In my early days of designing and building websites, MS Frontpage was the tool of choice. It was easy, flexible, created code in a somewhat compliant format, and....it was cheap! Then along came Dreamweaver and the process of developing attractive and functional web pages became a whole lot easier, at least after the initial learning curve was completed.

Nowadays I barely touch Dreamweaver, it's an expensive relic of the past, brought out for occasional hard-coding tasks which invariably involve creating a code snippet for inserting into a Joomla or Wordpress website.

When I made the transition from Dreamweaver to Joomla it wasn't without its challenges and setbacks. Creating an optimal file path with SEO friendly URL's and filenames was and still is a challenge in Joomla, made easier by the use of 3rd party plugins, but a challenge nevertheless.

After a year or so mastering Joomla, and with 25 or so websites under my belt, I began to embrace the power and flexibility of Wordpress. When I made my first Wordpress versus Joomla evaluation, around 2008 or so, Joomla had the upper-hand when it came to eCommerce functionality. Wordpress, despite a growing base of custom plugins, couldn't really compete with the type of eCommerce applications on offer for Joomla users. Components like Virtuemart shopping cart made eCommerce for Joomla a breeze, and can sill be downloaded freely from Virtuemart dot net.

But wind the clock forward a couple of years and the playing field has leveled out. Wordpress can now be utilized to create a conventional website and not just a blogging site, complete with integrated eCommerce components/widgets and all of the commerce related bells and whistles which were once much harder to find.

So which is best, Wordpress or Joomla?

It really boils down to the end application. What exactly do you have planned for your website and how do you intend to make money from it?

For sites which are content rich and require a good structured system for organizing articles and pages, I'd tend to lean towards Joomla CMS. For sites with more of a 'social' bent - blogging and providing a base to interact with visitors, I'd lean towards Wordpress.

However, it's easier to get Wordpress to fulfill both of the above roles than it is Joomla. Joomla has various modules and components to emulate WP blogging features, but none are really as good as Wordpress itself. Wheras Wordpress can be customized to provide most of what Joomla brings to content organization, with a little bit of extra effort. It's also a little easier than Joomla for the novice to master, in my opinion. Joomla does come with a steeper learning curve, whereas Wordpress can be driven to the races without opening the users handbook.

So for many people the decision comes down to a slightly more arbitrary factor, one of SEO. Or put another way - which site has the best opportunity for ranking well in Google, a site built with Joomla or a site built with Wordpress?

The 'stuff' which is spun on various webmaster forums about this subject never ceases to amaze me. You have people who've only ever used Wordpress, or only ever used Joomla, claiming to be experts with both platforms, and obviously they always assert that their chosen path is the best to follow.

So for James and Arlene and the visitors to their fine website, I wanted to take a slightly more scientific look at the differences between the two platforms, at least as far as SEO is concerned, and hopefull help you with some basic configuration setting to maximize your SEO.

The following is a listing of the different functions and features of each platform with respect to SEO, to see how each compares with the other, and to offer a performance grade based on my extensive experience with each platform.

URL/ File name formatting -

Most people know by now that Google and other search engines consider keywords in URL's towards SERP's. This extends beyond the actual domain name into actual filenames. Keywords in the domain name are more useful than keywords in the file paths and filenames, but it's worth taking the effort to name your files and sub-directories to reflect the keywords targeted by the content.

So how do they compare?
Both Wordpress and Joomla can be setup for optimized URL's without plugins.

Joomla uses 'sections' and 'categories' to organize content and the section name and category name are used by Joomla in the URL. With Joomla, it's actually quite difficult to create a full file path without the page appearing to be in a subdirectory. If you organize your content into categories and sections, as Joomla inherently drives you to do, and you link to the content from menu items, then Joomla will show the category/section name as sub-directories in the URL path. Since Google gives more prominence to pages in the root directory than pages which are one or two steps down from the root, this is a slight drawback for using Joomla for good SEO. Using the Joomla system of content management, you're going to have only your index page in the root directory with all other content placed in sub-directories. There are workarounds for this but they're not easy to implement without resorting to SEO plugins or 'components'.

