While search engines ranking and categorization algorithmns continue to mimic human behavior and incorporate patterns of human usage, it will be some time before they are able to mirror human patterns of search.
True, they are able to provide a breadth of information that runs into the hundreds of millions of results. But at the same time, how many are truly relevant to the one result you’re looking for.
Sometimes due to reasons of ultra efficient search engine optimization, the most relevant result might be located on page 5 or 6 of the search engine result pages. Finding that metaphorical needles in the haystack tends to lead to frustration, and in the worst case scenario, not finding the information you’re looking for.
Enter the “Human Search Engines”. (more…)
Rand Fishkin and the folks over at SEOmoz have launched their inaugural podcast discussion how dominant online user-edited encyclopedia resource Wikipedia should be on Googles SERPs (search engine results pages).
Doing a search for “affiliate marketing” shows the Wiki entry at the top position for the organic results.
Should Wiki entries be so dominant? Especially as the members of the SEOmoz team point out other high authority sites might provide more comprehensive and relevant information?
As Shoemoney pointed out (more…)
It’s been due for sometime and I was checking out ZZ Online Marketing’s post “Google Toolbar PageRank Update”
I checked my Live PR at the Google datacenters:
My Google Toolbar PR displays a 3, though it may be headed to a PR5 at the end of this exercise. Some of my other sites look like they may be moving up a notch.
This is encouraging because I’ve mostly focused on a content-based approach (except for a brief period where I felt I was excessively focused on meta and H1 and H2 optimization). Looks like the organic route has worked out well.
If you’re like to check the Live PR for your sites from the Google Datacenters, check out (more…)
Fundamental to SEO is the ability to track links to your site. Especially since the search engines give preference to offsite optimization, compared to onsite measure.
Typical backlink tracers like SEO Elite and iwebtool give linear tabular reports.
What I liked about TouchGraph’s GoogleBrowser is the ability to visualize the links in 3D.
Witness:
The GoogleBrowser is interactive, meaning you’ll be able to zoom in on a cluster, isolate inbound and outblound links and check out high authority sites you’re linked to.
Obviously, this tool has competitive intelligence functions in allowing you to
(more…)
I’m don’t go out of my way to do a lot of SEO, though I follow some basics such as having keywords in my URL.
It was a little shocking to find that my blog permalink structure was organized along the lines of /post ID/post title, resulting in URLs like http://www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com/214/meme-update.html.
Having the post ID (the numerical post identifier) has zero SEO value, so I changed it to /post category/post title, so it’d display as http://www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com/traffic-generation/content-based-posting.html.
Assuming your categories are optimized for appropriate keywords, the search engines will send you more targeted traffic.
One important caveat (more…)
Finally, after a long 3 months of waiting!
The results are out!
The results aren’t exactly how I expected, but this is what I’ve achieved.
PageRank PR3. Current Alexa ranking: 116,781
(Fairly decent, considering I was PR0, Alexa 2m+ about 3 months ago).
PR0, Alexa: 818,262
PR3, Alexa: 718,908
I learned a couple of things from this exercise.
(more…)
