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Utilizing Content Emergence For SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 25, 2007 in Search Engine Optimization

There is a topic I have been wanting to write about lately that I’ll content Content Emergence Theory. Think of Content Emergence as the random creation of documents about a topic.

If you are familiar with the Big Bang Theory, then you know that many scientists believe the universe began as a single point which exploded into an expanding glob of proto-matter that was superhot. As the universe cooled matter formed (primarily as hydrogen gas) and then began collecting into pools of densely packed atoms. These pools eventually formed the first black holes, stars, and galaxies.

A Web topic community comes into existence in a very chaotic fashion. People become interested in a topic and start creating Web pages about that topic. They gradually become aware of each other’s pages and start linking. As linking relationships grow some pages accrue more links and some pages confer more links.

When the community reaches a critical mass, several “authorities” emerge — these are the most informative sites that nearly all the other sites link to. And at the same time several “hubs” emerge — these are often the niche directories around which communities form, but hubs can also be F.A.Q. documents, informal “roundup” articles, and other things besides niche directories.

Because there are hundreds of millions of people using the Web to communicate with each other, every topic inevitably spawns multiple communities. Think of each community as a small galaxy of documents. These Web galaxies are not very well interlinked although they are often aware of each other. But there is generally tight interlinkage between members of the communities.

Although it’s always best to get in on the ground floor of any topic in search engine optimization, you can build a new community at almost any point in the lifespan of a topic as long as there are new people expressing interest in the topic. So you may not be able to take the top search engine positions away from the ancient stars of the Web universe, but you can build up a community of Web sites that recognize your leadership.

Finding and recognizing new content before the major hubs do is a key to building value in the larger Web universe. It’s not easy to find all those new little guys who crave attention, but you can certainly take your best shot at it. And the more attention you give to them, the more they’ll appreciate your efforts on their behalf.

Xenite.Org has built its success on this principle for years. Within the science fiction and fantasy community new topics and communities are born every year. If I choose to enter a topic after it has been well-established, I have the option of building out resources around newer, younger Web sites that have not yet been drawn into the larger, older, more well-established communities.

The principle works on the business Web, and in fact offers flexibility to people who don’t want to exchange links with competitive sites. If you allocate part of your content creation time to extending recognition to other sites that share interest in your topic but which have not yet accrued much other recognition, you build a resource that other people find valuable.

Helping other people helps you faster than simply trying to help yourself. But when you have to be sensitive about whom you help, the best people to help are those people who seem to be the least infuential. They may become tomorrow’s influencers, they may even turn their backs on you, but you never lose the power and the opportunity to become an influencer.

So the next time you’re out hunting for links, think about hunting for good, as-yet unknown content instead. Don’t approach this as another link-buiding exercise. If you invest the time to shine your spotlight on someone else with genuine, sincere recognition, you’ll reap benefits you cannot wring from link-building.