Wordpress uses Permalinks as its system of managing the URL structure. The full file path including sub-directories, can be created from variables such as date and time, or from fixed values such as categories and tags. But which permalink settings work best? This is what the WP Codex says on the subject -

“For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID.”

If you read the above, then do a Google search on “Best permalink settings for SEO” you'll see that a lot of so-called SEO gurus contradict the advice from the WP Codex. Many suggest a custom setting for the permalink structure which looks like so /category/post-name/ That would certainly result in a URL with a more conventional structure, one that we're used to seeing pre CMS days. But it would be in direct conflict with what Wordpress are telling us to do.

The best way (IMHO and through extensive research) is to use a permalink structure that does not start with a text based variable, as recommended in the Codex. Here's a list of variables you can use that are not text based:

%year% – The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004

%monthnum% – Month of the year, for example 05

%day% – Day of the month, for example 28

%hour% – Hour of the day, for example 15

%minute% – Minute of the hour, for example 43

%second% – Second of the minute, for example 33

%post_id% – The unique ID # of the post, for example 423

Remember, you just need to make sure the first variable is not text based, like “/%year%/%postname

Now what about the file extension? You'll notice that for most of the settings, your posts won't have a file extension, they won't end in '.php' or '.html', you'll merely see the trailing slash, like /

Probably 95% of Wordpress sites don't show a file extension, and it certainly isn't required from a functional standpoint. But Google SEO leader Matt Cutts recommends using extensions to help Google differentiate between different types of content. So here's a custom permalink structure which suits all conditions and it's the one I generally use for new Wordpress sites -

/%year%/%category%/%postname%.html

So to provide a score for Wordpress versus Joomla when it comes to URL formatting -
Out of the box, without using plugins -
Wordpress 4
Joomla 3

Ease of initial configuring of the SEO settings -
Joomla – From within the Joomla admin panel you can navigate to 'Global Configuration' and see the settings labeled “SEO Settings”. It's easy to change all three check boxes to “Yes” under SEO Settings (as they should be) but depending on your web server configuration, it may not work. On some apache installations when you select the the 3 SEO parameters to 'yes' in global config, you'll need to manually login to your Cpanel or FTP and change htaccess.txt to .htaccess. This is made clear in the config but newbies may have trouble working with the htaccess files particularly as some programs class them as system files and you may need to change your file permissions to see the file.

Wordpress - setting the Permalinks is easy enough but there's a LOT of conflicting information over which settings are best for SEO. WP doesn't make a recommendation inside the Admin, so you'll need to either just use one of the default options (not recommended) or use the recommendation I've made in the “ URL/ File name formatting” section above.

Score -
Wordpress 3
Joomla 4

Meta Tags (Title)
Joomla is fairly intuitive in that the page title will appear as the Meta title tag on all pages with the exception of the Home page. Then it becomes a newbie nightmare trying to find out how to set the home page Meta Title tag. You'll need to research it the first time, the key is within the menu default landing page setting, which is not at all intuitive.
Wordpress - pretty straightforward to set the page title tag, which is the actual title you've created for the page. But what if you want to use all 70 characters in the Meta Title tag? - it means you're going to have a long and ugly page file name. Also, the Title will appear at the top of every page above the content block, so unless you manually remove it from the theme page.php you're stuck with it.
Joomla 4
Wordpress 1

Meta Tags (description)
Joomla - simple to set the description tag on any page from with the page/content edit screen.
Wordpress - You can't set the Meta description Tag without a plugin. You can handball code into the header.php but it will be static from page to page. Not good.

Joomla 5
Wordpress 0

Meta Tags (Keywords)
Joomla - Easy to set on a page per page basis
Wordpress - You can't set the Meta keywords Tag without a plugin. You can handball code into the header.php but it will be static from page to page. Not good. Some say you don't even need a keywords tag, but some SE's still seem to use it.

