical writing. The instructions and documentation assume the users know too much (we don't) and I almost always have to rely on the Forums to get the little details straight. I'm learning, but most people will just walk to another platform rather than fighting through it.
So here's the request - Please give me a form to fill out and "presto" it's installed. I should not have to go hacking around inside of the guts of files to make stuff work. If your instructions start off with "go to line 7943 of file named whatever.php and modify the "true" to "false" if you want your eggs sunny side up..." You get the point. I don't want to have to hack anything, change any settings, or gut any files. Just make it work for us dumb guys, Mr. programmer.
SEO - I worked on the SEO issue for months, literally. Now it seems like I've got it licked, and when I post an article (my website is primarily a news outlet) it gets picked up by all of the major search engines in a matter of minutes. So, Geeklog can be SEO friendly but I had to do a lot of work to make it that way. And If I could pull it off (with a lot of help) then the changes I made should be part of the standard package.
Every time SEO issues are addressed, it seems like there is a battle between programming form and function and SEO. We users care more about SEO than the details of smooth programming. SEO is what it's all about when your website is a business. If Geeklog is not SEO friendly, then most webmasters will choose another platform on that issue alone. Making Geeklog SEO friendly should be a major priority. It is for the users, and if you're either downplaying or ignoring SEO then that's a significant mistake.
It all comes down to user interface. The other CMS platforms have made the trade-off - easier user interface at the cost of reduced capabilities. My humble advice - keep the capabilities and build the user interface to be idiot proof. There's enough of us idiots out here trying to keep up, but it's hard.
"Patience?" It's April, 2008. What's the schedule look like?
Don
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/23/08 09:40pm
By: Blaine
Why don't you share your lessons learned so others can benefit. If your not a programmer then maybe you can help with some documentation. The documentation and Geeklog as a whole can only improve if community members come forward to help. The present and past contributors all volunteer their time. It's great to point out the holes and fustrations but we need help filling them.
If you don't have Wiki access, then you only need to register on the wiki or yell and we will certainly get you access.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/23/08 11:04pm
By: garfy
Quote by: BlaineWhy don't you share your lessons learned so others can benefit. If your not a programmer then maybe you can help with some documentation. The documentation and Geeklog as a whole can only improve if community members come forward to help. The present and past contributors all volunteer their time. It's great to point out the holes and fustrations but we need help filling them.
If you don't have Wiki access, then you only need to register on the wiki or yell and we will certainly get you access.
Why is it so hard to fix SEO issues, you only have to add meta desc and keywords, url are already rewritten. yo can add custom url names and custom page titles also.
Why is it so hard, it would require just a small patch.
I am so sad because geeklog is used form my most scessful site and it is perfect as a small package, but guys installation is a bummer and SEO also .
So is anybody move hiss ass, because I am not a programmer so I cant help, I would if I would be able
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/24/08 01:57am
By: Dirk
Quote by: winnerdk"Patience?" It's April, 2008. What's the schedule look like?
:rtfm:
Geeklog 1.5 status, posted a mere 10 days ago.
bye, Dirk
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/24/08 09:03am
By: winnerdk
Quote by: DirkQuote by: winnerdk"Patience?" It's April, 2008. What's the schedule look like?
:rtfm:
Geeklog 1.5 status, posted a mere 10 days ago.
bye, Dirk
Great, thanks. Looking forward to it.
Don
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/24/08 09:06am
By: winnerdk
Quote by: BlaineWhy don't you share your lessons learned so others can benefit. If your not a programmer then maybe you can help with some documentation. The documentation and Geeklog as a whole can only improve if community members come forward to help. The present and past contributors all volunteer their time. It's great to point out the holes and fustrations but we need help filling them.
If you don't have Wiki access, then you only need to register on the wiki or yell and we will certainly get you access.
I would love to. But, there are still problems I have not been able to fix. For example I had a problem awhile ago with the formatting of the Forum plugin that I simply had to "give up" on and develop and awkward work-around to make it functional. I could write that in the Wiki if you like, but I don't think it will help anyone very much.
Don
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/25/08 05:03pm
By: beewee
Quote by: Chase
what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?
