I agree with most of what Paul said, except that the thread on karakas has a page rank of 2, so I am not sure what the ROI would be on that one.
For comparison, SAGE's homepage has a page rank of 6. My homepage, which can easily be located, has a page rank of 5. Slashdot's homepage has a page rank of 9, etc... The [mathematica free] search keyword is clever. I think I've personally searched for that many times. Also, it helps to have a domain name where the individual words are separated. Search engines will boost site rankings for search terms that appear in the domain name: sage-math.org or sage.math.org or sage.math.net or sage.net If you make an email signature (that you use on reputable mailing lists) which contains the aforementioned type of domain name in a URL, you can obtain a double bonus. The reason for this is that mailing list (and newsgroup) messages are (usually) automatically converted to HTML archives where URLs are hyperlinked. When this happens, you gain a link from a reputable source that has your key words in the anchor text. Anchor text has a lot of weight; it's what people used to Google bomb the keywords [miserable failure]. On Aug 9, 5:54 am, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am not a SAGE developer, and I'll probably say things that most of > you know already, but I thought about this so I might as well email > the list. > Here is how to go about and possibly improve rankings on Google (*): > > Step 1: Everyone on this list could make sure to add a link to > sagemath.org on their homepage, preferably with "free", "open-source", > "math" and "software" spelled out close to the link > > Step 2: The sagemath.org website definitely needs meta data to be > added. The same keywords and more, maybe a dozen total. Google uses > those. One could say this wouldn't help for a search on the single > term "sage", but I am not sure: the very last step that Google > performs in every search is to make sure that it has diversity in the > output (make sure it talks about herbs, fly-fishing rods and > software). So I would suspect the sagemath.org website suffers on a > search for the single word "sage" mostly because there are already > quite a lot of programs out there called "sage", and Google will only > display so many in the top ten. Helping Google (through the meta) > distinguish how one is different from the other might help. > > Step 3: Definitely buy Google ads. Who would find SAGE through Google > that has never heard about it? I could imagine that someone searching > for "free mathematica" would be very interested to learn about SAGE. > Also you would get data out of it, since you can see which keywords > seem to work with people. Finally, with Google Ads you only spend as > much as you are willing to spend (I can't remember if there is a lower > limit/month or what it is). That data must be worth some cash. > > Step 4: Go around and post on forums. For instance, if you search for > "mathematica free" (without the quotes), this shows up high up, at > least for me:http://www.karakas-online.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=189. A > website, > highly ranked by Google, where people seem to be interested in > something exactly like SAGE. Doesn't matter how old the conversation > really is (in that case it was initiated 4 years ago, but the latest > post is 6 months old), it would be good for all (the forum users, > Google, SAGE users and developers) if someone took the time to post a > paragraph about SAGE and a link to sagemath.org on many similar posts. > It would help drain some PageRank to sagemath.org. > > Suggestion: Writing this up, I have a question. What is the correct > case? sage, Sage or SAGE? Is it standardized? For example, in the > Firefox search bar that was just posted yesterday, it seems to be > written Sage. On the website, it's always (?) written SAGE, except in > the logo where it looks like "sage". Google picks up on those > differences, sometimes, and it could be helpful. > > Paul > (*) This is backed up: for a while I was the first hit when searching > for "chocolate mousse" (without quotes) ! Unfortunately I have come > down to 10th since moving to Oxford. :) > > On Aug 8, 9:14 am, Chris Chiasson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > This is kinda off the wall: > > > Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab don't have a lot of competition for > > their keywords on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. > > > By offering a **very low bid** on each of the names, you could > > probably put a message about the SAGE open source project on each of > > their names. In addition, you could do the same for SAGE's name. > > > Together with the nice solid application based tutorials suggestion > > mentioned in this thread, you might easily siphon off their new users > > (and some old hands too). > > > On Aug 7, 5:22 pm, "William Stein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Hi Sage-Devel, > > > > The SAGE downloads during the last week are as follows: > > > > Linux Binary > > > 42 > > > OS X Binary > > > 42 > > > Source > > > 91 > > > VMware (= Windows) > > > 57 > > > > Total .................................. 232 > > > > The number of new downloads of SAGE per week have been roughly > > > constant during the last 2-3 months. The growth of SAGE is definitely > > > not what I hoped for during my talk at SAGE Days 4. Does anybody > > > have any good ideas about how to increase the number of people > > > downloading SAGE? My hope is that this question will spark a relaxed > > > but enthusiastic and positive open-ended brainstorming thread in which > > > a lot of crazy ideas appear. > > > > I'm laying a lot of groundwork (e.g., writing books, articles, etc.) > > > and I think other people are (esp David Joyner), but there is probably > > > much more that could be done. > > > > Please share your thoughts! > > > > -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
