Ask HN: How do sites with little unique content get SEO clout? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do sites with little unique content get SEO clout?

8 pointspilom9 comments

How do you get search engines to notice you when you are just a portal to other content? Think a service like padmapper.com or hipmunk?

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Start a blog. Add unique content.

Ask nicely from other sites like yours. 'Resource' or 'Links' pages are your friend.

Ask your friends to link from their blogs. If your friends are tech folks, they probably have more than one blog or site they can add your site too.

If you post your site I'll give you some specific strategies and examples.

whitewatermap.com. So far its extremely regionally specific but that will change in the near future. Any recommendations for content options that don't diminish the effect of the full screen map?

Interesting. I would recommend adding a link to the blog in the box w/ the text.

As far as link opportunities, this seems to me like something that could go in: - lists of google maps mashups - lists of cartographic resources - lists of outdoors resources - On the resources page of every rafting club and outdoors club in the country - especially clubs at colleges.

Is the whitewater data you're laying over the Google Map yours, or does it come from somewhere else?

The data comes from public KML files. Technically AmericanWhitewater.org publishes them.

Create original content. Build links. Dominate the social scene.

See http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-i-would-do-seo-for-hipmunkcom for Tom Critchlow's take on it. (Did this post inspire your question? Seems coincidental.)

I actually had never seen that link but its kinda useful. I guess I was looking for something other than "write a blog" and the targeted pages were new. Thanks.

Be awesome and get people to talk about you. If you're solving a real problem for people then people will link to you and share content. I run a niche job board and I get a lot of link juice from our customers who love our service and have blogged linking us.

Ummm... perhaps your concept is wrong. Search engines can be thought of as a "portal to other content" and may, rightly, view your aggregation of links as noise. Perhaps you should focus on unique, useful, not-available-elsewhere content.

The only way to get SEO these days is great inbound links or great unique content. If you don't have really great inbound content, then you better have a ton of really high profile sites linking to you.

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