You better don't try that because you'll create duplicate content. I used the url "mydomain.com/topic_id/story_id" but it gave me lots of troubles because you have to change the paging in lib-common.php, and Google still indexed the "&topic=" and the "mydomain.com/article.php/story_id" pages despite the robots.txt.
I'm back to the normal structure, and Google is still indexing my new stories within 20 minutes sometimes...
A simple hint: just increase the amount of stories on the frontpage, to get more content on each page. I've set it to 15 stories per page right now.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 04/26/08 08:43am
By: winnerdk
Quote by: beeweeQuote by: Chase
what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?
You better don't try that because you'll create duplicate content. I used the url "mydomain.com/topic_id/story_id" but it gave me lots of troubles because you have to change the paging in lib-common.php, and Google still indexed the "&topic=" and the "mydomain.com/article.php/story_id" pages despite the robots.txt.
I'm back to the normal structure, and Google is still indexing my new stories within 20 minutes sometimes...
A simple hint: just increase the amount of stories on the frontpage, to get more content on each page. I've set it to 15 stories per page right now.
I've got mine set to 100...works great.
Don
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/03/08 03:56am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Hi,
I have been trying to make GeekLog Seo friendly since some time now. I have done the following
1. Learned to add dynamic meta to all articles. Its being detected by google.
2. reverse the title from <sitename>-<Title> to <title><sitename>
3. add meta to homepage (in one of the blocks)
4. Convert all story titles in the homepage to a link
5. Rewrite the URL's without the ? mark. http://www.geklogsite.com/article.php?story=21321321 to http://www.geklogsite.com/article.php/21321321
But still Google takes days to index articles on my site. Another site i started with wordpress (iphonehelp.in) enjoys fantastic response from search engines. Any advice??
the site onlygizmos .com
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/03/08 09:38am
By: winnerdk
1. Learned to add dynamic meta to all articles. Its being detected by google.
How did you do that? Or, what did you do to make it happen? I would like to do the same thing. Is there any way to make it automatic rather than manual?
I take "runs" at SEO every now and then, and this is one of the issues I would like to tackle.
Thanks.
Don
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/03/08 10:21am
By: garfy
Wordpress is using ping to alert other sites, and geeklog also but maybe here is the catch
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/03/08 04:04pm
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
@grafy: Can we have such a Ping service in Geeklog by some plugin>? or manually? Such pings work for google?
@Don: Here is the hack, in the second part of the article (while composing a new story) after you are done with all the editing and content press "Source" - and add the meta code <head><META name="description" content="--"> <meta name="keywords" content="---"> </head>. And save the article without clicking source again. (Because whenever the FCKEditor comes to rich text mode the meta vanishes. everytime your edit the article you need to take care and put the meta back in)
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/03/08 04:21pm
By: Dirk
Quote by: Sunny@grafy: Can we have such a Ping service in Geeklog by some plugin>? or manually? Such pings work for google?
:rtfm:
Sending a Ping in Geeklog 1.4
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/03/08 04:28pm
By: garfy
Quote by: Sunny@grafy: Can we have such a Ping service in Geeklog by some plugin>? or manually? Such pings work for google?
@Don: Here is the hack, in the second part of the article (while composing a new story) after you are done with all the editing and content press "Source" - and add the meta code <head><META name="description" content="--"> <meta name="keywords" content="---"> </head>. And save the article without clicking source again. (Because whenever the FCKEditor comes to rich text mode the meta vanishes. everytime your edit the article you need to take care and put the meta back in)
wow, is this actuall y working? and nobody figured it out before????
Is the code insterted in head
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 04:26am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Thx Dirk, I will go through that article and see what get. Also will try and get the Ping that WP uses. To compate
@Grafy: Yes it works, but the same is not inserted in HEAD. But google still picks it up. Dont know how effective it is. I will check tonight if Yahoo and MSN is also picking it up.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 09:08am
By: winnerdk
Yes it works, but the same is not inserted in HEAD. But google still picks it up. Dont know how effective it is. I will check tonight if Yahoo and MSN is also picking it
As a news site, I get picked up almost immediately. Yesterday morning I published three articles about a Panamanian lawyer named "Manuel Antonio Caballero Pérez" who was shot in the head and killed in a drive-by assault. I published those three articles between 9:47 - 10:36 am. And after publishing the second article at 10:14 am I did a quick Google search on the guy's name to see what else was out there, and was surprised to see that Google had already picked up the first article in less than 30 minutes. Try doing a Google search on "Manuel Antonio Caballero Pérez". This article comes up in the first spot, primarily because it contains the entire name of the victim, "Manuel Antonio Caballero Pérez"
A search on "Manuel Pérez Caballero" returns the second article published yesterday, but it comes up in the fifth spot because it only contains a partial name of the victim.
