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SEO Theory sanity check: looking ahead

Posted by admin on February 23, 2007 in SEO Theory

It is ironic that this blog, which now ranks 1st on all four major search engines for “seo theory”, receives much of its traffic from people clicking on bookmarks or typing in the URL directly. Google Analytics is not too clear on what people search for to find this blog, but my name tops out the most popular keywords for 2007 to date and only 37 referrals came in for that (less than 5% of Google’s recorded referrals).

According to Analytics, this blog gets about half its traffic from referral sources, and almost 3 times as much traffic from Direct access as from search engine referrals.

Given that I seem to suck so badly at building traffic from search engines, why are you people reading this blog about SEO Theory?

I just think that is rather amusing, but I appreciate all the attention.

This evening I did something I previously believed I would never do. I wrote an article for Wikipedia. It’s about SEO Theory. I thought, what the heck? No one else has written it, so I might as well give it a shot. If any of you actively watch over the SEO category at Wikipedia to prevent vandalization or link drops, please help keep an eye on that article.

It will be interesting to see if Wikipedia displaces this blog in the search results. One should expect that it will almost certainly do so on Ask, since they prominently feature relevant Wikipedia articles above the regular organic search results.

But what about Google? Wikipedia hasn’t kicked my butt in every keyword yet, and I can actually knock Wikipedia down in the SERPs when I pay attention to it. Google and Wikipedia have become topics of great interest to many deflated SEOs.

I will admit to having done some link-building for this blog. But it’s not a high priority for me. In fact, I keep hoping that we’ll move it to an official domain at some point, but the people at work keep saying they are too busy to do any Web redesign. Goodness knows, I am too busy for it.

Well, I guess my mother was right: the cobbler’s kids go without shoes.

Anyway, we’re now about to see who is more powerful in an extremely unscientific test: Michael Martinez and Blogspot on one side, Google and Wikipedia on the other side. I promise I won’t do any more link-building for this blog now.

Which is not to say I am asking anyone NOT to link here. Go ahead and link if you think I say something worth linking to. Search Engine Watch has been particularly kind in that respect, and I appreciate the support.

But I also want people to link to the Wikipedia article if they feel it is useful. I tried to be as honest, unbiased, and neutral as I possibly can. About the closest I came to self-promotion was to link to an old article I contributed to SEOmoz because it contained the definition of “search engine optimization” I wanted to use for the article (the art of designing or modifying Web pages to rank well in search engines).

I could have gone into more detail in some areas but I felt that would be overkill. The article takes an encyclopedic point of view (I hope) toward what is really an informal discipline practiced by perhaps no more than a few hundred people on Earth. We SEO Theorists are an elite group, and I suppose most SEO Theorists tend to walk a bit more on the dark side than some best practices advocates would support.

SEO Theory is an obscure field mostly because it is so time-consuming. You have to be constantly testing ideas, but it takes time for the tests to reach fruition. One of the most commonly asked questions in SEO forums is, “How long will it take for my sites to achieve my goals?” Well, something like that.

And, of course, we don’t have the wise old owl from the Tootsie Pop commercial to tell us that it only takes three licks to the get number 1 in the search results. It takes as long as it takes, and you can only do your best and hope no one else is chasing the same keywords as you.

I did recently see where someone asked in a forum, I don’t remember which, what would happen if you compete with yourself in the SERPs. I’ve done that in more ways than one. I can honestly say that you win and win again. But it looks a bit odd if the same guy shows up in all ten positions. Of course, the question was predicated upon the complaint that someone else had taken up all ten slots on the front page.

I don’t know if I’ll grab all ten slots for “SEO Theory”. I guess I’m well on my way, but how long will that last? And if it does last, what of it? There aren’t very many people who search on the term anyway. I’ve got a page on Xenite.Org that announces this SEO Theory blog and when I look at the Google ads in the margin I see keywords like “Effective Web Marketing”, “Generating Traffic Sucks”, and “New Media Consulting”.

Seems to me if there were money to be made in “SEO Theory”, someone would have taken out PPC ads for it. Oh, wait. I think I just gave someone the idea. Rats. Well, send me a cut of your earnings, and I’ll appreciate that too.

