plusLINK Blog

What is right with Search Engine Optimization?

Posted on 16. Oct, 2009 by estafrofarl in SEO

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sul­li­van has pub­lished an open response to Derek Powazek’s Spam­mers, Evil­do­ers, and Oppor­tunists defend­ing the prac­tice of search engine opti­miza­tion, argu­ing that there’s plenty of eso­teric, use­ful, non-sleazy infor­ma­tion that web-site-owners need to know to get their stuff rec­og­nized cor­rectly by Google. 

I think there’s some­thing to this, but I don’t find most of Danny’s exam­ples very com­pelling. In Derek’s orig­i­nal arti­cle, he men­tions most of the sort of thing Danny cites here (dis­tinc­tive page titles, for exam­ple). The Google Base bit is indeed eso­teric and the kind of thing a pro can help you with, but I’d be more con­vinced if his arti­cle had more of this sort of thing and fewer straw-men. 

But to really be real, let’s remem­ber that she’s sell­ing real estate in one of the most com­pet­i­tive areas of the coun­try, New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia. Her friends aren’t all going to buy homes she’s list­ing. Her “com­mu­nity” con­gre­gates on Google and does things like type in “new­port beach homes for sale.”
To suc­ceed in attract­ing that audi­ence, she should have a great site and great con­tent — agreed. But does she have indi­vid­ual list­ings? Then she prob­a­bly needs to kick them out into Google Base, in order to fully be listed in Google. Does your myth­i­cal web devel­oper deal with Google Base much? And where’s her web site now? Is she run­ning it off Blog­ger? Using her own domain? These have impacts on how both the search engines may see her as well as how she’s perceived. 

Does she have a blog in addi­tion to a main site? That has an impact. Has she con­sid­ered some unusual, cre­ative ways to cre­ate con­tent around real estate in her area, per­haps some catchy link bait, which may pull in the links she needs to rank bet­ter (which, by the way, is a rec­om­mended Google practice). 

Does she have a local office? If so, has she claimed her list­ing in Google Local? If so, has she updated her title to reflect that per­haps she has “new­port beach homes for sale?” 

Related Posts:

• What is wrong with Search Engine Optimization?
• Under­stand­ing Search Engine Optimization
• Search Engine Opti­miza­tion Techniques
• Ten Sim­ple SEO Tips
• Choos­ing A Good SEO Com­pany Is Key To A Suc­cess­ful SEO Campaign

Tags: danny, danny-sullivan, defending-the-practice, derek-powazek, evildoers, opportunists, practice, search-engine