Our SEO strategy blog was supposed to be our research material to be among a few colleagues in the SEO industry. We used it as a notepad where we featured key research projects for overall optimization strategy. Although we had no intention of making the blog available to outside parties, we were surprised to find that after a few short weeks, the blog was on page 2 of Google for the keyword: "SEO Statregy". In the midst of a highly competitive market for a competitive keyword, how did this blog surface in the top 15 links on Google? Being that we have many other blogs that have what we perceived to be better content, we felt this phenomenon deserved further analysis.
The fact is that this blog was never intended to be seen by anyone but my team members. The notes that we made there are research notes regarding SEO elements that relate to some current clients of ours as well as holistic concepts about Twitter, local optimization, and types of domain names that deal with the ever increasingly important "trust" factors. The notes are raw and free of any referencing elements or links that might promote another web site with the exception of a news feed that we (our group) read to learn more about SEO.
So, here is the Zen: The blog ranked high for competitive search terms without implementing techniques that are associated with website promotion such as high page rank article submissions, meta tag optimization, or changes to anchor tags/text. Why? That is the question. The answer is in the following qualities of this blog:
1. This blog had no intent to promote or reference anything. In a total of 11 posts, it has only 1 outbound link within the body of the blog. What does that mean? Every other promotional blog makes references via links so they are designed to rank well on Google almost always has a specific "acceptable ratio" of keywords to links. Thus, those blogs are easy for Google to identify as "referencing" or "promoting" blogs as opposed to blogs that are not trying to "game" the search engines, but be provide quality content. In our case, the content was for internal purposes.
2. There are no ad feeds in this blog. Once again, this blog appears as though it's not manipulating search engines to attempt to rank high. It just sits here and grows. The content has grown with no outbound linking or other promotional link references.
3. No ad feeds are found in this blog. No Adsense, banners, or other ads are feeding into the blog in question.
4. For the purpose of simply having a short and easy remember place for the blog rather than the cumbersome Blogspot domain, we bought a simple domain name. This is theory, as most predictions about search engine ranking preferences are, but we have other Blogspot blogs that are stuck in the sand box that have good content. The domain name purchase may have given this page a small vote of confidence because we made a small investment in creating a home for this lonely little blog.
5. The domain name purchased was relevant to the topic. This appears to help rank the blog well; however, with so many other domain names with the same words included in them, it can only be a minor factor.
In the end, SEO strategists are searching in the dark for Google's philosophy. The philosophy is taught to us through the ranking of the pages we watch and change. So what has this taught me a about Google's philosophy? Create sincere value without much promotion and advertising and users will like the page so the page may rank higher as a result. This is congruent with Google's mission of making the user the highest priority of their service. Create a page with the intent to promote and it is likely to be treated with a greater degree of scrutiny without the liberal application of better ranking (not Page Rank - note this is a PR 0 that has some first page placements).
Is it Zen in the Art of SEO? If you want to promote, don't promote - grasshopper. This might be the axiom to live by in our profession.
The fact is that this blog was never intended to be seen by anyone but my team members. The notes that we made there are research notes regarding SEO elements that relate to some current clients of ours as well as holistic concepts about Twitter, local optimization, and types of domain names that deal with the ever increasingly important "trust" factors. The notes are raw and free of any referencing elements or links that might promote another web site with the exception of a news feed that we (our group) read to learn more about SEO.
So, here is the Zen: The blog ranked high for competitive search terms without implementing techniques that are associated with website promotion such as high page rank article submissions, meta tag optimization, or changes to anchor tags/text. Why? That is the question. The answer is in the following qualities of this blog:
1. This blog had no intent to promote or reference anything. In a total of 11 posts, it has only 1 outbound link within the body of the blog. What does that mean? Every other promotional blog makes references via links so they are designed to rank well on Google almost always has a specific "acceptable ratio" of keywords to links. Thus, those blogs are easy for Google to identify as "referencing" or "promoting" blogs as opposed to blogs that are not trying to "game" the search engines, but be provide quality content. In our case, the content was for internal purposes.
2. There are no ad feeds in this blog. Once again, this blog appears as though it's not manipulating search engines to attempt to rank high. It just sits here and grows. The content has grown with no outbound linking or other promotional link references.
3. No ad feeds are found in this blog. No Adsense, banners, or other ads are feeding into the blog in question.
4. For the purpose of simply having a short and easy remember place for the blog rather than the cumbersome Blogspot domain, we bought a simple domain name. This is theory, as most predictions about search engine ranking preferences are, but we have other Blogspot blogs that are stuck in the sand box that have good content. The domain name purchase may have given this page a small vote of confidence because we made a small investment in creating a home for this lonely little blog.
5. The domain name purchased was relevant to the topic. This appears to help rank the blog well; however, with so many other domain names with the same words included in them, it can only be a minor factor.
In the end, SEO strategists are searching in the dark for Google's philosophy. The philosophy is taught to us through the ranking of the pages we watch and change. So what has this taught me a about Google's philosophy? Create sincere value without much promotion and advertising and users will like the page so the page may rank higher as a result. This is congruent with Google's mission of making the user the highest priority of their service. Create a page with the intent to promote and it is likely to be treated with a greater degree of scrutiny without the liberal application of better ranking (not Page Rank - note this is a PR 0 that has some first page placements).
Is it Zen in the Art of SEO? If you want to promote, don't promote - grasshopper. This might be the axiom to live by in our profession.
About the Author:
SEO Strategy and SEO scams reviewed by by edapte CEO, Charles Lloyd. You can follow his blog at SEO Strategy Central. Edapte LLC is an SEO consulting firm based in Orange County CA.
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