

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

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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mattgratt
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.

~~~
pilom
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?

~~~
mattgratt
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?

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

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cooperadymas
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.)

~~~
pilom
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.

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ig1
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.

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drallison
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.

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longlistener
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.

