SEO

 SEO  is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization which refers to the practice and results of publishing pages and permalinks on the web in order to rank better (earlier/higher) in web search engine results. In practice IndieWeb sites seem to do better than silos at search engine results.

How to

 * 2022-02-09 : 1 Simple SEO Step To Put Your Site In The Web’s Top Percentile

Anecdotal experience of what does better, in rough order:
 * IndieWeb sites with permalinks with slugs of search terms
 * HTML over equivalent PDF content
 * Silos with permalinks with slugs of search terms
 * IndieWeb sites with permalinks without slugs
 * Other silo results with slugs of search terms (e.g. silo wikis)

IndieWeb Examples
Notable examples of search terms or phrases showing indieweb results first or in some other highlighted manner such as an explicit preview.

Donald McIntosh
Donald McIntosh's journal of The French Divide beats their official Facebook page, as of 2017-12-30.

Mobile search result from Donald: 

Verified by undefined on desktop:

Aaron Parecki
(stub)

https://w7apk.com/baofeng beats the PDF version of the same information on another site.

IndieWeb Wiki
The IndieWeb Wiki itself shows up frequently in top search results. Interesting examples:

"NASCAR problem" is not only the first result in Google (as of 2017-11-15), but shown in a preview box with abbreviated text from the page and a screenshot (almost like an encyclopedic presentation)



Tantek
undefined's Twitter account showed up for in the top position for the query "t" on desktop and the second-from-top position for "t" on mobile on the Google search engine.

Google displayed undefined's permalinks back to his original posts. This shows that your domain could show up in Twitter posts that appear on Google, which gives additional incentive to add original post permalinks to your POSSE Tweets.

Other Wikis
Other wikis used by folks in the community


 * E.g. searching for "emailefail"

Articles

 * Update 1:
 * Update 2:
 * Update 2:

Publish Good Content At Simple Permalinks
Some of the oldest "simple" advice on SEO for independent websites essentially recommends:
 * publish well-written relevant blog posts on a topic
 * use well designed permalinks with slugs mentioning key topics

If you do that, people will appreciate your blog posts, and are more likely to want to share them with others, informally (e.g. in messages), and publicly, on their own blogs or social media, which search engines will notice and use as an indicator.

Keeping your permalinks short and readable (less than 70 characters, no random hex digits / UUIDs etc.) make them easier for folks to share, and more likely that people receiving / seeing them will click on them.