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Can
the Mainstream Media Understand SEO?
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement
Inc.
May 3 2006
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I am a SEO. As a search engine optimization specialist, I have spent
the better part of the last decade studying search engines to get a
better understanding of how they work in order act as a guiding consultant
for
paying clients. My clients, or more appropriately, my firm’s clients,
are interested in having their web documents found on the first page
of search results across all the major search engines. After spending
years
traveling trenches full of fiber, my colleagues and I have gotten very,
very good at getting those first page placements. If only SEO was so
simple.
In the trade-press we can discuss our personal war stories and write about
website marketing campaigns and all is good as we tend to understand the
metaphors being used. When talking to the mainstream media however, representatives
of the SEO community seem to lose the thread of an otherwise sensible message.
Explaining the finer points of website optimization and search engine marketing
to a person who has never designed a website themselves is tricky, under
any circumstances. It is all too easy to get carried away when discussing
one’s ability to put a website on the first page of Google results,
especially over drinks.
Where most clients are generally happy to learn that their SEO is a proficient
practitioner, mainstream journalists need to feel they understand the subject
they are covering and have a limited amount of time in which to learn it.
Though an increasing number of articles are appearing, writers in the mainstream
media still find it difficult to wrap their heads around the practice of
search engine optimization without sensing and reporting some form of techno-skullduggery.
Articles appearing in the mainstream media tend to note how SEOs “game” the
search engines by using techniques that give documents an unfair advantage.
Perhaps reporters on the business and marketing beats simply perceive SEOs
as cyberpunk hackers-for-hire, professional players in a William
Gibson metaverse.
An article in the NY Times April 9 edition, “This
Boring Headline is Written for Google”, noted how news writers were adapting their
headlines and styles to meet the challenges of getting prominent placements
in search engines. The author likens search engine optimization to a chess
game played between SEOs and search engines.
The goal of the game is to get first place listings. Being seen means being
read. In the world of search engines, being seen means being on the first
page of results. Journalists are intensely interested in search engine optimization.
High rankings bring strong click-through rates and tend to generate happy
publishers.
It’s all about the rankings, or as noted in a recent piece in the
Washington Post, “How
to Juice Up a Site’s Rank” it’s
all about the Google juice. Google juice, (for the SEO-illiterate), is apparently
produced by squeezing links. To be fair, the article is based on the “v7ndotcom
elursrebmem” contest initiated in January by John
Scott.
Though achieving a Top10, or first page placement is only half the game,
it is the part of the process the mainstream media is fixated on. That is
to be expected, given the conditions under which most business reports work.
They perceive the Internet as a research and communications tool.
Understanding that most writers view search engines as indispensable workplace
assistants, it is little wonder their imaginations turn to imaginings of
the old-school game of cat-and-mouse SEOs used to play, back in 1998.
Search engine optimization and placement in 2006 is very different from
the information used to describe the industry in previous years. The Internet
and the search engines that guide users across it have changed and evolved
enormously over the past twelve months.
Mike Grehan published an excellent two-part article, “Does
Textbook SEO Work Anymore?” which should become required reading for SEOs who
want to get a better understanding of how Google is learning to learn about
web-documents and their connections. (link to part
2)
Mike points out that Google is now considering a couple more important
factors (in addition to the multitude of other ranking factors) when determining
the placement of documents in its index.
The first is a deeper analysis of the network of links that lead to any
particular document. “Aggregate linkage data can tell so much more
about the subject matter and content of a site.”
What this means to SEOs is simple. Links from one document to another are
used to determine the topical relevancy of information found within those
documents. In other words, Google is learning about you by examining your
buddies.
The second is that Google is studying user data to determine what information
its users find relevant based on their initial search query and behaviours
after choosing a listing. “End-user data proves that people who were
interested in the initial search query were also interested in other information-related
to the topic.”
Google is as interested in what visitors do on a site as it is in what
they read while they are there. For SEOs this means that site usability,
analytics and planning are essential to delivering a full package of services.
Achieving and maintaining strong placements at Google requires the ability
to predict and funnel users through a site in order to A) help guide visitors
to relevant information or towards conversion goals, or B) help guide spiders
to relevant information.
The working world of search engine optimization specialists has come a
long way from the cloak and dagger world that existed in the late 90’s
and into the early 2Ks. Perhaps reporters and journalists will start to
see the intricacies of SEO work and move away from the cyberpunk image they
too often portray. If that is going to happen, it is up to the SEOs themselves
to make it happen. Next time the media calls, let them know there is a lot
more to the story than gaming Google for wild rankings and fun times. (Try
to help them imagine writing about the cadre of fun loving criminal robots
spamming away on the PPC end of things.)
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