How To Get Googled, By Hook Or By Crook

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "There is a Search Engine Optimization contest that just started up. For those that don't know about SEO, it's basically the process of optimizing a web page and links to insure a high ranking on search engine, with Google being the main search engine of interest. There are countless debates on the best approach. Note that there are 'white hat' and definitely 'black hat' methods (using the later can get you banned by Google - a risk some people seem willing to take! ;-)" Read more on this contest below.

Mr. Christmas Lights continues: "So some folks in the SEO community decided to have a 2 month contest where they made up a nonsense keyword phrase (nigritude ultramarine), and they will award a iPod and a 17" LCD (big spenders, eh?) to whoever ends up #1 in Google a month and two months from now - read more contest details at Dark Blue's SEOChallenge and follow the progress at www.seochallenge.com.

As you can imagine, there will be all sorts of wild web pages out there - for example, take a look at this "optimized" URL for nigritude ultramarine : www.nigritude-ultramarine.com/nigritude-ultramarin e/nigritude-ultramarine.asp and I'm sure there will be plenty of other entertaining entries - you can do a Google Search yourself to see who's currently on top.

Note to Slashdot Editors: I have NOT entered the contest - buncha SEO pro's are involved and a hobbiest (at best) like me (who doesn't stray over to the dark side - I like Google! ;-) would get spanked."

Comments

The bare bones of search engine optimization

[broothal]

This should be obligatory reading, followed by this . It's amazing how many people are paying search engine optimizers to tell them what these links says.

How they do it.

[caluml]

The main secret is to search for a certain phrase, and then analyse the top results. This tells you things such as if the phrase boldened up to 3 times in the page helps, but maybe, for example, if it is boldened more than 3 times, it isn't counted so effectively. The title, the META tags, the page, H1-5 tags, bold etc, all count. But you have to work out how many you can put before Google thinks you're just trying to boost your ratings.

Re:We have a winner!

[Neon Spiral Injector]

A better link would be nigritude ultramarine. Your's would just link the keyword "here" with the article.

Do a search for Indie-Mail

[KalvinB]

and I'm the second result. There's no secret for getting ranked high when your web-site doesn't suck. You just let Google do its thing.

"DirectX SDKs" and I'm on the first page of results. Although it's going to the Distribution section (pay per CD) instead of the SDK download section which is free access.

"Digital Black Market" also gets me a spot in the top 20. I used to be ranked higher on that one.

Before the site wide overhaul I was ranked 2nd when searching for "Driver Library" but if you're looking for a specific file and I have it, I'll get a top ranking.

Google is currently reindexing my site. It'll probably be another month or so before everything is indexed as well as it was before. Last check there was about a half a million files on the web-site.

Domain, directory, file name, content is about the general chain of importance for getting a high ranking.

Ben

Re:Hmm.

[stefanlasiewski]

But only after the page is moved off of the dynamic content area.

Re:i'll be curious to see what they come up with

[Anonymous Coward]

So get it removed.