Climbing up the Search Ladder

j_heisenberg writes "Wired carries a story on SEOs or search engine optimizers. Among some bold claims: traffic is up 6 times and sales double, once you hit the first page of results on major engines. The catch: eventually everyone will use SEOs, and there is only one first page."

Comments

Exclude web stores

[tepples]

I'd like to see google be google and froogle be froogle and that be that.

There are some keywords you can tell Google to exclude if you don't want web stores. Try adding -price or -shipping or -checkout to your query.

Re:SEO

[Manchot]

Ah yes, but they don't need to optimize their own page. Do the search again, and notice that OneUpWeb is the first sponsored link. And as we learned a few weeks ago, most Google users can't tell the difference between acutal results and sponsored ones.

Re:The question is...

[dilvie]

You think so? The truth of it is this: Most websites are not well thought out. Many websites don't even include important keywords anywhere in their page title, heading tags, or even the page content itself!

It's so easy to blow past 90% of your competition on most keywords, it's silly. Only a small fraction of the hottest search buzz keywords are difficult to optimize for, and even in areas with heavy competition, there is a long tail that's fairly easy to grab.

You want to optimize your site, here's the whitehat way, and it's a piece of cake:

• Know which keywords your potential customers are using, and include them in your page titles, headings, and content -- you don't have to do any spamming, just be sure that your landing page is exactly tuned to your customer's searches.
• Develop a site that is worth linking to! Hire a decent designer. Make sure the site works on more than one browser. Provide quality content. Offer a good value.
• Run a blog (update it frequently), provide an RSS feed, and send out pings. Be sure your blog is something that people will actually want to read. Obvious spam doesn't attract inbound links.
• Make sure your site is listed in all the obvious directories, including the local listings like superpages and Yahoo! Local.
• Make it easy for people to link to you. Provide a "link to us" page with (valid) sourcecode.
• Run an AdWords campaign, and be sure to target a wide variety of keyword variations.
• Link to your customers, and ask them to link back to you. Happy customers are an easy way to get hundreds of great inbound links -- more than enough to put your site at the top of most search results.

You don't have to be a blackhat or break the bank to get results.

Google's official statement

[jdavidb]

Google's official statement on search engine optimization gives a number of reasons to be wary of search engine optimizers. While not condemning them outright, they have almost nothing positive to say.

I would think anyone paying money to "guarantee a higher rank on Google" would want to first see what Google itself says about the subject.