March 2008

Search engine optimization secrets

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 31, 2008 in SEO Theory

Every now and then someone gets up on their soapbox and claims there are no secrets to search engine optimization. I would have to say that because 90% of all SEOs appear to be following the limited advice given out on SEO blogs and forums there are probably relatively few secrets in the [...]

200 emailed link requests and counting…

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 28, 2008 in Link Theory

One of the most stupid ideas ever embraced by the SEO community was the suggestion that you should send unsolicited emails to Webmasters asking for links (either by exchange or simply one-way). Of course, as the practice of managed reciprocation fell into disrepute people began offering “three-way” links (where your site, A, links to [...]

Fundamental Principles of Off Site SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 27, 2008 in SEO Theory

The most sophisticated theses in the search engine optimization lexicon are concerned with on site optimization, which I feel is very ironic given how obsessed people in the industry tend to be with links. Links constitute only a small part of search engine optimization but on any given day you’re more likely to find [...]

Why your nofollow testing sucks

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 26, 2008 in SEO Theory

The SEO Method: Experiment, evaluatue, adjust.
It seems like half the SEO community is trying to prove that “PageRank sculpting” is a viable optimization method. All the testing is a good sign that people are not willing to just take one pundit’s opinion over another’s. We want people to reserve judgement and to require [...]

Prioritizing content for search, people, and you

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 25, 2008 in Content Theory

When you have more than enough content you need to figure out which content is the most important for you, your visitors, and other shadowy figures on the periphery of your visibility. Contrary to popular assumption, the root URL for a domain is not necessarily its most important page. Contrary to current SEO [...]

Real advice from bad SEOs

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 24, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization

Maybe I should call this post “bad advice from real SEOs” but I think it’s better to emphasize the fact that it’s real advice being offered by people in the SEO community.
When I wrote about Google’s March 2008 Update (and I use the term “update” loosely as only an SEO knows how), I was only [...]

How a new query grows - “seo theory” example

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 21, 2008 in SEO Theory

I started my present job in the fall of 2006. At the time I was blogging about SEO in a couple of different places but my contract as Director of Search Strategies asserted an intellectual property claim over SEO compositions to my employer (for the duration of my employment). I had to stop [...]

Shaping query traffic for new keywords

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 20, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

20-25% of all queries every month have supposedly never been seen by the major search engines before. In a search world that counts in excess of 7,000,000,000 queries per month, where do these 1.4 to 1.75 billion new queries come from? It certainly doesn’t come from bogus link anchor text tests.
Traditional advertisers could [...]

SEO Spammers run amok on Gmail

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 19, 2008 in Web spam

Google says that spammers haven’t cracked their Gmail captcha system yet, that the spammers are paying low-cost labor in overseas markets to sign up for Gmail accounts.
All I can tell you is that I have now banned Gmail registrations from two forums. A lot of people with Gmail accounts send me legitimate email but [...]

Three things that are changing today’s search environment

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 18, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization

Search engine technology is constantly changing but there are larger pattern flows in process that represent collections of actions or decisions. These larger patterns have a greater impact on the search environment than specific events such as the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo! (which would be disastrous for the search environment if it happens).
1. [...]

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