Joomla 5
Wordpress 0

Heading Tags (H1, H2 etc)
(These are important for on-page SEO)
Easy enough in both. For Joomla I'd recommend you go to 'admin' > 'plugins' - 'TinyMCE' and click 'Extended'. This isn't installing a new plugin it's merely adding more features to the existing plugin and it will give you more page formatting options. With extended options enabled you can now highlight text on the page and set it as H1, H2 or whatever. As of V3.2.1 of WP, you'll need to manually install and configure TinyMCE plugin to see and extended set of page/post formatting options.

Joomla 4

Wordpress 3

Alt Image tags allow you to enter comments (an area where you can include keywords) so that when a web surfer hovers their mouse over an image, the browser displays the content of the Alt Tag. These are easy enough to use in Joomla and Wordpress.

So, which CMS platform is best for SEO?

With an out-of-the-box approach my vote goes to Joomla for SEO.

In my experience Joomla installations can work just fine without an SEO plugin, in fact I rarely use one unless I'm converting an old HTML site to Joomla and need to match the file structure.

Wordpress absolutely needs a Plugin, at which point the playing field is more level.

Another consideration is that I find myself doing more code-hacks when I'm working with WP than with Joomla. One of the first things I always do when setting up a Wordpress blog is to remove the Title tag from the top of the page, so you can add your own title in a <h1>Title Here</H1> format. The way to do this is to FTP to your server and navigate to

www/wp-content/themes/YOUR-THEME/page.php then look for and remove this code -

<?php the_title(); ?>

Hopefully that will help you get the most out of which ever CMS platform you choose to commit your effort to. Both platforms are excellent, you just need to know a few basics to get the most from them.

Wordpress and Content Distribution / Sharing.

The following is a simple guide to setting up a Wordpress powered website which utilizes some neat ways of distributing/sharing your content automatically.

The Goals -

Your goals and objectives will no doubt vary, but I had some specific needs from this project based on it being for a specific client.

1. I need to have my content distributed to social media and social bookmarking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Digg.
2. I want my static content pages to have some dynamic content to keep them fresh and updated, but I'm lazy so I just want the pages to update when I make blog posts into specific categories
3. I want to have the ability to update my blog easily on the fly, when I'm traveling our just hanging at the bar!
4. I have no interest in 'optimizing' my web content, I need a system where the SEO is basically set and forget.
5. I want a website which is completely 'white hat', I don't want to be worried about upsetting the Google gods.
6. I want to avoid custom coding. I may change my template/layout at some point and I don't want to have to worry too much about updating core Wordpress files when I change my blog.
7. I need all the hooks, triggers in place for good visitor interaction with my website including effective means of content sharing by my visitors.

The Setup, Wordpress and Getting a Template Designed

The key to a good Wordpress website is its functionality followed closely by its visual styling. Many of the free WP templates are heavily slanted towards blogs and newsletter layouts, but what if you're trying to retain the styling of a 'real' website? On that point, many people miss the fact that Wordpress can be used as the backbone of a traditional website and not just a blog. You can control Wordpress in the same way as any other CMS, like Joomla or Drupal for example, so for all intents and purposes your Wordpress powered website doesn't even need to have a blog!

But back to styling and template design - I generally use the product 'Artisteer' to build Wordpress templates. It's a very easy to use design package which will allow you to create a visually appealing design without the hassles of coding in the Wordpress elements. Artisteer Download

You can create a Wordpress (or HTML, Joomla etc) theme in just a few minutes, export it as a zip file then install it through the Wordpress Theme section in the admin area of your Wordpress powered website.

Of course you don't have to use an Artisteer generated template for this tutorial, you can install any of your favorite templates/themes as you would with a typical WP install.

For the remainder of this tutorial I'm going to assume that you've installed and configured WP, installed a suitable theme for your website and that you have sufficient admin privileges to install and configure plugins and widgets.

Plugins

To get the functionality we need from Wordpress we're going to be using several 3rd party plugins. In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of 'plugins', they're basically software blocks or modules which expand the functionality of the core WP software enabling very specific features. You can download plugins from a variety of sources but I always try to download directly from Wordpress.org so that they're free from spyware/malware and have some feedback from the WP community.

