Category: SEO Theory

It’s very, very hard to design a good SEO experiment. Most people will never be able to do it. But I will concede that not every “bad” SEO experiment is completely useless. You can glean interesting information from many failed experiments. I advise you to be immensely skeptical of the findings of SEO experiments, especially…

I received the following question from a newsletter subscriber: “Michael, I enjoyed your recent article on ‘SEO for Non-expert Websites’ (vol 8, issue 46). I was hoping, due to the emphasis the article placed on framework selection, it would have more to say on same. … by ‘frameworks’ were you referring to the formal definition…

You know people are struggling with basic search engine optimization when their request for help begins with several SEO metrics (DA, PA, DR, TR, TF, etc.). It’s encouraging to see more people dismissing these 3rd-party SEO metrics right away, although they still have their defenders. SEO tools generate automated opinions about content and link quality….

For years Web marketers and search specialists have used a fairly rigid classification system for identifying queries by type. You should have these three types burned into your soul by now: Informational queries Navigational queries Transactional queries I’ve identified other…

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Computational queries have emerged as a new category of search behavior.  The most common type of computational query I use is “how far from HERE to THERE”.  Sometimes I do this when driving around town.  Sometimes I do this when…

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Because the SEO industry has never adopted standards there is no way for the average business decision-maker to know whether their in-house SEO expert or SEO consultant is telling them something reliable.  This is the problem that we all have…

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Up until now search engine optimization has largely followed one of two philosophies. Let us call the older philosophy in situ optimization and let us call the younger philosophy prima facie optimization. In situ optimization originally called for little more than publishing text on a page and embedding some comments (these were originally crawled and indexed by several search engines) and meta tags (especially keywords). Some early search engines, including Alta Vista, attempted to analyze on-page structure (techniques for which were developed decades ago for large document management systems). Prima facie optimization called for placing links on other Websites to expedite crawl and confer sufficient trust and value that a search engine index would prefer the link destination over less frequently linked destinations. Inktomi was heavily influenced by prima facie optimization but other search engines, including Alta Vista, incorporated it into their second and succeeding generation algorithms. When Google came along they worked with both in situ optimization (ignoring the keywords meta tag) and prima facie optimization. Google attempted to limit the effectiveness of prima facie optimization by using PageRank to impose a hierarchical order on linking documents. From 1998 to 2003, while Google was still competing for market share, […]

Google makes money by taking content from YOUR Website and republishing it on THEIR Website and running ads against that content. When they were just a search engine providing links to Websites this was fine. But now Google has turned into the Mother-of-all-Scraper sites, taking content from thousands of Websites and republishing it as their own “for improved user experience”. To date the only redeeming factor I see in this practice is that Google isn’t running ads against Knowledge Graph results, but how long can we count on that to last? As a publicly traded company they will answer to their investors’ concerns about seeking “return on investment”. Google critics will be quick to point out — on the day Google brings the ads to Knowledge Graph results — that they are violating their own guidelines. Technically, however, Google doesn’t index its own search results so we can’t really say they violate their own guidelines. Google does scrape its own content. You see that happen every time a YouTube video is included in search results. But most YouTube videos are uploaded by Google’s user community, so we willingly give Google our content for their own monetization in exchange for the […]

We don’t agree on what “Technical Search Engine Optimization” is supposed to be so we won’t agree on what comprises “Technical SEO Skills”. Here are my definitions and why I think these skills are important. Technical Search Engine Optimzation These skills break down into four areas: HTML coding and analysis Server operating system administration and analysis Website architecture design and analysis PHP, Javascript, Perl, and similar language coding knowledge There is a difference between “having some coding knowledge” and being someone who writes software for a living. I’m not sure if a “coder” is supposed to be different from a “software engineer” but I get the impression that anyone who bills him/herself as a “coder” builds Websites, plugins, themes, and stuff like that. My apologies to any coders who actually develop full-blown software applications. In my day, when we walked uphill through the snow both ways (barefoot) we called ourselves “(computer) programmers” and the guys who taught us how to develop software were “programmer analysts” and “systems analysts” (who often called the “programmer analysts” wannabees — but I digress). Technical search engine optimization delves into code and operating systems. It’s got nothing to do with keyword research and link placement. […]

Search engine optimization is neither dead nor in need of redefinition. As always, SEO bloggery is publishing a broad spectrum of opinions, defenses, and justifications in the wake of Google’s latest round of link filtering. These blog posts have begun to raise an important issue: should we redefine SEO or conclude that it’s time to move on? There is, I think, something to be said for the inadequacy of popular definitions of Search Engine Optimization. For example, the definition provided in SEO Theory’s glossary reads: Search Engine Optimization — Noun phrase. The practice of designing, modifying, and/or supplementing Web documents to rank well in search engines. Now mostly superceded by link building (q.v.) and/or link baiting (q.v.). I have used this definition and variations of it for many years, all the while talking about the SEO Cycle, which I have usually defined as: Keyword Research Content Production Link Placement Measurement Analysis Do you see the disconnect here? The definition we provide for SEO really only describes — at best, and only with some approximation — one step in the SEO Cycle. So while there is sound basis for arguing that we need to redefine search engine optimization, I realize that […]

What is normal Web behavior? What makes that behavior “normal”? I am sure there are many different types of “Web behavior” that we could argue are normal but which are not found on all “normal” Websites. But then, what is “Web behavior”? When I use this expression I refer to the things we do with Websites. We publish sites and we use sites. So “Web behavior” includes whatever you do with your HTML code and whatever you do with the document you find on the Web. A search engine attempts to take into account both types of Web behavior. In the SEO community we don’t have much agreement on how much user behavior a search engine measures. Some people are convinced that Google is watching what you do through the toolbar. And in some corner of the Googleplex there must indeed be people who analyze data collected through the toolbar — but Matt Cutts says that data is not used to determine rankings in Google’s search results. On the other hand, we know that Google is recording the clicks people make on its search results. Is this data used to determine rankings in the search results? Some people believe so; […]

Someone once told me that venture capitalists don’t want to invest in traditional SEO agencies because “SEO doesn’t scale”. If The Wall Street Journal is to be believed, 3 out of 4 start ups (companies seeking venture capital at some point) fail. In a follow-up to the WSJ article

You will often times find people who say things like “EMDs should rank well”, “Google Plus will succeed”, “guest posting will always work”, “Pinterest is worth investing in”, “white hat %&$ing works”, “infographics can be successful”, and etc. While these are all things that can and might be true, the reality is the author of […]

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