The third article, which only contains a shortened version of the name "Manuel Caballero" does not appear at all in the first five pages of Google because there are just too many other pages out there with that string.
But if I do another search with specific words that I know are contained in the article, "Manuel Caballero" and "Metropolitan Social Security" then the same article comes up in the #1 spot in Google.
So, I'm getting indexed very well, but the search results will depend on the content in the articles as well as the search string used by the Google searcher.
One more thing - I tried to put in URL links to the searches, but the post got rejected as SPAM. Is there any way you can remove the restrictions on my posts? I won't spam the forums, I promise. I wanted to put in links to the example results to illustrate the point. Dude, your spam filters are jamming my style... (grin)
Don Winner
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 11:11am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
@winnerdk
Have you modified Geeklog? Anything for seo? any submissions / ping etc for google??
Wordpress has similar magic for me (iphonehelp .in), but somehow this ones on onlygizmos .com isnt working ...
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 11:24am
By: winnerdk
Honestly, I've done everything I can find to make my Geeklog site as SEO friendly as possible.
In short, I've done
everything I can think of or find, anywhere.
For the most part, all of the efforts or changes I've done are documented in the Forum posts over the years. I don't know if any one thing has had a greater or substantial impact, or if rather the success has been due to a compilation of all of those efforts.
"Tweaking Geeklog for SEO" should be a WIKI somewhere. I've gotten the impression over the years that the real geeks behind Geeklog (Dirk) don't care as much about SEO as I do, and I think they are just a little out of step with the wants and needs of us regular (not so geeky) users, who care very much about SEO issues.
In fact, at one point I was almost ready to abandon Geeklog as a CMS, exactly because it was so SEO unfriendly. But, I managed to make a few dozen little fixes to overcome the limitations. With the help of guys like Dirk, of course.
Now, my site is about as SEO friendly as it gets. And if I learn of or find anything else that will make it more SEO friendly, then I will implement those changes immediately.
Don, staying faithful to GL, looking forward to versions 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc.
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 11:24am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Don, I just noticed that whats getting indexed in your site is the Printer Version.
http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20080603093725217/print
And i was just wondering if the sites theme makes a difference to it!??
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 11:31am
By: winnerdk
Quote by: SunnyDon, I just noticed that whats getting indexed in your site is the Printer Version.
http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20080603093725217/print
And i was just wondering if the sites theme makes a difference to it!??
Actually, if you will notice - there's no question mark in that URL - therefore Google sees (and loves) all of those print URL's, which are produced with every article. Double the content, double the fun.
The search engines should also be seeing the primary URL, which also do not contain any question marks.
For example: http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/200806011621391
Getting rid of those question marks did wonders from an SEO perspective. Major hang-up for Google.
Don
http://www.panama-guide.com[*2]
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 03:13pm
By: Dirk
Quote by: winnerdk One more thing - I tried to put in URL links to the searches, but the post got rejected as SPAM. Is there any way you can remove the restrictions on my posts? I won't spam the forums, I promise. I wanted to put in links to the example results to illustrate the point. Dude, your spam filters are jamming my style... (grin)
At the time of your posting, "google.com" was yet again blacklisted by SLV. I've also seen a lot of test spam using plain http://google.com over the last days.
FWIW, your panama-guide URL is already in the SLV whitelist here ...
bye, Dirk
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/04/08 04:11pm
By: beewee
Quote by: SunnyDon, I just noticed that whats getting indexed in your site is the Printer Version.
http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20080603093725217/print
And i was just wondering if the sites theme makes a difference to it!??
Don't forget to block the print versions in robots.txt!
