Archive for the ‘seo’ Category
It has been weeks since I’ve had time to write, so hold on while I do some ‘splaining.
A young woodcutter had just married the granddaughter of an old lumber jack and was determined to prove his worth in the eyes of the old man. As they headed into the woods for the first time together, the young woodcutter was eager to start felling trees.
Soon the woods were filled with the sounds of ringing axes and falling trees. After an hour or so, the young woodcutter noticed the old man sitting on a stump mopping his brow. Smiling, he continued swinging his axe.
Throughout the day the young woodcutter noticed that the old man would take a rest every so often, sitting quietly on a stump for a few minutes. Every time the old man rested, the young axeman would swing his axe faster.
Before dusk, they both stopped to tally the felled trees. The young woodcutter was amazed to find that the old man had felled more trees than he had.
“I don’t understand”, he exclaimed, “you took several breaks, sitting on a stump, and I continued working all day without a single break”.
“How did you fell more trees”?
The old man replied, “While I rested, I sharpened my axe”.
Thank you for having the patience to sit through my little paraphrased story. I needed some time to sharpen my axe.
Information retrieval science is moving forward, lots of people are interested in what Google and Yahoo are doing now. I’m interested in what they will be doing a year from now, or two years from now. Hopefully our interests will collide. ; )
Posting light over the weekend while I help educate the next generation of SEOs, SEMs and bloggers while they help educate the ‘old guy’ in the habits of teens.
It’s been interesting so far and at least for this crop of future webmasters, there will be fewer animated graphics, blinking text and flash animations, and a lot more emphasis on content.
Quite a bit has been written about bad SEO information found in fora, websites, etc. Very little has been said about bad questions. Now while you’re trying to reconcile ‘there are no stupid questions’ with ‘ ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer’ I’d like to touch on a few of the questions I’ve seen lately that are just wrong, and the result of wrong-headed thinking. Here are three that I saw just yesterday. My apologies to all the veteran SEOs out there, but I’m getting a few emails from really new folks so I wanted to cover some of their questions.
1. Can I use nofollow to manage my PageRank?
WRONG. Nofollow was intended to combat comment spam. If you’re using nofollow on something other than user-generated content, it’s WRONG. If you want to keep search engines out of specific areas of your site, use robots.txt
But so-and-so said to use nofollow on paid links. Well of course so-and-so said that, helps them figure out who is buying and selling links now doesn’t it?
2. I’ve got a PR5 site, is it okay to trade links with a PR1 site?
WRONG. First, you don’t have a PR5 site, you have a PR5 page, but that aside, if you’re asking about PR you’re WRONG.
Do the links benefit the users of both sites? Are they links to relevant areas of both sites? Would you link to them if search engines were extinct?
3. My competitors have 3 zillion links and are number one for [insert pet phrase here], how do I compete?
WRONG. You don’t compete. At least not over a single phrase, not yet. Target less competitive phrases and work your way up to the big boy’s arena. If you just started playing golf would you be asking about when you could play Tiger Woods?
I’m a country boy, and the first thing I think of when someone mentions ‘bait’ is ‘trap’. That’s exactly what linkbait has become. The lure for a trap. Sensationalist headlines crafted for the sole purpose of luring readers into a story that is either devoid of truth or a story that contains a mere hint of truth.
Headlines like this: Google Funding Al Qaeda and Hezbollah Terrorist Groups
Note the question mark at the end of that headline. That question mark serves two purposes. It forces the reader to ask, ‘hmm, are they’? And it alleviates any journalistic responsibility on the part of the author. Now the author is free to simply question the plausibility of the headline rather than present citations and factual evidence. Mind-boggling leaps of imagination are now possible.
Matt Cutts Devours Babies?
Graywolf Embroiled in Bitter Controversy With Ted Leonsis?
Cubs Win The World Series?
There’s a price to be paid for baiting your readers. While the short-term goal of obtaining more links may be met, the long-term goal of gaining your readers’ trust is damaged.
I’ve noticed that the SEJ headline has been changed. At 1:53 PM CST TechMeme still carries the orginal headline.
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