How we ranked N°1 on Github Trending for a week using Github SEO

Hello Everyone!

I'm excited to share my insights from developing several open-source projects on GitHub, specifically focusing on SEO techniques. These strategies helped my projects achieve the number one trending spot in both the developers and project categories for nearly a week and amass over 25,000 stars in under eight months.

Concentrate on infusing your Title, Description, and Tags with keywords. The rest is secondary.

Understanding GitHub's SEO is straightforward: any modifications to your project directly influence your ranking. Here's the hierarchy. GitHub uses to rank projects: Keywords in Title > Description > Tags, supplemented by the number of stars. That's the essence of it!

Understanding GitHub's SEO is straightforward: any modifications to your project directly influence your ranking. Here's the hierarchy GitHub uses to rank projects: Keywords in Title > Description > Tags, supplemented by the number of stars. That's the essence of it!

Your project title should incorporate as many keywords as possible. It's worth noting that while your organization's name doesn't factor into GitHub's search bar, it does play a role in Google searches. Altering your project title doesn't affect cloning or similar aspects. GitHub maintains a record of your project's previous names.

For instance:

A project named "MyCompany/product" will only appear in GitHub searches under "Product," but can be found on Google as "MyCompany Product." If your aim is to maximize your repository's ranking, consider including your company's name in the project title, like "MyCompany/MyCompany-Product."

Additionally, if targeting a specific market or audience, incorporate relevant terms into the title.

Example: "MyCompany/ProductName-B2B-SaaS-HR" will rank higher for keywords like B2B, SaaS, HR compared to similar projects.

Start with Keywords in your project name on github and once you have reached a thousand stars or more, remove them.

The project description is crucial. Begin with a succinct product description, followed by as many relevant keywords as possible. This approach makes your project more discoverable on GitHub.

For example, adding "W24" to my description quickly elevated my project "Quivr" to the third rank for those keywords. Though a simple example, the results were immediate, demonstrating the effectiveness of keyword usage.

Tags play a significant role. They link your project to various Topics on GitHub (https://github.com/topics), enhancing your visibility. For newer, smaller projects, avoid competing in heavily saturated tags like Python or React. Instead, target trending tags with fewer stars to gain traction. Check out https://repositorystats.com/topics for more insights.

Regularly update your description and tags to align with current trends, competitors, or emerging technologies. This keeps your project relevant and well-ranked.

Hope you learned something!

Stan Girard is the co-founder and CEO of Quivr, an open-source chat-powered second brain. Girard graduated from EPITA Computer Science School in France. Worked in Blockchain before it was called Web3. Moved to DevOps (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform) before becoming Head of GenAI in a web dev agency and leading the GenAI Thought Leadership of the group.