SEO - Search Engine Optimization for Perl programmers

It is funny that some Perl programmers have been very angry with as they felt I was using the evil practice of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), while other were scolding me for not writing Perl programming on every page I write and thus depriving the Perl community from a higher ranking on the Tiobe index.

But what SEO is really and how can a Perl programmer implement it?

A while ago I saw this:

SEO Explained in five words

get links from trusted sources.

by Jon Morrow

There are of course other things you need to do, but let's focus on this one.

How to get links from trusted sources?

  1. To write articles that people like enough that they will link to it from their own blog, or at least share it on one of the social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but most importantly on Google+.
  2. Make the articles so good that people will share them on Reddit, Hacker News, Stumble Upon or whatever other social link sharing site they might use.
  3. In order to get people to link to your articles, they first need to read them and for that they will need to click on a link to the article: So make the title and abstract interesting.
  4. Asking your friends and family to link to your articles and to "like" your pages can work, but only as a kick-starter of the process. Eventually you need to create good content for other people to like it. (Or make more friends, or marry into a large family.)
  5. Link to other people so they will feel more compelled to link to you. (Oh and make the link-text meaningful.)

SEO for Perl Programmers

Besides just the regular advice you'd get for your blog here is a specific one for Perl CPAN authors:

  • How do you get people to find the module that fits their needs the best? By giving your modules a good abstract.
  • Encourage people to "like" the modules on Meta CPAN. I am not sure how to do that in general. Maybe MetaCPAN could offer some service in exchange of the "likes", but you as the individual module author could ask the users, even in the POD, to go ahead and recommend it.

Perl Maven

You knew that will come, didn't you :)

In my little world of the Perl Maven site that means it would be great if in an article you recommended the Perl tutorial.