Strange Signals from SEO Land

The science of search engine marketing, specifically natural search which is using the SEO moniker,  seems to get more esoteric each day as the smartest hackers do battle with each other.

Google and others try to program spiders and bots to map and rank cyberspace. And the other side -- the contenders-- generally the side I'm on -- are madly trying to psyche out both the programmers and their digital droids to achieve high rankings and the eyeballs and clicks that naturally follow.The process is like trench warfare; bit-by-bit, day-to-day moves and counter moves are made. Subtle differences are introduced and timed to influence the not-so-predictable passes of the spiders much like missile silos and air bases are camouflaged or counter programmed to avoid or to confound the prying eyes of reconnaissance satellites..

A few hours with Assaf Zmirly, Zvika Alon and Gidi Pridor of Whiteweb -- the ultimate countersearch team for marketers -- convinced me more than ever that SEO is a dark art requiring instincts, wizardry, craftiness, proprietary tools and databases and way more tech and mechanical understanding of the digital landscape than I'll ever have. If you are serious about search rankings you'll find yourself doing all kinds of things that seem extra, out of left field or simply crazy in attempts to influence rankings. Many sites create whole sections of mostly meaningless blab all designed to manipulate the search devices and psyche out their programmers and strategists. 

But if you are managing this process, especially the natural search effort, consider these factors and the trends surrounding them.

Content. You have to be what you seem to be. Content is scored according to its natural language and keywords, but overdoing it trips a trigger which denigrates your ranking. If your site is about poker or boxing or sewing, it has to be about that and the more content, the better. New content matters and sites that stay true to themselves and feature consistent content with regular new additions are rewarded with higher rankings. At least they are for the moment.

Links. Its not the number its the quality. Though numbers still matter for broad scale validation, its the content at the end of the click that adds to your relative ranking. Since many sites dramatically expanded inbound and outbound links in an effort to align themselves with an earlier programming preference on Google's part, the spiders reacted to link loading by testing the relevance of those links so that quality beats quantity. So now you must have an awful lot of links that are naturally related with similar content ( or content that the bots think is similar) to use this tactic to advance. And you have to watch your Ps and Qs about internal links since they too are assessed for relevance and for the numbers and types of words and tags loaded into or behind them.

Images & Video. These items are still not fully spidered or understood so it remains a gray area. And while this kind of content may add immeasurably to the experience your visitors enjoy, its not clear that they help you rank higher or drive more traffic. There are also issues of clickability and tracking that further complicate the use of these assets.

SEO is not a game for the weak or the weary. Its digital 3-dimensional chess best left to experts and managed by big picyure marketers with healthy budgets for this task who fit this tactic into a broader branding and direct response paradigm. 

Comments

[EH]

Search engines, especially Google, are getting increasingly selective about what links are actually related to your site. When building links, it is import to remember to stick with sites or blogs that have related content to your own website. If you are linked to unrelated websites, those search engines will discount your website and it will put you lower on the PageRank instead of moving you up like you want it to.

[Jeff Paul Internet Millions]

Internet marketing is indeed very different from traditional marketing. In the field of internet marketing the webmaster uses all possible means for promotion just from the comfort of his small office or his bedroom.