It's common to install and configure a plugin, then download, install and configure the next. For the purpose of this tutorial I'm going to have you download and install all the necessary plugins first, then we'll go through and configure them later.

To install a plugin you can do it in one of several ways. Most plugins these days can be installed directly through the WP admin without needing access to an FTP program, so we're going to install all the plugins we need in this way. Also, you can download the plugin file onto your desktop/folder and install it by locating the file and uploading it, or you can use the plugin search box and search wordpress.org from within WP admin and install the plugin directly. I'm going to be using the first method, downloading the file from Wordpress.org first and then uploading them through WP admin.

So, go ahead and create a folder on your desktop called 'Wordpress Plugins'.

Now follow each of these links one by one and click the 'download' button on each of the plugin pages, then save each one into your new folder.

TO GET THE REST OF THIS GUIDE, CLICK HERE

The remarkable thing about this whole process is that it came about practically without cost. Even more remarkable is that there are even more ways to expand this model of information distribution which are not covered above.

By using this system you're developing an extremely powerful way to accomplish SEO without really having to think about SEO. The 'FAQ builder' plugin is a simple method of building relevant content and targeted traffic. Its SEO benefits come from the questions you can easily stage yourself. For example, if you're operating a local business directory a question might be "can you recommend a good golf course in the [area]" The detailed 'Answer' provides plenty of opportunity for you to name-drop local businesses, building keyword-rich content designed at opening up your website to a broader range of search traffic. This simple yet effective strategy can be applied to any business model.

To conclude - the technology on your website collects a simple incoming post from a smartphone and distributes the post to a blog, into specific sections of static web pages, to Facebook, Twitter, Digg and almost 50 other social bookmarking websites. As website owner you can focus on building your site content in a format which is ideal for SEO, without having to worry about SEO. This type of website checks all the right boxes for Google. It's heavily social media oriented with fresh/new content appearing regularly around the website, and not just in a blog section. Its evolution will be natural and 'unforced', with no obvious effort to manipulate search results by unnatural content or backlink building tactics. It's the perfect SEO website without the need for SEO.

Establishing Ownership of Your Content PART II

Thanks for reading my article at Site Pro News. It isn't terribly difficult to create unique content in a way which cannot be easily replicated. Remember, you do this as a means to take control over your content and prevent its misuse and misapplication around the web. It's also a mechanism for improving your own SEO and achieving higher SERP's for your content pages.

The next in my content series of articles is something I've written to help people understand the affects of different types of Article Marketing. Many people are drawn to article marketing since it seems on the surface to be a simple, accessible and effective way to market our websites, and it appears not to involve any upfront costs. But time is money. If you're inadvertently working on something which has no real benefit then you are wasting your time and your money. That's not to say that article marketing has no real benefits, it's simply a preface to understanding the different forms of article marketing and understanding which are worthwhile and which are not.

Stay tuned for Part III The Perils of Article Marketing.

"Fact #1 - We are all Article Marketers, whether we choose to be or not.

If you proactively publish your content in article directories, blogs or eZines, or just simply choose to passively publish content on your own website or blog, you are still an article marketer.

Fact #2 – Google is changing the rules on duplicate content and the new rules affect ALL web publishers - proactive and passive article marketers alike."

If you would like an advanced copy of this sending via email, please register at the top of this page and we'll send it through on completion.

If you're in need of an effective content development strategy for your website, and would like to turn your content into something which can earn you a considerable stream of ongoing income, then contact us to learn more.

Or learn more about our integral article creation and traffic generating service here

The web is all about content, it's basically one large article directory. The task for a company like Google is to provide an efficient indexing system so we can connect with the information we are looking for in the fewest possible steps.
In the old days, when we bought our 'Encyclopedia Britannica', we'd flip to the front to find a broad index of content, then flip to the back to try and find a specific piece of content. It was and still is a pain trying to find something specific in a large hardcopy publication.
So obviously Google automates that task pretty well on the web. It can record billions of documents and serve up the most relevant to our needs in a few milliseconds.
However, by recording our specific surfing habits and combining the personal data it records about us with the  data taken from a website (via analytics or just simply from standard Google searches), it can match us with content which is even more relevant to our needs - or at least what Google determines to be most relevant to our needs.
So Google has become a very intelligent content indexing system, delivering more and more 'personalized' results based on our surfing habits, our demographic and the performance of the websites it records in its index.

