Hi everyone. I wanted to start a thread on the new Google Caffeine release coming up and ask that if there's anyone who has any info on how DNN sites will fare with the Google's new search engine. I have read many articles saying what will be weighted more now on Google. Like long tail keywords and domain names. I have also seen where google will be very hard on overall site infrastructure. Has anybody been able to test search their site using the google sandbox? I got in late on the sandbox dosent seem to be functional any more. Please add to this thread as Im sure it will play an important part in the year ahead. Thanks

I have half a dozen DNN sites that I manage the SEO for. In my expirimentation, if you are doing everything that you should be, DNN performs well, and may even get a slight boost with the update. The sandbox was very friendly to my sites, in some cases bumping them up several placements for targeted keywords. Of course, that may or may not have anything to do with the DNN architecture. There are so many variables, that it's difficult to pin down exactly what it's treating differently that makes an impact. It could have nothing at all to do with the site framework and be another ranking factor that's making the impact.

I think you'll find that the caffeine update won't play nearly as important a role as you are imagining. At least not as far as traditional SERPs are concerned. I think the biggest stories of 2010 as far as search goes will be related to the localization/personalization of the SERPs. It's one thing to have to adjust your SEO methods to accomodate new ranking factors or newly weighted factors. It's another thing entirely to have a game changer like local/personal search shake things up. SEO in it's current form won't exist in a couple years. For that matter, Google won't exist in it's current form in a couple of years!

Thanks for the input Steve.
I agree that the Localization/personalization are the biggest hurdle for SEO. Given the state of change and where we maybe in a few years I can agree that search as we know it will change dramaticaly although I hope that the competition makes for better results all around. It makes one wonder if advertising in Florida while your in Arizona using present tactics will hold up.

I also have several sites all DNN and do well with them for now. My concern is perhaps the same as yours and that's the DNN architecture. I know DNN has been supportive of SEO abilities and hope it continues.

Kemper

For the record, Tom Kraak at Seablick is really the go to guy for all things SEO when it comes to DNN. Bruce Chapman at iFinity is also a great resource. Lee's no slouch himself, either. :-) I'm happy to say that I found some of the best resources in the DNN community through DNN Creative. The sub here really was the best DNN related purchase I ever made. I do expect that the framework will continue to mature and that crawlability will become better and better. One concern that I have is the page load times affecting our rankings negatively. A simple html file correctly optimized is always going to load faster than a dnn page. However, there is much debate about whether load times are going to be a significant ranking factor or not. The coming months are going to be very interesting!

Hello,

The key points I always focus on are:

• SEO CSS Semantic skin - this helps search engines to correctly index your content
• Snapsis PageBlaster - this helps pages to load as quickly as possible
• iFinity URL Master - this helps to ensure all URLs are optimized
• RSS Feeds - this helps to distribute your content to other networks + can help with automating backlinks
• Good useful content that people want to link to and come back to and content that is regularly added to the website

These may be useful:
Pure CSS SEO Layouts for DotNetNuke skins
Semantic Code and Header Tags in DotNetNuke Skins
iFinity URL Master Module
Issue no 3 - Covers RSS
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and DotNetNuke MP3 Interview
with Jeff Smith from Venexus, Inc.
(60 minutes)
Search Engine Optimisation Made Easy
(PDF) 
Keyword Research Guide
(PDF)

Great Post Lee. I have always come here when I needed some type of help and your video's are great.

I wanted to start this thread to finally give something back. I've been working in DNN since 2.0.
The tip I would like to leave is about getting more home page keywords picked up be search.

CSS for me has been a challenge with some trade offs using certain modules.

One that works for me is using UMG Ultra Media Gallery. This module is SEO friendly so when I use it on the Home Page of a site it gets picked up by the searps. By keywording every image in the gallery you can get these added to your page. If you have WEBCEO or something like it you can actually do a "anaylize page" and see the results.

If you have a Google sitemap setup, you can also use their webmaster tools and they will show you the top keywords that Google has analyzed you for - pretty useful.

In fact there's another one for SEO - get a Google Sitemap setup, plus Google Analytics can be useful for tracking traffic.

Further info here on Sitemaps - I use GSiteCrawler:
Google Sitemaps Interview
with John Mueller (23 mins)