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/05/08 05:29am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
@ Don: I have done all that i could for SEO. Check on onlygizmos .com . Will do through the forums to see what else can be changed. Can you suggest a few? Or probably post a few links?
I have also blocked /print in robots.txt recently. But not sure if it will really work. need to wait for google to index again.
This is how my robots file looks
User-agent: *
Disallow: /docs
Disallow: /pingback.php
Disallow: /submit.php
Disallow: /trackback.php
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: Disallow: /print$
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/05/08 10:37am
By: Laugh
I've been doing the SEO game for a while now and here are few things I have learned over the years.
The most important thing for your geeklog site is original content. Take a look at sites like http://www.macosxhints.com/ and http://www.groklaw.net/. These are two large and popular geeklog sites that don't do much SEO yet they rank very high.
The second important thing is people linking to your site. The best way to get this done is publish original content and ping the popular services that track this stuff when you post anything new. The other thing that helps here is RSS feeds. Make sure you have one setup and use Feedburner to monitor it. Google owns Feedburner so it is a good source of information for them.
Other important things include keywords in your domain name, Page Titles (which staticpages and stories handle well) and keywords in the URL. A great spot to put this in is the id of the story or staticpage. Don't stuff these spots with keywords, use just the most important ones. I mainly just reuse the title of the post here.
Things I don't worry to much about:
URL Rewrite. I did worry about this at first but not much anymore. I've done several tests on sites (for several months) and notice no improvements when enabled.
Duplicate Content. See Google SPAM Guru Matt Cutts
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/duplicate-content-question/
Matts blog is a great resource his latest post mentions Meta descriptions as well. I haven't done much research into Meta descriptions since dynamic ones aren't possible in geeklog.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/improved-seo-documentation-galore/
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/05/08 02:24pm
By: Laugh
Here is a more informative post on meta descriptions and what google looks for (from the Google web master blog).
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/08/08 05:23am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Don,
I tried a lot of things
1. URL rewrite (from config.php)
2. Making story titles link to the story on the homepage
3. Meta on home page and dynamic on story pages
4. Giving the title text as ID for URL
Any more suggestions?
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/26/08 01:42pm
By: ankur_mmy
Quote by: garfyWordpress is using ping to alert other sites, and geeklog also but maybe here is the catch
Ok I checked that; WP uses the same Pingomatic like Geeklog. No change.
And out friend www.panama-guide.com is enjoying indexing almost instantly, so I am still trying to figure out where is the catch.
Increasing the no of articles on hompage cannot be the solution as my another WP bases site iphonehelp.in get indexed instantly (hosted on same server as my geeklog site)
I just love geeklog and the whole cms .. also the blocks system and the theme, not willing to shift to any other cms...
Sunny
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/26/08 01:46pm
By: ankur_mmy
Quote by: beeweeQuote by: SunnyDon, I just noticed that whats getting indexed in your site is the Printer Version.
http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20080603093725217/print
And i was just wondering if the sites theme makes a difference to it!??
Don't forget to block the print versions in robots.txt!
I am unable to block it by robots, please share the settings...
Meantime I am adding the noindex meta to print pages...
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/26/08 01:58pm
By: Laugh
You don't just have to ping Pingomatic, you can ping Google and other sites like Technorati directly.
Do you have an account at Google Webmaster Tools? They will usually tell you if anything is wrong with your site.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/26/08 06:53pm
By: ankur_mmy
Yes I am active with Google Webmasters.
The recent two problems I faced was of DUPLICATE META
1. The pages with story=? and the new rewritten URL's are seen as differnet pages and hence duplicate. Is there anyway to redirect all those? pages to the normal ones?
2. The PRINT pages are being highlighted as duplicate. I have added noindex tab in the meta. Should take effect soon. But need more advice on robots.txt to restrict indexing of print pages.
Regards
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/26/08 06:55pm
By: ankur_mmy
I Do ping Google BlogSearch.
Any way to PING Google Search?
Which other sites shall i ping (other than Pingomatic and Google Blog search)
Rgds
Sunny
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/26/08 10:36pm
By: Laugh
Quote by: ankur_mmyI Do ping Google BlogSearch.
Any way to PING Google Search?
