[csw-maintainers] Positioning our website

[Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski]

I just made a search for "solaris packages" on Google and I saw that
out of the first 10 results:

3 are actual Solaris package projects (we aren't any of the 3)
3 are packaging howtos
2 are pages that just point to other pages and provide little actual materials
1 belongs to a specific open source project which offers Solaris packages
1 is a blog entry on Wordpress.com I wrote some time ago

Not seeing opencsw.org within first 10 results is depressing.  Our
website was the result number 20, the last one on the second page.
This is of course better than nothing, but I believe we deserve a
better position.

I see two things we can do to improve the situation.

The first one is our domain registration.  Here's a snippet from whois:

Domain ID:D153552903-LROR
Domain Name:OPENCSW.ORG
Created On:08-Aug-2008 08:29:30 UTC
Last Updated On:14-Sep-2010 20:19:19 UTC
Expiration Date:08-Aug-2011 08:29:30 UTC

I'm not sure what the "Last updated" field means here, whether it was
the renewal date or an unrelated metadata update.  In either case, I
believe that extending our registration to 2 or 3 years into the
future would give us a huge boost.  Google considers domains that are
registered for a short duration less trustworthy and demotes them in
search results.  Extending the registration can be a really quick fix
for our positioning.  Dago, can you take care of that?

The other suggestion requires more people to work together.  There are
essentially two things we can try doing:

- work on moving opencsw.org up until it gets into the first 10
- create pages that can get into the first 10

If my blog post can get into the first 10, many other pages can too.
For instance, I know that some of us write blogs.  If you keep on
writing blog posts with the "solaris packages" phrase in the <title>
tag, and linking to opencsw.org, it'll help both sites.  The page rank
of opencsw.org will go up - good!  If it's your blog post and not
opencsw.org that makes it into the first 10, that's great too.  If
your blog post has a link to opencsw.org, people will click on it and
learn about our project, and potentially start using our packages.

I'm going to start by writing yet another Solaris packaging howto,
focused on using GAR and being short.  It's something I meant to do
anyway, but after looking the positioning issue, I'll make sure my
howto's title contains "solaris packages" and features prominent links
to opencsw.org.

Do other people have topics they can write about?

Maciej