Search Engine Optimization: Intelligence from The New Yorker

Disclaimer: This is another in the series of “I may be the last know” postings so if you are an expert in search engine optimization skip to the next one.

I was skimming through that high tech news source, The New Yorker, on Saturday and came across an article that articulated a topic I have been discussing a bit. I had been curious to see my modest blog appear at the top of the pile of 153,000 Google hits on – portals and km. Several people explained that this was because a number of kind readers of this blog had put in links to it in their sites and the presence of these links is one of the most important criteria Google uses to rank its search results. I am glad it is not hits.

According to the New Yorker, “Some American companies have armies of programmers toiling away in Bangalore solely to boost their Google rankings.” The writer goes on to add, “Much of what the “optimizers” do is reasonable, helping companies do a better job of presenting content, using keywords, and building pages to which others will want to link. (These are termed “white hat” tactics.)”

This was reassuring since my daughter, Sarah Ives, revealed to me over lunch on Friday that she has done work related to search optimization and my friend, Amanda Watlington, has developed such strategies for the web sites of a number of large firms. I would certainly put both of these people in the “white hat” category.

On the other hand, there are many unnamed companies that wear the black hat in this space. The New Yorker article states that some companies even set up “link farms” - interconnected Web sites that simply link to each other. A company can buy thousands of domain names, set up Web sites, and create thousands of links out of nothing. I am glad they are not going after the portals and km search string.

Google tries to outsmart these companies to keep their rankings honest and there is a constant battle between Google and the black hat optimizers. The Google moves have even gotten names, like hurricanes, and they result in counter moves and counter-counter moves.

As Cesar Brea showed me recently, you can even go to Technorati, put your url in the search field and see who is linking to you.

Comments

[Roland Tanglao]

"As Cesar Brea showed me recently, you can even go to Technorati, put your url in the search field and see who is linking to you. "

Better yet, with PubSub you can setup an RSS feed that is updated everytime somebody links to ANY page on your site, not just ONE page on your site like Technorati. This is done using the "URI" feature. More info on how to do this can be found at:
http://www.streamlinewebco.com/blog/_archives/2004/4/21/37574.html

I love both Technorati and PubSub and use both but if you want to see who's linking to your site in the blog world, PubSub is a lot more efficient than manually surfing using Technorati.

Hope that helps!
...Roland

[Bill Ives]

Roland thanks for your comment and I will follow up on it. I also went to you web log and it looks very interesting. I added it to my Newsgator feeds and look forward to reading more.

[Roland Tanglao]

Hi Bill

Glad that I helped!

If you have any questions or comments about PubSub, Feedster, Technorati, or RSS, blogs, wikis or social software, please don't hesitate to leave a comment, email roland AT streamlinewebco.com or call me at 604 729 7924. I am in Vancouver, Canada and would love to meet you if you are ever in Vancouver or the Pacific Northwest.

[Roland Tanglao]

oh and don't forget my other blogs:

www.UrbanVancouver (our Vancouver 'life blog')
www.VanEats.com (Vancouver food blog: 200 recipes, restaurant reviews, etc.)
www.rolandtanglao.com - techie blog focused on social software (blogs, wikis, RSS, etc.)

[Tom Holzel]

I have found the best way to get high Google ranking is to create intelligent website content. Using this unheard of technique, I got 8 out of 13 articles into the Google Top Ten rankings (See: http://www.velocityassociates.net/pages/Rankings.php

SEO is fine to get people to your site, but it takes Human Intlligence Optimizations to make them stay.