Which other sites shall i ping (other than Pingomatic and Google Blog search)
Rgds
Sunny
You could ping Technorati and Feedburner. There is no way to ping Google search.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/27/08 07:51am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Hi Technorati and Feedburner are both in pingomatic right?
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/27/08 04:41pm
By: beewee
@ winnerdk:
- in most of you stories you're imediately linking to anothe site. Don't do that, your losing linkjuice with that. Make them at least nofollow links.
- you're making duplicate content: in the sideblock there's an URL http://www.panama-guide.com/crime, and in the fly-out menu there's http://www.panama-guide.com/index.php?topic=crime.... with all the topics...
- you're using too many topics. About ten is the max. If you ned more, use the tags plugin to focus and link with keywords only (with the risk of duplicate content)
- my experience you better not use url_rewrite for topics, since the paging still uses /index.php?topic=**&page=2 so that's duplicate content again since Google also likes to follow only the first part of /index.php?topic=**&page=2, which is /index.php?topic=** ...
- using url_rewrite for topics also will lower the ranking of the homepage and stories. And you should see that the homepage and stories are the best ranking pages since the topic pages change constantly (paging).
-use descriptive story titles with 2 or 3 keywords and not too much "garbage", and use these also in the story ID.
- "Add this article to any online bookmarking service": make these no-follow links, you're losing linkjuice in every story again!
- You're link to this in your fly-out menu, the not rewritten url, so duplicate content again: http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php?story=20061007084736160
- In the fly-out menu the Home link leads to /index.php. Skip that, link to /
- Make the links to "Post a comment" also nofollow.
- Skip directory.php, that's pure bogus for SEO, or block it in robots.txt.
- Read real SEO blogs like the one from Matt Cutts, or http://yoast.com/ and http://www.pearsonified.com/
- Start getting more backlinks. Not too many in a short time, and try to get some with a nice anchortext and linking to a story or topic (if you've decided which url to use...)
- Make the /print links and all other unimportant links nofollow.
- Give the Read More some kind of descriptive anchortext with a href="**" "title="{story-title}"
Well, you see, in ten minutes there are lots of thing found you can improve. But firtst of all: stick to the basic. Everything you change on your site which changes or duplicates the content radically is mostly wrong and overkill.
A basic built Geeklog site is not that bad for seo. All you need is a really good SEO theme (I know, there isn't anyone for GL at the moment) with a very simple and lean & clean semantic source. The CMS is good enough, I can tell you.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 06/27/08 07:52pm
By: Laugh
Quote by: SunnyHi Technorati and Feedburner are both in pingomatic right?
So is Google, but if you want your stories in the search result faster it is better to ping the source directly.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 03:59am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
I have been working hard to find out ways to get things better with GL. But its getting frustrating.
GL is the best CMS i have come across. Its V good in certain things, and frankly i am addicted to an extent.
But see this: Articles that i post on my WP site get indexed within 9-10 hrs. And it takes 5-6 days or more of GL articles to get indexed ...
I have seen this trend with many GL site owners. And only Don (Panama-Guide) seems to have managed to get it working, after a lot of hard work.
But is it worth it to spend so much time to fix the CMS, that much time and effort would better be spent on content and other things for the site ...
There is certainly something that we are missing, I am just not able to figure out what is that magic in WP!!
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 04:20am
By: 1000ideen
Quote by: SunnyBut see this: Articles that i post on my WP site get indexed within 9-10 hrs. And it takes 5-6 days or more of GL articles to get indexed ...
This has nothing to do with Geeklog. There is nothing to "fix" with this CMS. Beewee gave very valuable hints how to do search engine optimization. You`d need to do that with any other CMS or blog too.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 06:15am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Hi
Yes those tips are really good. But what I mentioned is after my experience with both WP and GL.
Even if I copy a week old artilce from my GL to WP (with a backlink) the WP article is indexed before the GL article and also ranks higher. The GL site in reference has a Google PR3 and the WP site is new with hardly any backlinks and just received a PR2
I am still trying to do all that Beewee and others have mentioned. Lets give it some time, and I will post the results
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 07:34am
By: beewee
Quote by: SunnyThe GL site in reference has a Google PR3 and the WP site is new with hardly any backlinks and just received a PR2
That is not correct: your pagerank depends of the amount of your backlinks, and the pagerank of your backlinks! This is fully independend of the CMS you are using. You can get a PR9 with a fully bloated site if you can get enough good backlinks. Please learn more about SEO before posting such replies.