It is no secret that one of the main technology hurdles for Google is duplicate content. But why should it care about duplicates if it's large enough and fast enough to index pretty much everything of worth?
Google uses relevance and authority to determine the degree of value of the content and hence the degree of value to the searcher. To do this reliably Google needs to know the source. As the author of a piece of writing I should have ultimate authority over everyone else who publishes it. If I'm using content as the ultimate arbiter of 'authority', hence 'value' I need to know who owns the content so I can give preference and prominence to the source and not to someone who has merely replicated it for their own self interest or gain. Its one of the most critical yardsticks that Google has to judge us by. If it gets the source wrong in its algorithm, all other measurements will result in a false outcome. It can't reward quality content fairly if it doesn't know who has authored it.

This isn't rocket science nor is it particularly new. It's also something that we don't hear Google making a big deal about, why? because they don't have and never will have a perfect working solution. But it's clear from some of the algorithm and policy changes during 2011 that Google is working hard to improve its chances of determining the true source of content.

The first step in a series of new steps was for Google to make a basic assumption about article directories, since they hold a lot of content and faired well under the old system of ranking. We've seen the results of Panda so it's easy to work backwards or reverse-engineer the thought process Google has gone through to arrive at its conclusion with respect to AD's. Article Directories contain primarily duplicate content, but not entirely, so Google must have factored other information into its decision to devalue AD's. If you look at the whole scenario it can give us valuable clues as to where things are headed.

I'm certain part of the thought process went like this -

Google HQ
"Ok, a lot of the web's duplicate content is coming from Article Directories and content farms"
"But it isn't all duplicate, some articles in eZine etc are 'original'"
"OK then, but generally speaking, what's the standard or quality of those 'original' articles?"
"Well, they're pretty poor, mostly, they kinda look a lot like other articles which we already know have duplicates, with a few semantic differences."
"Oh, so perhaps a lot of them are 'spun' from one of the multiple copies of an original?"
"It sure looks like it, so based on this, that and the other, lets demote the entire directory until we can figure out a better way of dealing with them. Sure, there'll be some blood-letting that we've gotten wrong, but we can come back and fix that later. Plus, we'll be sending out a strong message to the world.....lets make a sacrifice for the greater good of the web."

And in one fell swoop out came Panda, changing the whole lay of the land and the future web publishing.

So where does this leave us WRT content publishing, what are the rules, how do we play the game?

Google can't announce the new rules yet because they haven't finished writing them. It's in a state of flux, not in a static sense but in an evolutionary sense. In a way Google is just like an intelligent marketer trying to optimize its own business. It makes changes and it tests the results. It realigns based on measurement data then tests again. To stay at the top of its game, this process is perpetual, it has to be.

How does that affect you, or how will it? - First off, to hide behind 'well it's worked for me for the last 5 years so it must be OK' is like sticking your head in the sand and missing the whole point. iFrame cloaking worked for a while, IP cloaking/switching, Xrummer backlinking etc. These were all strategies that worked and have since been marginalized (or are heavily along the path to being) by the Google team.

But with a little forward thinking, some evaluation of what has happened in the past and some common sense, you can start to see the shape of what is coming along, hopefully in time to adapt.

And here it is -

There's a new system of page authority being worked out right now. It's ever evolving, but it has recently taken on a major set of changes. It now uses some re-hashed data from the old Page Rank system (back-linking) combined with new data that Google didn't have access to in sufficient quantity before, chiefly the introduction of user profiling data and website profiling data.

1 - User profiling data - we're seeing Google experiment with this in how it filters search results based on our surfing habits and demographics. The data it uses is extremely wide reaching and includes our social media interactions.

