Search Engine Optimization Management

Assignments

This website was created as part of a class in Findability taught by Aarron Walter at The Art Institute of Atlanta. The goal of the course was to teach us how to create sites that receive higher search engine placement. That having been said, I now shamelessly admit to having already deliberately plugged in 3 keyword phrases suggested by WordTracker that might help me capture the audience of people trying to attain an improved search engine ranking.

I'm also trying out the rel="nofollow" link attribute and value. Basically, rel="nofollow" is supposed to:

  • NOT follow through to the URL in the href.
  • NOT count the link in the major search engines' calculations of page ranking.
  • NOT count the anchor text as a keyword.

So, I used rel="nofollow" on the WordTracker link above because even though I like WordTracker and wanted to promote them by offering my readers a link, I don't like them well enough to send spiders and bots away from my site and off to search WordTracker. Conversely, I did NOT use rel="nofollow" on Aarron's link because he's a good guy and his blog is excellent so I want to help support him. Besides. He's my teacher. Smiley

After I put the nofollows into various links, I ran this page through Webconfs' Search Engine Spider Simulator to see if I had done my job right. I was surprised to see that according to the simulator, search engines would spider the nofollows. Some preliminary research is suggesting that it's probably Webconfs — that their simulator doesn't recognize rel="nofollow".

This interactive media project was created by students for educational purposes at The Art Institute of Atlanta and is in no way intended for commercial gain or as a source of public information.