February 2008

Link analysis done right

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 11, 2008 in Link Theory

SEO bloggers like to talk about links and promote their friends’ link tools. They also like to provide you with long check lists of things to examine for your link analysis.
Most of what you’ll read on the Web — particularly from SEO bloggers — concerning link analysis is time-wasting nonsense.
Every search engine treats links [...]

How Microsoft May Change The Searchable Web

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 8, 2008 in SEO Case Studies

How much search market share does Google really control? Before you reach for your latest Compete, comScore, Hitwise, or Nielsen search market share report, stop and consider the fact that none of them accurately measure search market share. So far they’re not even coming close, although they have begun improving their analyses in [...]

The Searchable Web - Ecosystem and Mechanism

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 7, 2008 in Advanced SEO

The Searchable Web is a three-point ecosystem. There are Web Publishers, Web Indexers, and Web Searchers bound together in an inextricable symbiotic relationship with each other.
You cannot have content without indexing, you cannot have searching without indexing, you cannot index without content, and there is no point in creating content or indexing it if [...]

Optimizing site structures through diverse navigation

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 6, 2008 in Advanced SEO

Carlos Delrio has some interesting things to say about using NoFollow to game Google on your internal linkage. Towards the end of the article, he writes:
What you should be doing is constructing sites that better distribute linkage to deep pages. This includes selectively restricting navigation through the site, use of robot.txt and meta robots [...]

Sham analysis optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 6, 2008 in SEO Theory

So Andy Beard called me out yesterday on the subject of whether SEO Theory is really better indexed than most SEO blogs. He resorted to a smoke-and-mirror tactic of inplying that articles on SEO Theory are not indexed because some date archive pages (all duplicate content pages that are poorly linked through Wordpress’ default [...]

Linking Theory Axioms

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 5, 2008 in Link Theory

Links are connectors, not opinions

An opinion may be favorable, unfavorable, or neutral. Links have no mechanism for expressing opinions.
If you link to a document you disagree with, search engines may interpret that link as a vote or endorsement. If you don’t link to the document, people may not have any clear idea of [...]

Why SEO collective wisdom lacks credibility

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 4, 2008 in SEO Theory

We have no authoritative voices in the SEO community. We all lack proper credentials, formal training, and credible validation for our expertise. Search engine optimization itself is still chaotically defined according to whims and personal preferences. What is the meaing of “search engine marketing”, for example? I’ve always preferred to [...]

Why Rand Fishkin’s nofollow post was wrong

Posted by Michael Martinez on February 1, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

The SEO method is pretty clear and simple: Experiment, evaluate, adjust. Unfortunately, some people toss in an unwarranted fourth step: “Reach inappropriate conclusions and proclaim revolutionary breakthroughs in SEO science”.
Let’s look at Rand Fishkin’s recent premature declaration that his implementation of Rel=Nofollow on many internal links magically increased the number of search referrals to [...]

Previous Page