Just a tip.  I've been in Part Time SEO mode for a few weeks now.  The Google +1 button is new for 2011 and Google has finally admitted publicly that it does play a role in page ranking.

I read a post in our forums somewhere something like this...

For SEO purposes on my main page I go into my main page settings and on the Search Engine Optimization tab I set my "Canonical Url Override" to http://www.mojoportal.com/ (or whatever).

So.  I did that to my new website home page.  A few hours later I noticed that my Google +1 count had zero's! Yikes.

I removed my "Canonical Url Override" and all my Google +1's were back.  MMMmmmm....

So...  It makes sense.  By making this change, I had told google that I had changed the name of my home page.  But google had attached my +1's to home.aspx.

If I start a new site I'll add the "Canonical Url Override" on day one.  However for what it's worth I'll continue on and keep my 7 (+1's).

Comments or insights anyone?

PS.  Joe.  Can we get a SEO section in these Forums?  Id' much rather discuss SEO here with my friends than with the air heads on some of the SEO forums.  My first post on one of the SEO forms a few weeks ago was a response to "What's the best CMS?" I replied mojoPortal was great etc...  Some senior forum member just BLASTED me.  It was NOT a nice "Welcome to the forum Rick."

Rick Hubka

Hi Rick,

I'm open to the idea of a specific forum for SEO, but I'm also a little leary about it, the SEO industry is tainted with a bunch of spammy snake oil types though there are some good valid techniques for improving SEO and some good consultants out there. My fear is that such a forum would invite a bunch of spammy people promoting their SEO services and that isn't the kind of content that is going to help the SEO for this site, and in fact could hurt the reputation and SEO of this site.

My thoughts are that the main things are good titles, good headings, good meta descriptions, and most importantly good content are the main ingredients that people should focus on for SEO. In addition of course to submitting their site maps to the search indexes. The documentation on this site starting at the article Search Engine Optimization covers the basics.

I think for now people can ask questions or discuss SEO in our Questions About Site Administration forum or in our General Questions forums. If we get lots of discussions then maybe later I'll consider a separate forum for it.

Best,

Joe