2 - Website profiling data - yes, analytics has been around for a long time, but there's now sufficient data to combine it with the user profiling data in point 1. Think about this very loose example - John Smith is interested in apples, but never oranges. When he finds the information he's looking for (i.e he doesn't repeat the same search) he spends on average of 65 seconds on a page. When he doesn't find the information he's looking for he spends an average of 7 seconds on a page before repeating the search. Apply what Google knows about the user-profile, the content of each web page and the analytics data of each page (it's all about apples and John never needs to know about oranges, the page contains 250 words which takes on average 65 seconds to read), and you can serve up something very specific to maximize John's Google experience. If that sounds far fetched it's because you're limiting the scope of your imagination. Google are doing it now, it's just still in the prototype stages.

3 - Old PR data - the old system of scoring back-links is in the middle of a major upheaval. Google is implementing relevance filters on all back-links to your site. It always has, but the parameters are changing. We've played the system, exploited the loopholes and Google is closing them down. And if you think you can't be penalized for what points at you, think again. Some of you will get on your soapboxes and say something like "if Google can penalize a site based on its back-links, I could start sending out spammy links to all my competitors and get them penalized". How basic is that. From the data Google collects about you and your website, it's able to predict which links are valid, determine which links it is uncertain about (neutralize) and take action on those links it knows have been fabricated with intent to mislead. It's a slow and ongoing process, the more data it collects the more precise the outcome of its calculations.

Each one of the 3 points encompasses the entire sphere of the web. They take into account how users interact with publishers and how publishers interact with users, it's pretty much a closed-loop system with an ever decreasing number of variables outside of Googles' access and/or control.

Now back to the original question "So where does this leave us, what are the rules, how do we play the game?".

We need to focus on what we can influence and not things we have no control over. At a basic level we need to ensure that we are recognized as the source for the content we publish and we need to stamp credibility on our content. We also need to exercise more control over who has access to our content and how it is used outside of our own website. Essentially, we need to take more responsibility over what we publish on the web.

But out of all of this, helping Google determine that you are the originator of your content is most critical.

Google can only determine the source of content if it has real-time indexing of the entire web, which obviously it does not have, nor is it anywhere close to having. The idea that you can post an article on your site, wait until it's indexed, then post it everywhere else, and Google recognizes you as the 'originator' is a complete fallacy. How can Google know you're the author if it only has a third of the web indexed at any one time? So the most valuable component in the Google algorithm is 'originator', but it's a variable that it cannot yet accurately determine on a page by page basis. It has minimized the opportunity for error by removing the relevance of websites whose primary function is to re-publish information, and it has provided us with canonical linking and REL author tags, which few of us can practically use. So there's still a hole in the most important parameter of the algorithm. But there are things we can do as publishers to fill the hole, to swing things in our favor.
Imagine that the parameter in the algorithm 'author' is weighted, perhaps on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being an absolute certainty that Google knows you're the originator of the content. So if you score high 90's, or even 100, all subsequent processing of the algorithm is numerically weighted in your favor.

There are simple ways to indicate that a page is the original, one which article directories and other 'syndication' sites cannot replicate. And no, it doesn't require that you use long and wordy articles, in fact you should produce shorter more relevant content since Google knows that the vast majority of people don't stick around on a page long enough to read 1500 words. Incidentally - many web publishers fail to realize the fact that the vast majority of people only spend enough time on a page to read 200-350 words, assuming your page is even relevant to them in the first place. We look at our analytics and see an average page view time of 1.2 minutes then continue to produce content that requires 10 minutes to read. What's up with that? We're writing for what we perceive Google to want and not our visitors. Google is now using that data against us. (I know there are exceptions, some of you 'engaging' writers can keep people entertained all the way through a 2500 word dissertation, but I'm talking about the masses here).

