Subject:
Re: Review of GNU/Linux Tools Summary
From:
"Chris Karakas" ####@####.####
Date:
15 Dec 2003 03:52:43 -0000
Message-Id: <20031215.5eX.83523500@www.karakas-online.de>
David Lawyer ####@####.#### schrieb:
>
>On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 10:45:08AM +0000, Chris Karakas wrote:
>> Why? Because Chapters and sections will become separate HTML
>> documents.
>
>Not always so. The text format is a single doc. Also, LDP provides
>html docs in both in multiple pages (separate HTML docs) and single
>pages. Search the Internet for HOWTOs and you'll find single page ones
>also (in text, html, pdf).
>
You are correct only in part, the part that refers to "single chunk documents". But
my concern were not those documents.
Why? Because I have yet to see that I type
"network comands"
in Google and land into the one, huge HTML, or txt, or even PDF document. I almost
always will land into the "chunked" version. The above choice of keywords and search
engine are just an example. We can take whatever keywords and whatever search engine
you like - if there is a chunked version there, you will get the chunked version.
There are various reasons for this, one of them being that search engines don't read
a document that is too long till the end.
So forget about the huge, one-chunk docs, as a search engine strategy. If you want
to be found by the SEs, you must rely on the chunked versions - and perhaps a little
on PDF, but only a little.
But my point lies even further: we are not talking about a user who is searching for
a unique, multiple keyword phrase that identifies the content of your reorganized
document. We are talking about a user who just searches for, say, two keywords, for
the sake of example: "network commands".
If you change the label, you change the filename of the chunked version. If you do
this, the search engine will NOT think
"Ahh...the file network-commands.html is not there, let's present the huge document
that contains the whole HOWTO - at the same ranking place!"
First, the SE does not know that network-commands.html is just a chunk of some
"whole" document, book1.html. There is nothing that a SE does to find this out - not
with today's technology. The two documents are different for the SE.
Second, the big one, book1.html, contains much more text, therefore the importance
of the "network commands" part of it is "diluted" from the surrounding, irrelevant
text (irrelevant to what the user is searching, "network commands"). Therefore, the
document will rank at a place that is way back - not visible, dead.
Third, you may put it on TLDP, that alone does not guarantee good ranking. What is
also important, is that people *link* to it. But if you change an existing label,
thus changing the filename of the chunked version (which is the only important from
the SE point of view for the reasons stated above), then you kill all the links to
the previous URL. You kill what you were able to gather up to that point in terms of
SE visibility. You start anew. See my post to Martin Wheeler for a more detailed
description of this.
>Google has cashed versions so if one can't find something due to a
>change in the link, then they can always look at the (old) cashed one.
No. Google's cash will not remain there for ever. Most people don't even realize it
is there. After a few months, the cached version will disappear too. What then? Do
we start at rank 1 million out of 2,5 million again?
>But the most common case may be where one reaches the wrong chapter,
>etc.
That's why I say "think about it". I don't say "when you reorganize, put content
regarding editor commands in the chapter with the label 'network commands'". I say:
try to keep label and content in sync, of course. You may rephrase, delete and
insert text in the chapter or section with the label "network commands" as you
please - you may even change its title, somewhat. But of course, the content should
pertain to network commands, otherwise we have the situation you describe.
I guess this is not difficult to achieve: either there already exists a
chapter/section on editor commands, in which case we put the extra content there, or
there isn't and we create one. But we don't let an existing chapter or section just
disappear. We'd better double think on our labels at the start, choose them in a way
that fits our purposes, but we don't throw them away in the middle of a documents
life. We kill the document if we do.
> But since each chapter has a link to the table of contents, then
>they can still find what they are looking for.
>
No they will not. They want to find what they are looking for, *here* and *now*.
Only 1% will search further. I have had people ask me in emails if I have a PDF,
although the Formats section is there to see in the ToC. "Ahh...I must have been
blind" was the reaction, when I pointed them to it with a link. They were right, but
it does not serve me anything if they go and never come back again because "the PDF
was not there".
Want more? I have had people tell me that a link I gave them was broken, just
because there was a dot at the end. Read the debate:
http://www.nukeforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18185
>Even "nowhere" will be found if one uses the exact search terms and if
>you have something unique to offer.
No. Definitely not. You will never find a document you killed this way again. Not if
it was #15 out of 2,5 million before you killed it and not with the same, simple
keyword combination. 95% of all people who read a document coming from a search
engine, they come from the first 3-5 result pages of that SE. That's my experiene
and it is shared among other webmasters. Changing the label brings the document
(that chunk) back to result page 100000, rank 1 million (roughly, plus or minus a
few hundred thousand), 10 results per page. And people will search for "network
commands", that brings up 2,5 million results, not for "Displays contents of
/proc/net files. It works with the Linux Network Subsystem", which uniquely
identifies that chunk. People don't know that such a string exists. And for all the
other strings they can think of, the SEs will spit millions of results.
>But if it's at LDP, then it will
>get a high ranking. Thus I don't think much about search engines when
>writing or revising a doc.
Well, I see it. ;-) Please do. Here's a start:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm
> However, since some search engines don't
>consider key words much I'm told, then I try to put synonyms into the
>body of the doc to help people find it.
>
You are confusing meta-keywords in the header and keywords in the text body. You
mean the meta-keywords. I am talking about keywords in the body.
--
--
Regards
Chris Karakas
http://www.karakas-online.de
