Three simple elements for efficient SEO

You only need to know four lines of HTML code to create a functional Web site. You only need to know six lines of HTML code to create a minimally optimized Web site. While it might be interesting to see how many variations on 6 lines of HTML code people could devise to match my proposed model, I think the fact that it’s possible for people to think of such varitations underscores just how flexible the on-page optimization process truly is.

You don’t have to throw every trick in the book at the problem in order to grab a great search result placement. And I would argue that most SEOs never even try to do everything possible to optimize a site. When you’re managing a full load of Web sites you have to look for efficiencies.

So why do so many SEOs rely on linking if it’s as inefficient as I’ve said, you might well ask. And that would be a good question. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to answer for those SEOs.

But I can suggest a few things that most SEOs pay less attention to where they reduce the efficiency of their methods.

• Insufficient Repetition - A lot of SEOs just don’t repeat their kewords enough. They’ve been taught not to “keyword stuff” pages.
• Insufficient Emphasis - A lot of SEOs don’t use the bold, italics, underline, “quotes”, and large size fonts as much as they should.
• Inadequate Site Architecture and Navigation - I still catch my own team using “home” as link anchor text occasionally. If you don’t put any thought into your on-site navigation, you aren’t thinking about optimization.

The hurry-up-and-rank attitude of SEOs in today’s competitive markets leads to a great deal of sloppy optimization. You really need a second pair of eyes to look over your work and make sure you’ve done as much as you can possibly do — reasonably — in the time and space you’ve been allotted.

It is not necessarily faster to go out and get links but most people would agree — I think — that if you just get the site up “you can always fix it later”. Of course, later may come too late for many sites, or not at all.

Repetition is key to relevance in today’s search engine results. Some people will tell you it’s links but that’s not true. It’s repetition. The more you repeat the keywords, the more relevant your content is to the keywords. Percentages and density factors need not apply. If you embed your keywords on a page 400 times, the odds are pretty good the page will rank for the keywords.

And though that actually happens in natural content, no self-respecting “white hat” SEO would even dare put a keyword on a page 400 times. They would immediately label it “spam”.

I would not immediately label it spam. I would first want to see why the keyword is on the page 400 times and what the page looks like.

Maybe the new spam will be gangs of black hats piling up comments on each other’s blogs where they all use the same keywords over and over again in the comments. Search engines might already be looking for frequent comment from a small number of people but what’s to stop the spammers from creating verbose sock puppets?

Most people choose to do their repetition through link anchor text. It has felt safer and less obvious to go through links than to go through on-page content. In fact, link anchor text is the primary reason for the rise of the paid link exchange services among SEOs.

If people feel more comfortable using links to repeat their keywords, then they are making a conscious choice to limit the efficiency of their optimization efforts. They are making an educated choice if they understand what they are sacrificing by refusing to embed keywords on a page as often as is necessary in order to be competitive.

When it comes to emphasizing keywords, most SEOs again eschew the better tools and go for the least efficient methods. Why? Again, I don’t speak for most SEOs. But I would guess that the perception is that too much bold is ugly and unnatural (although what people base their idea of “natural” on is beyond me).

To me, a natural piece of copy has obviously not been optimized. In SEO content naturalness usually abounds in forum discussions, where people are more intent on sharing their mis-spellings than in helping the forum owners rank well for competitive expressions. Outside of search engine optimization sites there is a lot of sales and marketing copy that is not optimized.

People try to sell to their visitors before getting their visitors to the Web site. That’s the kind of overemphasis that doesn’t work in search engine optimization. You have to be compelling and interesting at the same time that you have to be algorithmically relevant.

Algorithmic relevance is not about which document better matches the user query. It’s about which document scores better against the user query, suffering the fewest penalties. In a perfect search engine the algorithmic relevance scoring would be a fairly transparent process. Titles and page URLs would be utterly meaningless.

The day of naturally relevant copy winning in search results is a long way off. Search engines are fumbling in the dark when it comes to figuring out which documents are the best to present to users. It’s way too easy to manipulate search results. All you have to do is get some links.

And you don’t have to buy those links or trade for them or do anything sneaky to earn them. All you have to do is create enough content to give yourself all the link power you want. Some people run around social media networks linking to themselves. Some people do it in forums. Some people rely on profile pages, directories, and other cheap sources of free links.

And that’s where site archicture can help you. I’ve looked at many a spammy link that never helped anyone because they were embedded on orphaned or blocked pages. If you don’t understand how site architecture builds the pathways that search engines need to follow, all your little profile pages aren’t going to accomplish nearly the amount of work you’re hoping for.

If I were going to drop links on the Web, I wouldn’t rely on a robot to do it for me. I’d want to go out and look at the Web sites that allow me to create links and I would ask myself, “How many value-passing links can I find in this resource?”

How do you determine if a link passes value? Look for unique link anchort text. That is at least one way to do it.

It takes time to compile a list of good linking sites. It takes time and effort to monitor those sites and watch their performance. And if you invest that time and effort you should want to enjoy the benefits of your work for as long as possible. And that is why I tell people not to share linking resources on the Web. Once you put it out there everyone else can abuse it.

You cannot stop other people from finding and using the resources you like, but you don’t have to help ruin those resources for everyone by sharing them.

Sharing specifics is usually a bad idea for search optimizers because it takes less time for a resource to lose its ability to pass value than it does to find one to replace it.

Search engine optimization becomes less effective, less efficient as it becomes more transparent. Search engine optimization succeeds less often when you tell people what you are doing.

Which, of course, seems to suggest that so-called “white hat” SEOs are playing a losing game. But that isn’t so. A good best practices approach to search optimization pays close attention to the finer details of Web design, content, repetition, and emphasis. The details are where inefficient SEOs get lost.

Meticulous care and attention should be given to every Web page. Treat it like it was your only child. There is no effort to great to make if it will pay off in the end.

At all levels of skill and success we become creatures of habit. We optimize in certain ways, certain patterns. Sometimes it’s good just to shake things up but we need to find our most efficient habits so that we can optimize without thinking about it. When you can cover the basics subciously you become more efficient, more empowered.