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SEO_ _3_rules_for_success
| SEO - 3 rules for success.
If you have a website, you’ve no doubt heard of SEO. If you
haven’t, you might want to read a few of my earlier articles
before continuing with this one. If you’ve done any reading on
the topic, you’ve probably noticed that people seem to
constantly contradict each other. This is exactly why SEO is the
favorite part of my job; it’s never boring!
I have to confess, I lied to you in the title. If you’re looking
for a how-to blueprint to get the top rank in Google or Yahoo
you won’t find it here, or anywhere for that matter. There is no
formula. There is no way to manipulate Google, if there were
they’d be out of business.
Why does Google constantly change their algorithm? To prevent us
from finding a formula for high rankings. Think about it. If
there was an easy way to get top 5 rankings in Google, would you
still need your Adwords account? Most of Google’s revenue comes
from paid search, and you can bet they’re going to do everything
in their power to keep paid search profitable. (and judging by
my Google stock, it definitely is)
While there may not be a guaranteed formula, there are a few
solid SEO rules that, if followed, will help your site out
perform the competition.
Rule #1: Correlation is not causation. I can’t stress this
enough. Just because two things are related, doesn’t mean that
one caused the other.
Before I talk about correlation and causation however, let me
say this plain and simple: Your site rankings will fluctuate,
regardless of what changes you make. Why? The web is constantly
evolving. New sites are being added, and old sites are being
modified. Keep in mind that
My favorite example of this involves a study I read in the paper
saying that of the 1000 elderly people surveyed, those that
frequented casinos were in better health than those who didn’t.
The newspaper article concluded that occasional gambling must be
healthy. While gambling and health may be positively correlated,
one surely doesn’t cause the other. A little bit of reasoning
will show that people who are in bad health don’t leave the
house as much, and therefore don’t frequent casinos.
Ok so where are you going with this? I wanted to make sure we’re
on the same page, because now I’m about to deliver the shocker:
PageRank isn’t as important as you think it is. While it’s true
that higher ranking sites often have higher PageRanks, neither
one is a direct cause of the other.
To help you better understand, let’s discuss how PageRank works.
PageRank is based off of what we computer scientists call the
wandering drunk algorithm, but I’ll try to use a more
appropriate example.
Suppose you’re given a computer with a random website. From
there you click 1 link at random. From there, you click another
link at random, and so on. Do this for about a month straight,
clicking a different link every 5 seconds.
Now count how many times you actually visited each site. If you
found widgets.com 10 times and sprockets.com 4 times,
widgets.com would have a higher PageRank than sprockets.com
This is the basic principle of PageRank. In fact, it’s what
Google Co-Founder Larry Page did with his program. He pointed it
at Stanford’s home page and let it go.
Now, the actual PageRank formula has changed significantly, but
the basic underlying theory is still the same. What causes a
higher PageRank? Links! Not just how many links, but the
PageRank of the linking site is also taken into account.
The important concept to remember is this: PageRank does not
determine your position in Google, links and content do.
This brings me to my 2nd rule: There are no bad links. I’m sure
you’ve heard people talk about link farms, reciprocal links, and
off topic links, and you may have even declined a reciprocal
link request or two. Don’t. Many of you are probably cursing
under your breath about link farms and getting banned from
Google, but let’s look at it rationally.
Site owners have no control over who links them and where
they’re linked. If I know this, Google knows this. If a link
could hurt a site’s ranking, it would be very easy for me to
sabotage all of my competitors by linking them from “bad sites”.
The ranking system could be manipulated, and Google would lose.
Link building is important, and this is where your SEO company
can help you develop a strategy.
This brings me to my 3rd and final rule. As this is a long
article, you may want to pause here and visit the restroom or
grab some more coffee before continuing(anything other than
getting back to work right?).
If you only remember one thing from this article, remember this:
your site visitors come first. No exceptions. Your pages should
make sense to a reader.
Make your text flow, in fact I recommend hiring a professional
copywriter to write it for you. You hire one for magazine and
print ads, and they reach less people than your website.
While keyword-rich content is the meat and potatoes of SEO, it
does NOT mean placing keywords in every possible place. People
may find your site, but if it sounds like it was written by a
5th grader taking English as a second language, you can bet they
won’t buy anything.
If an SEO company makes a suggestion that compromises a user
experience, you should re-evaluate the company. Sure, there may
be minor trade offs like using text instead of images for links,
or stripping out flash content, but if an SEO technique breaks
up the flow of a website, confuses a user, or makes the site
visually unpleasant, it shouldn’t be implemented. Remember, your
site is designed for customers, not search engine spiders. Util
the web is served up in XML format only and interpreted
differently by each user, your site needs to be aesthetically
pleasing, and more importantly it needs to flow.
And that’s it! Follow those 3 rules, and your site will be fine.
You may not be top 5 in Google for all your desired terms, but
you won’t do bad for those that are actually related to your
website.
Is that all there is to it? No, there are many other factors
like coding style, layout, keyword selection, linking campaigns,
and content management that can all affect rankings, but most of
them will follow as a result of my 3 rules.
If I had to give a 4th rule, I’d say don’t concentrate all your
efforts on SEO. Search is just one way potential customers can
find your site. Paid search, advertising on high traffic sites,
direct mail, email, and print are all other effective methods
that all too often get overlooked. Seriously, does it really
make sense to spend 80% of your time on a medium that only 40%
of your customers use to find you?
About the author:
About the Author: Ryan Jones is a University of Michigan
graduate who is currently working as a web developer. He runs
several popular websites (including his Internet Slang
Translator [ www.noslang.com ], and has authored articles for
many more. You can learn more about Ryan, his websites, and
interests at http://www.thehockeygod.com
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