But how would you go about selling SEO theory anyway? I mean, I can sell my services. I’ve been doing that for some time. But is it possible to commoditize SEO theory, or is it just a part of a larger picture?

Some people might say, “Write a book” but there isn’t, so far as I can tell, a huge market for SEO theory. SEO techniques, yes. A lot of people want the latest techniques that propel sites to the top of search results. But that’s not theory, that’s application. SEO application is easily monetized.

Who is willing to pay money for, say, an analysis of the latest Google algorithm change? Before you start waving your checkbooks in the air, keep in mind that not only does it take me about two months to settle on an opinion of what happened — it’s only an opinion, and I quite often change my opinions.

Search engine optimization specialists take on a huge amount of risk if they pursue algorithms. If you lead your clients down the traditional Web marketing path, manage their expectations, show them that building a truly comprehensive marketing campaign will benefit them more in the long run, you stand less chance of being basted, roasted, and stir-fried the next time an algorithm changes.

Let me assure you, I well know the feeling of waking up in the morning, thinking everything is great, and then checking the old statistics log to see that my traffic just dropped in half. A 50% loss of traffic hurts. I don’t care what universe you’re from, 50% loss of traffic hurts. You want to throw chairs through the wall. You curse the day search engine X was born.

That’s why I don’t trust search engines to send me all of my traffic. When I lose a top spot, I don’t panic. I still get traffic. I have time to figure out what happened (if I need to figure out anything at all).

I only wish the clients were as confident as me when that happens. Instead, I find myself explaining things without having the liberty to explain things. You don’t have the luxury, when you fail to meet expectations, of saying, “Well, both Google and Yahoo! changed something” or “I told you this would happen”.

The real value in SEO Theory, in my opinion, is that it helps you prognosticate at the cheater’s level. That is, if you learn enough theory, you know something will change or go wrong almost always at the worst possible time. Anyone remember the Google Christmas Crush of 2006? The Google Christmas Crush of 2005? The Google Christmas Crush of 2004? The Google Christmas Crush of 2003? Hey, is there a pattern embedded in that history?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that probably Google is going to slam a lot of Web sites this fall — maybe around October, but they’ll definitely be feeling the pain come November and December.

Remember, you read that here first.

So what can you do to weather that storm, knowing that it’s coming? Amazingly, I rarely ever see people talk about what they’ll do in the next algorithm update. It’s almost always, “Whew! We got through that one. Here is hoping we don’t go through this again!”

I’m sorry, but what planet were you born on? I get slammed by Google almost every year. What makes you so special? I’ve seen people in forums say things like, “We had the number 1 slot for 5 years and now we’re gone. What happened?”

If you don’t have a backup plan, you’re not practicing good SEO Theory. SEO Theory is the child of Murphy’s Law, which says that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. SEO Theory is founded upon the axiom that whatever changed in the SERPs to my detriment can be changed back to my advantage.

You can always influence a search engine’s results by planning ahead. How long does it take you to get a site to rank? 1 month? 4 months? 6 months? A year? You should already be working on your Fall 2007 Google backup plan. That doesn’t have to involve a whole new Web site, but make sure you have content rolling out that Google will love if it decides that your old content is no longer relevant.

Sometimes Yahoo! and Google go on drunken weekend binges and they just sort of dump stuff right and left. Maybe they celebrate the memory of the Boston Tea Party. Maybe they really do run out of disk space. I don’t know. What I do know is that I won’t always have the number 1 slot for “SEO Theory”. Maybe if history is kind to me my Wikipedia article won’t be mangled beyond recognition.

Of course, I’ve seen what people did to other Wiki articles I’ve contributed to, so I’m not holding my breath. When I was younger people called me a pessimist, but that was never the case. I tried to explain to them that if you always expect the worst, you’ll be pleasantly surprised more often. I don’t see the glass as either half-empty or half-full: I just accept that there is something in the glass.

Maybe it needs to be topped off, maybe not. Maybe your content should be topped off each year in the Spring, just in case you get overwhelmed by the Christmas Crush.

Think about that while you set up your PPC campaigns for “SEO Theory”.