On the goodness of self-linking and why O’Reilly is wrong

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 19, 2008 in SEO Theory

Tim O’Reilly has put forth a suggestion to major content providers:
Ensure that no more than 50% of the links on any page are to yourself. (Even this number may be too high.)
Ensure that the pages you create at those destinations are truly more valuable to your readers than any other external link you might [...]

Secret SEO Secrets That Should Remain Secret SEO Sauce

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 18, 2008 in SEO Theory

Every now and then I play with blog search to see what other people are saying in the SEO industry. Lee Odden’s big list of SEO blogs captures just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO blogging. You seldom find anything really useful in the search results.
In fact, most of [...]

SEO is dying! SEO is dying!

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 15, 2008 in Seo Myths

So once again we have people posting in the pointless debate over the impending death of search engine optimization. The latest craze in crazy assumptions seems to be that since more companies are hiring in-house optimization specialists the demand for out-house — er, outside specialists must be doomed or something.
Let’s review the facts before [...]

The Huey Lewis Method of Link Building

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 11, 2008 in Link Theory

“I want a new drug. One that won’t make me sick. One that won’t make me crash my car — or make me feel three feet thick.”
The SEO industry needs to sing that song with just a very minor tweak in the lyrics:
“I want a new link. One that won’t make me beg. [...]

Why your SEO advice sucks so bad

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 8, 2008 in SEO Theory

I was going to write another “rel=’nofollow’” rebuttal but, let’s face it, the Ministers of Misinformation are out in force and the SEO community no longer seems to be interested in the facts. Okay, that means I discovered a really biased, wacky explanation of the use of nofollow on internal links today after thinking [...]

July 2008 Real Search Market Share per Compete

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 7, 2008 in Search Market Share

The following tables are based on Compete’s estimated U.S. visitors for the selected domains. The domains listed here were included in the June 2008 Real Search Market Share report because Compete estimated a minimum of 100,000 visitors for each.
The report is divided into three tables: Algorithmic Search, Directory Search, and Blog Search.
Listings marked with [...]

July 2008 Real Search Market Share per Quantcast

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 7, 2008 in Search Market Share

The following tables are based on Quantcast’s estimated U.S. visitors for the selected domains. The domains listed here were included in the June 2008 Real Search Market Share report because Quantcast estimated a minimum of 100,000 visitors for each.
The report is divided into three tables: Algorithmic Search, Directory Search, and Blog Search.

July 2008 Algorithmic [...]

Bad Parenting May Keep SEOs In Business For Years

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 7, 2008 in Reputation Management

But for the fact that I was the recipient of a gag wake-up call from Hannah Montana, I never would have known or cared that Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old actress who plays Hannah Montana, has been taking pictures of herself on her cell phone. When I went searching for the Hannah Montana gag site [...]

How punishment benefits search engine optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 6, 2008 in SEO Theory

Yesterday I wrote about how game theory reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the SEO community. In brief, we fall into three groups: Free Riders, Reciprocators, and Cooperators.
Reciprocators constitute the majority in any natural population. Free Riders are the “black hats” and Cooperators are the “white hats”. The overall performance of a [...]

Math Union study devalues citation statistics (and PageRank)

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 5, 2008 in SEO Theory

You’ve heard it a million times. You’ve probably blogged about it enough until you’re sick to your stomach. PageRank is based on citation statistics. Every document gets a “vote”, and the “democratic process of the Web” allows documents to vote for the most important documents. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were [...]

Next Page