Good news for SEOs? Propeller.com Sets Sail with New Crew

Social Media portals have become an important tool for search engine optimisation (SEO). When deciding on the right websites to support your SEO activity, the PageRank, traffic and usability of the website in question are of particular interest. Therefore, it is important that the site attracts the right people, the people who help the site increase its competitiveness to other social bookmarking sites by posting ethically correct contributions and comments.

AOL has recently launched version 2.0 of their social bookmarking website, Propeller. After years of staling when trying to create a competitive social content portal, the launch of version 2.0 deserves a look from a search engine optimisation perspective.

The new website is well structured with shades of blue and grey giving it a sophisticated appearance. The main categories have been reduced to eight straight forward headlines that make it easier to simply take a stroll through the website. To further improve on the website there is a whole team of moderators in place. This also helps to keep the site clean from spam and intolerable comments. Overall, the new website design is neat and tidy, but the two main changes to the previous version that should be should be paid more attention are the new mascot and the new voting system.

The new mascot is described to be part professor, part citizen journalist. A unique idea for social bookmarking sites but will it be rewarded with user eyeballs?

Complaints levelled at Propeller to date describe the mascot more like a business studies professor trying to fit in with his up-to-date students. Mature and hip at the same time, targeting the correct group of eyeballs can be tricky waters to navigate, especially for search engine optimisers wanting to attract the right kinds of users to their site.

Mascots aside, one of the most important changes made and sure to be of interest from a search engine optimisation and development point of view, is the revamped voting system. It has been transformed from a standard vote count, the likes of which are used by competitors like Digg, to an algorithm based popularity ranking running on a scale from 1 to 10. This means that the more people vote or in the Propeller case ‘prop’ for a story, the more popular the story becomes, and therefore, climbs up the ranking ladder.

With the alteration, Propeller is differentiating itself from the competition. Of course, it might take a while for users to get used to the idea that the voting system is less transparent, but the results could turn out to be more valid than the basic vote count. However, should the new voting system turn out to be a more justifiable approach to defining popularity rankings, it could significantly influence the role bookmarking plays when sites are submitted for search engine optimisation.

Propeller was initially launched in June 2006. Back then it was called Netscape and officially promoted as big competition to Digg. Editors were paid to decide on top stories, but surfers quickly lost interest as better Web 2.0 applications started to surface. In August 2007 the site was re-launched under a new name with an improved concept and resulted in the improved version 2.0 at the beginning of last week.

Even with a bumpy start last week, the site is well laid out and if it manages to attract new users and keep them happy, it could give Digg & Co a run for their money.