Open Data and SEO - Government sources
-
Hi Everyone,
Does anyone know of a connection between open data and SEO? I think this is a very interesting topic to explore. Lots of governments are jumping on this trend and it seems like Google and other search engines would be interested in this kind of authoritative source. Here are some examples -
USA OPEN Data examples
- Palo Alto, California USA: paloalto.opendata.junar.com
- Cupertino, California USA: cupertino.opendata.junar.com
- San Jose California USA: data.sanjoseca.gov
Other international Open Data examples
- Chile: recursos.datos.gob.cl
- Bahía Blanca, Argentina: http://bahiablanca.opendata.junar.com/dashboards/7844/medio-ambiente/
- Lima, Perú lima.datosabiertos.pe
-
Thanks Alex,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I sent Matt Cutts a tweet about Open data and SEO but got no response...no surprise
but at least I tried.Thanks for the info above...I am going to be watch this SEO variable..
Cheers! Carla
-
Some companies/websites have already used open data to great SEO effect. If some interesting data can be presented in a unique and interesting or useful way it has a great chance of attracting interest.
I clicked on the Chile link and these ideas came to mind immediately:
- Data on traffic accident statistics - perhaps a car insurance firm or road traffic safety campaigner could present that data on their website, with further research into why certain locations are accident hotspots and what could be done to improve the safety.
- "Consumer Prices of Fruits and Vegetables" - a travel website could present this as a guide for backpackers visiting Latin America - for new visitors to a country it's always difficult to know what you should be paying for products.
- "Polling stations in Santiago" - a political candidate looking for votes and increased publicity could have an interactive map for voters to find their closest location.
I did have a link listing some awesome presentations of public data but it seems to have disappeared. Here are a couple of cool uses I remember:
- Live London Underground Map - Page Authority 64, 231 referring root domains, 6000+ Facebook likes, 5600+ Tweets. You can track worldwide flights too - it's scary seeing how close so many planes look over major cities: http://www.flightradar24.com
- Hills Are Evil phone app - Overlay Media created an app to help people with "restricted mobility find the best and easiest route between two places" - it overlays gradient and even surface (e.g. cobblestones) data onto Google Maps.
There are lots of good Google Maps Mashups using public data - Google [google maps mashups] to see!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO audit for ccTLD sites
Hi.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOSanna
My customer has sites with Country code TLDs (e.g. https://sample.fr, https://sample.fi and https://sample.en) and I'm supposed to perform SEO audit for them. Is there any way to perform audit at the same time for all versions? Can I perform audit e.g. just for https://sample or do I have to run every .fr, .fi and .en separately in multiple tools I use? Thanks much in advance!0 -
Are In-Page Tabs still detrimental to SEO?
Hi Mozers, Are in-page tabs still detrimental for SEO? In-page tabs: allow you to alternate between views within the same context, not to navigate to different areas. As in one long HTML page that just looks like it's divided into different pages via tabs that you can click between. Each tab has it's own URL, which I guess is for analytics tracking purposes? https://XXX https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=1 https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=2 https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
SEO - is it site or page
Hi When we're talking about SEO does the search engine only look at the whole site in general or do they look at the individual page when we're talking about SERP? So if you have a keyword "my search term" Does the search engine look at the site first or the page with the term on then rank you or is it the page then the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
SEO transfer to new website
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference? If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Souk0 -
Recommendation for Small Business SEO
I'm trying to find a company that can provide SEO services for our small business. We have a limited budget, $500 a month or less. We have staff that can do much of the work in terms of correcting content issues, changing content, etc. However, I'm not an SEO expert and we need someone to help us by understanding where we are now and providing ongoing guidance on what we should be doing to improve and also in helping with execution where possible and/or necessary. Can anyone recommend a company that might be able to help us with this within our budget constraints?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Careerbags0 -
Website Layout and SEO
Hi All, As a brand new user to Wordpress and having read articles and forum posts I have purchased Studiopress Genesis Enterprise Theme. QuestionWordpress like any traditional bespoke site can be written to incorporate variations of columns structures.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
What is the best column strategy or page layout strategy for SEO? Thanks Mark0 -
Map with usability and SEO purpose
For my client I need to add some structure to its pages. The deepest pages are about restaurants and are sorted per city and then per province as a larger silo. I want to do this: Homepage > Provinces > Cities > Restaurant page This structure is optimal, but I as a usability freak I prefer making the experience cool for the users. I want to add interactive pictures that are cool for the user and hopefully are readable for the google bots, I want to do it like this: The homepage shows a map of my country that has the twelve provinces outlined, that light up when you hover over them. Then when you click a province you get to the province page. On the province page you see a large image of the province and see all cities where there are restaurants, when you hover over a city it grows a little and when you click it you arrive at the city page, at that page you will find a list of all restaurants that are available in the city. What I need to know is, is it possible for google to see these pictures as a nice site structure? Or do I need to add the ugly footer links and have pages with lists of links...? And what is the smartest way to structure this, flash?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lebron270