I have several Geeklog sites where articles are indexed in 15 minutes sometimes!
Just stick to the basics: use not too many topics, write decent stories with relevant, not too long titles with H1 tags (use not more than 2 or 3 keywords in your title), use 2-3 keywords in the story ID's, use just enough keywords in your stories, also use some relevant subtitles with H2 tags, use nofollow tags for external links if you have to, do not put too much rubbish on your site and only write about the subject your site is about. And: get a lot of relevant backlinks!
The only thing I don't like about Geeklog is the lack of good themes, none of them is really basic and SEO'd. So just follow my advise,
find[*3] or make a nice SEO'd (WP) theme and port it to GL and you're site will do just fine!
If you want to get indexed on Google News, your story ID has to contain a 5-digit number as well. You can use the date for it: story-about-geeklog-seo-20080702.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 10:06am
By: Laugh
Hey Beewee,
Regarding this comment:
If you want to get indexed on Google News, your story ID has to contain a 5-digit number as well. You can use the date for it: story-about-geeklog-seo-20080702.
I thought you could only get items in Google News if your site was approved as a publisher? (and I think it is a minimum of a 3 digit number and it must be unique among your stories).
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 01:25pm
By: beewee
Yep, you're right, at least 3 digits, but not 4 digits resembling a year (so not 2007, 2008, 2009), and it must be unique. I've always used a SEO story ID + 5 digits from the date of the story, which makes a unique combination and works fine untill now. And yes, you have to submit your site and wait for approval.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/02/08 05:33pm
By: Laugh
Have you gone through the approval process?
I met most of the criteria except for the one dealing with multiple writers and editors. I didn't initiate the process since, I am the only writer. I understand they do make exceptions sometimes.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/03/08 04:13am
By: Anonymous (Sunny)
Hi beewee
What i war referring to is that both my sites the one running on GL and WP have content written by me. So the writing styles are same.
Secondly, while the WP site is still v new, it still gets better response from Google. While the GL site which is much older and better linked gets poor response.
I am v sure it is not about the content but other factors. I am trying to accommodate all that you have mentioned on this thread and waiting for it to work.
Thx
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/03/08 10:43am
By: beewee
Quote by: SunnySecondly, while the WP site is still v new, it still gets better response from Google. While the GL site which is much older and better linked gets poor response.
That's a common issue, called the Sandbox effect. A newer site gets better SERP's in the beginning, after a few month it's dropping while Google is examining the clicks etcera, and after nearly a year it reaches a more final SERP. You can never compare two sites if their age is not the same.
Quote by: LaughHave you gone through the approval process?
I met most of the criteria except for the one dealing with multiple writers and editors. I didn't initiate the process since, I am the only writer. I understand they do make exceptions sometimes.
That was 2 years ago, I cannot remember anything about multiple authors. Why not just try to recommandate your news source
over here[*4] ?
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/13/08 11:58am
By: Laugh
I noticed Geeklog 1.5 flipped the page titles so the site name comes after the title instead of before. Have you guys notice any improvement in SEO because of this?
For the most part this makes sense to me but I would really like to keep my home page page title the original way with the name of the site first.
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/13/08 12:52pm
By: Dirk
Quote by: LaughI would really like to keep my home page page title the original way with the name of the site first.
Thanks for the reminder - I had the same thought the other day.
How about
this[*5] ?
Btw, I didn't realize we changed how {page_title} works in 1.5.0 :doh: That was an unfortunate change, but I'd rather not change it back now and cause even more confusion. So I've introduced a new variable ...
bye, Dirk
Re: Geeklog Issues
Posted on: 07/14/08 12:17pm
By: Laugh
That looks good.
I'm using 1.4.1 for the moment on a few of my sites so I added a hack to lib-common which if the site slogan is used as a page title (like on the home page, or topics, etc..) it displays after the site name. If a different page title is specified, Geeklog displays it first, followed by the site name.