July 2007

AlexaRank, Compete, Google Toolbar PR, and other SEO quackery

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 31, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

First impressions are hard to recover from. They are also not very trustworthy.
I usually form an opinion of someone’s SEO capability within 30 seconds of reading the subject line of their forum posts. If their opening sentence or paragraph mentions Alexa, Google Toolbar PR, or some similar popular “ranking” value, I usually write [...]

The SEO Tremor Effect

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 30, 2007 in SEO Theory

My personal hosting company moved all of its dedicated servers from one city to another as part of a new “partnership”. As of this writing my personal domains are offline because mine is one of an undisclosed number of servers that are still not responding even to pings on the IP addresses.
I have been [...]

Supplemental Days and Supplemental Nights

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 27, 2007 in Supplemental Pages

A few weeks ago Matt Cutts suggested that it might be a good idea for Google to remove the “Supplemental Pages” tag from search results. Although his proposal might have seemed like a good idea on the surface to me it seemed like it might be disingenuous if Google was going to continue treating [...]

SEM Theory: Shaping Search-related Theory

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 26, 2007 in SEO Theory

If I were to ask you how you think SEM theory might differ from SEO theory, what would you say? What would be your first impulse?
Several years ago Danny Sullivan proposed that people use search engine marketing as an umbrella expression to describe all aspects of search-related marketing: search engine optimization, directory optimization, paid [...]

Volume SEO for large content Web sites

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 25, 2007 in SEO Theory

Most people look at search engine optimization as a means of improving rankings for a single keyword and maybe a few related expressions. That is the first mistake that beginners usually trip over.
Search engine optimization is not about keywords.
Search engine spam is about keywords. Search engine optimization is about Web content. Remember [...]

Trusted Site SEO: Build Trust Authority SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 24, 2007 in SEO Theory, Seo Myths

If the title makes no sense, its because some of your queries make no sense. Oh, I understand well enough what some people are looking for (and it ain’t Jerry Brassfield — geeze, that guy is popular). You’re looking for the scoop on Trust. Many of you seem to think it has [...]

Content Theory: The Hail Mary Pass of SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 23, 2007 in Content Theory

Have you ever had a page that you feel like should rank but it just sort of sits there in a mid-range search results page? A lot of link builders end up that way because they don’t pay enough attention to on-page optimization but even on-page optimization can end up in a mediocre position. [...]

Stupid blog tricks and other SEO foolery

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 21, 2007 in Web spam

If you think you have heard everything good that SEOs, would-be SEOs, and spammers can say about blogs, think again. You’re in for a summer full of blog spam, nonsense, SEO quackery, and loads of great ideas for links that should drive any sane person to hit the delete key.
You see, a while back [...]

The Long Tail of SEO Theory

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 20, 2007 in Content Theory

There are not many people whom I would regard as “SEO theorists”: real thinkers who do first-line research, formulate their thoughts, and share their conclusions. A fair number of spammers practice the SEO Method (Experiment. Evaluate. Adjust.) but they are more practitioners of applied SEO science than developmental theorists. A lot of spammers [...]

Google broke the URL reference query

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 19, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

Google broke the “URL reference” query functionality. This was actually a technique recommended by Google some time back (maybe 2-3 years ago) when people complained about the “broken” link: query operator (which was never broken — Google has always shown only a random sampling of backlinks).
Up until recenty, perhaps when Webmaster Central Tools started [...]

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