the cheezhead wiki (and why you should give a damn)
May 13th, 2007
wi·ki - (wĭk’ē); n. pl. wi·kis - A collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone who has access to it.
It’s been mentioned here and here, but until now I haven’t promoted the Cheezhead Wiki too aggressively. Opting, instead, to see how things might transpire. Knowing a bit more now, here are a few reasons to consider adding content:
- SEO - Shocking, huh? Me doing something in large part because of search engine optimization? Put simply, you could pick worse domains than Cheezhead.com to leverage for ranking content. Nick Roy sums it up nicely:
Last week I added iTeaching.com to the Cheezhead Wiki. This week it is showing up 3rd in the Google search results. This does prove that Cheezhead is a powerful name in the eyes of Google.
If you’re a start-up, my wiki can be a strong ally in ranking quickly and outranking critical blog posts. And did I mention it doesn’t cost anything but some time? Like most wikis, links are nofollow, so they’ll do you little good for your own search juice (but it keeps spam to a minimum).
- Reputation management - Like it or not, Google’s Top Ten is critical real estate in your best interest to control as much as possible. People are searching your company information and names. Something detrimental on Page One can be, well, bad. Sometimes really bad.
The Cheezhead Wiki is here to help. For searches like “allcountyjobs,” JobCentral’s “Chad Sowash,” and even this blog, the wiki helps people and organizations manage their reputation via high rankings.
- Free advertising - You’ll notice my blog’s sidebar has a listing of recent wiki updates. This equates to free advertising for your brand - to the tune of hundreds of Internet recruiting pros and general traffic everyday. And the list is search engine friendly. No javascript here.
- In touch via RSS - My wiki is feed friendly, meaning you can stay up on new pages, comments, etc. without coming back to the site again and again. Consider it PR meets competitive data on steroids. Just checkout the right sidebar.
- Us and them - Lastly, if you don’t create content about yourself and / or your own organization, someone else might. Take control. Should pay to at least stay on top of things. My advice: At a minimum, create your page(s), then sign-up to get feeds on your own content and keep an eye out for edits, comments.
That’s it for now, but I’ll hopefully be posting some best practices in the future. For example, an article entitled “Teacher Locator Directory” currently ranks No. 1 on Google for that keyphrase.
Additional tip: Stay away from duplicate content. If you’re copying / pasting content to the wiki that’s already online, do your best to make it unique.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Regarding #1 - can you tell us how using your wiki is good for SEO? Considering your use of the nofollow, isn’t it better for you than it is for the site user who enters the content? I don’t follow.
May 16th, 2007 at 8:47 am
See No. 2. I believe it’s good for both. If users can create pages that rank well, leveraging a strong domain like Cheezhead, then both parties win. In Nich Roy’s example above, “iteaching.com” ranks well using the wiki, where the actual domain name fails to do so at this time. In this way, he’s controlling the site’s reputation (trying to keep out unflattering blog posts, maybe?) and driving traffic via searches done for that keyphrase as users click via links in the wiki.