January 2007

When SEO disaster strikes

Posted by admin on January 31, 2007 in SEO Theory

Hardly a year goes by where I don’t lose some rankings in a significant way. Matt Cutts pointed out at a recent SEO conference that, if you’re managing 50 Web sites, the quality of the content is bound to be less than if you were just managing one Web site. Well, technically I [...]

Linked to the Ochlocracy and other S.E.O. cliches

Posted by admin on January 30, 2007 in SEO Theory

There is an old story I love to tell about a day during the French Revolution when a brave salon owner opened for business. Not many people came by at first but after a while a ragged-looking man came running in and demanded a brandy. The salon owner poured his drink for him. [...]

Cherry-picking search engines

Posted by admin on January 25, 2007 in SEO Theory

People complain that about 80% of their traffic comes from Google. Anyone who understands basic marketing principles realizes that the more productive sources of traffic you have, the better off you are. That’s why I only allow Google to drive 20% of my traffic. I can live without Google. How about [...]

Why SEO tests almost always fail

Posted by admin on January 24, 2007 in SEO Theory

I’ve been preaching experiment, evaluate, and adjust for a long time but I’ve also been criticizing many SEO tests that people have proposed and executed through the years. I’m often asked to show why I say tests are invalid, or to show what would be a better way to perform these tests.
A successful test [...]

SEO by the book

Posted by admin on January 23, 2007 in SEO Theory

Many companies have literally had to write their own SEO manuals for in-house reference. There are, of course, plenty of search engine optimization books you can buy. Some of them sell very well. But the undisciplined nature of the search engine optimization industry virtually guarantees that most (if not all) SEO books [...]

Looking for science in search engine optimization

Posted by admin on January 22, 2007 in SEO Theory

Did you know that the sum of any series of consecutive odd integers starting with 1 is equal to the square of the number of consecutive integers in the series? Some examples include: 1 + 3 = 4 (the square of 2), 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 (the square of 3), 1 [...]

New SEO definitions to ponder…

Posted by admin on January 20, 2007 in SEO Metrics, SEO Theory

I figured I’d better write these down somewhere or I’ll forget them and someone else will coin them first. (Note to Blogger: Please give us smilies so I can include :rolleyes: )
Well, anyway, as other SEO bloggers are starting to talk more and more about cache dates (which Google rendered useless for Webmasters in [...]

The Five-point SEO Sanity Checklist

Posted by admin on January 20, 2007 in SEO Theory

In an ideal world you would always have about 2 months in which to launch a Web site, as far as preparing for its release to the open Web. Most companies don’t begin to think about search engine optimization and Web site marketing until after the train wreck of their dismal launch has brought [...]

SEO Analytics: Measuring Search Success

Posted by admin on January 18, 2007 in SEO Metrics, SEO Theory

A quick scan of SEO-related queries reveals that people devote several hundred times more effort looking for “seo analysis” and “seo” than they do to find “seo analytics”, “measuring seo success”, and “seo return on investment”. Nonetheless, many SEO pundits realize the value in writing about how to measure your success as an optimizer. [...]

Wishful thinking optimization cures all SEO ills

Posted by admin on January 17, 2007 in SEO Theory

There are people in the SEO industry who “would like to think” that some things work certain ways, or they believe that some things “should work in such-and-such a way”. I see these people, some of them fairly well-known and respected, make such remarks in forums, on blogs, and reportedly even at conferences.
There is [...]

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