The way to get a '100' credit score for your work and authority for your website, and more traffic, is to encode every page on your website with an encrypted 'uniqueness key'. That is, to give Google something to look at which it knows cannot be recreated outside of your own website. To do that you need to abandon the old approach to content creation of 'set and forget'. The standard approach is to put out a 1000-1200 word essay with two images, a meta Title and Description, then publish it on your blog or website and walk away. Whilst that may always have some place on the web, it leaves Google with the dilemma of determining where that piece of content fits into the jigsaw puzzle, who owns it and therefore how to serve it up to a searcher. Also, Google knows the format is highly inefficient based on what I've said above about page view times. These 1000 word static text articles are not what people want to see. Most people write 1000 words and think they're impressing Google, but when you strip out all the words that google doesn't even consider, a lot of the time there's practically nothing left. And that works for the reader too. They're not absorbing enough data/information from the vast majority of web pages, so they leave without ever reaching the end.

So here's where I'm at -

What I'm seeing now is that a shorter and more concise 'interactive' article can rank much better than a 'set and forget' article with 1000-15000 words, if the article contains a high scoring Uniqueness Key.

If the page as a whole -

1 - Uses a high ratio of substance words to throwaway words.
2 - Integrates video
3 - Integrates more images
4 - Links out to authority resources (links to Google reference sites, WIKI and other non-commercial sites which are themed to the source content are precious).
5 - Integrates social media into the page (I've been doing some testing on creating a page, using a blog excerpt to point to the page, adding some blog comments via external sources etc and you can rank a 250 word page higher than a 1200 word page on the same subject just by following a simple formula).
6 - Incorporates Google + and FB likes for the specific page and not just the homepage
7 - Offers alternate formats for accessibility, like PDF, audio and audio/video versions of the specific page content.
8 - Shows some pattern of social bookmarking
9 - Offers users the option for textual interaction with the page

....then the page can achieve a high credit score, a high UK, and can rank well. If you throw one or two authority backlinks into the equation you can get the page to rank well even in competitive niches. You don't need 10,000 backlinks, just two or three.

In doing most, or all of the above, you're essentially creating a unique template for your work that cannot be replicated. It seems to be common knowledge that adding a video or something else non-static to a web page gets it ranked higher. Why do you think that is? - because of the above. You're creating an encryption code that cannot be cracked outside of your own website and you're giving Google a reliable yardstick for measuring your content and determining authorship. The more uniqueness you can apply to a page in the form of components which cannot be easily replicated outside of your website, the more 'bits' there are in your encryption code and the more 'secure' Google feels about your specific content. (The reward is Authority).

And before you think, "well then, I'll just grab some content from eZines and embed a few videos into it". Well that won't work. The textual content is still the key component, it will still be 'snippet-checked' against Google's index. The videos, audio, social media, external links etc are just solidifying the uniqueness of the footprint of that page on the web. If there's more social media interaction on an article or blog post, then that's creating an even broader authority footprint, almost eliminating the possibility of it being replicated elsewhere. And if the interaction keeps on happening, i.e it's continually changing in a unique way in Google's index, then you'll get a reward for freshness (not the bathing type).
Also, if you look at how the display of Google search results is evolving, you'll see that web pages are being rewarded for these efforts already, by Google displaying additional data on specific pages in the search results. If you have a forum website which is frequently refreshed and updated, you'll see additional listings for your forum posts which essentially pushes your competitors further down the SERP's. And there's more too, just take note of the changing format of the search results and you'll see what's coming along.

It might seem far-fetched, but it's happening now, I just don't think we've connected the dots as to how and why it's happening, exactly. If we can connect the dots then we've got most of the rules of the game and we can start to get good at playing it.

Think about the 9 points I've listed above (I'm sure there are many others). These cannot be manipulated to exploit Google, and that's what they're all about. It's a constant battle for them to eliminate rogue exploitation of their search results. Sure, you might get away with manipulating one or two of the elements but then you're respective credit score will only be 10 or 20. The more you can incorporate into your content, the higher your score will be.

So that will be my goal in 2012. Every piece of content I publish on my site will be unique and will pass on all the information that Google needs to determine that the content isn't and cannot be published elsewhere. Rather than spend a day writing a 1500 word article, I'll engage my visitors with 350 words of useful and succinct information, then provide them with a broad range of media types and additional resources to develop their understanding of the subject via whatever format they wish to pursue.

None of the above is anything new, we all knew about this early in 2011, but how many of us are actually doing it?