Search Engine Optimisation terms that are good for Textpattern

Here are some current search result placings in Google for some terms that probably should at least reveal us as candidates:

• cms : 180th
• content management system : 222nd
• blogging software : 131st
• blogging tool : 98th
• blogging platform : 101st
• web design software : 555th

…

Not that great.

Aiming for #1 is not that realistic, attainable, nor even desirable for us as a community. But to attract the right sort of people who can do sites justice with TXP via clear, professional designs we've go to put ourselves about a bit more and make the spiders hear us.

So, what terms should we be looking to attract from search bots? What seems a logical search criteria for geeks may not be logical to web designers. For example, someone who knows about web design, blogging and CMSs might search for “CMS”, whereas more visual folk might search for “how do I maintain a web site more easily”. Our primary audience is perhaps this 2nd ctageory so we should at least look towards being placed better for combinations of words designers might use when faced with the prospect of creating and maintaining a web site.

• When designing page templates, put in a Summary/SEO custom field that goes into a meta description
• Ensure current and fairly plentiful links exist between the various TXP sites and other useful resources to boost relevance
• Think about using more than one terminology on the same page to increase the search distribution (even “Textpattern is not just a blog tool, it is a simple, flexible web design platform” will create a hit on “blog, blogging, blogger, platform, tool, design” etc)
• Where appropriate, use different spellings (US English vs Rest-of-world English) in the meta tag compared with the copy. Again, may increase the spread (though search engines might do this automatically nowadays)
• Approach it from reverse, perhaps, by looking through textpattern.com's logs to see what people searched for to find us. That could be a starting point to build on

• content management system
• easy to use / client-friendly
• supports organic search engine optimization
• rich library of plugins

• open source / GPL license
• PHP / MySQL

• web standards / built to support standards (need to emphasize this part since the admin area is not exactly standards-friendly)
• open templates / completely customizable
• easy to learn for non-technical people and designers (NO PHP skills necessary)
• highly extensible and customizable

• (by zero)
• content publishing
• web publishing (these terms not searched for as much, but google them and notice it brings up content management at the same time. So using these on pages along with content management, linking using these terms, pushing these terms etc, could put txp at top of google for these phrases. Note also they include 'blogging' whilst content management system excludes it.)

Once a good, solid list is compiled we can start to think of ways to shoe-horn them into the pages for utmost relevance. And I think this list needs to focus on multi-word searches, since scoring highly for single words (outside “textpattern”) is a long shot.

These are well searched for (according to Google Adwords and Yahoo):

• (open source, php, simple, free, web, website) content management (system, software, tool)
• (free, professional) web design (software, system, tool)
• (free, professional, amateur) blog (software, system, tool)
• open source (software, cms, download)

• Content management system - content management software, cms, web content management,

• Search engine optimization - seo, google-friendly, robot-friendly, searchbot-friendly

• Web standards - built to support standards, standards-compliant, web accessibility, W3C-compliant, W3C standards, designed for interoperable technologies, follows W3C guidelines

• Open source - GPL license,

• Flexible - responsive, elastic, adaptable, adjustable, pliant, compliant, versatile, multi-faceted,

• Easy to use - client-friendly, highly manageable, painless, simple, friendly, plain and painless, uncomplicated, effortless, user-friendly,

• Rich library of plugins - comprehensive plugin archive, plentiful stock of plugins, many plugins,

• Customizable - open templates, modifiable to your preferences, built to personal spec, readily tailored

* Extensible - expandable, scalable, extendable, extendible,

• Usable - functional, handy, helpful, practicable, practical, convenient, useful,

• Easy to learn - no PHP skills required, easily learned, simple, quickly mastered, easily grasped, easily understood, easy to get the hang of, easy as pie, easy as ABC, nothing to it, a breeze

• Stable - secure, thoroughly tested, reliable, established, dependable, trustworthy, balanced, exhaustively tested, bug-free, proven reliable, carefully checked