On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 22:28 +1300, Tony Meyer wrote:
> Surely there must be a way to get Google to prioritise the current
> documentation (if anyone is specifically looking for older
> documentation, then that should be easy to find once you get the
> current docs, or they can include the version number in their query).
> I know nearly nothing about SEO, but surely this must be the most
> basic level?
A sitemap.xml with appropriate priorities set would get the correct
ordering - possibly. Google just doesn't seem to be picking up the
correct keywords or which pages are important.
front page - 1.0
current docs - 0.9
old docs 0.5 to 0.0 as versions get older.
Don't even consider thinking about meta tags. (Number one sign a SEO
"expert" is clueless)
The one thing I was looking at the last time I downloaded the source for
the documentation (before running away screaming after an hour or two)
was to change all the randomly named anchor tags to something meaningful
for that tag. That was more for humans than google, but it would mean
that the same link would go to the same location in the documentation
when the "current" was swapped, which theoretically would benefit
google. Or split the manual pages up to make segregation easier for
googlebot.
A glossary or book index of the entire documentation might help ..
listing/linking every mention of a particular term.
Maybe slightly more friendly URLs? The last time I piped up about this
we got docs.exim.org and a slightly shorter url, but it still has a fair
whack of useless parts.
www.exim.org/docs/current/index.html introduction.html etc. instead of
exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/index.html
Stick the filter spec into the main documentation to avoid that front
page.
Every time I post to the list I've been adding the docs URL in my
signature and any manual references in an attempt to get the
docs.exim.org greater linking (go go one person google bomb!).
The only way I've ever been able to search the exim docs properly has
been use use grep, or "site:exim.org inurl:html-current"
--
The Exim manual -
http://docs.exim.org
