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ThirdGen SEO: You own the search engines

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 21, 2007 in SEO Theory

I usually carry my leftover trash out of movie theaters when I leave, even though I see the cinema staff moving in to clean up everyone’s tossed popcorn, half-empty drinks, and candy wrappers. I grew up learning to appreciate clean theaters where the seats are not horribly stained like some axe-murderer leaped off the screen and decapitated half the audience.

You can judge the quality of a theater’s patrons by how clean the theater itself is. To some degree, this is true of every establishment. If you walk into a store and find merchandise strewn across the aisles, the floors are dirty and stained, and clutter obscures your view you’re more likely to assume you’ll find cheap, low-quality “discount” merchandise there than high end expensive merchandise.

Presentation is critical to building the clientele you want to serve. If you walk into a tailor’s store and order a $5,000 suit you are looking for more than just the finest material and stitching that he can provide you. You want the service.

Search engines are no different from other service providers. They define the clientele they serve through their presentations. Google does not offer the most relevant search results but it does offer the cleanest search results pages. People want to see less clutter in their search results. They are looking for something specific.

Spammers, especially MFA spammers, are the cockroaches of search engine optimization. They’ll survive any update, they’ll spawn new garbage sites faster than legitimate Web site developers, and they’ll scarf up as many domains as they feel can perform according to a minimum standard as they can afford.

Spammers own the search engines because they usually tap into the techniques and methodologies that have the most immediate influence on search algorithms. Spammers work on volume so they manipulate results through links but getting those links requires thought, time, and resources. The most successful spammers grab as much screen space as they can safely control so that people are most likely to click on their listings.

Spammers want the popcorn kernels that taste freshest, have the best butter coating, and are still warm. They’ll throw away an entire large bag of popcorn just to get the 1 kernel that tastes best. Spammers want to sip their colas while the soda is cold, the carbonation is fresh, and the ice has not yet melted. They’ll leave the drinks behind at the first indication of wateriness.

This is why spammers are so challenging to many SEOs. They move fast, they take no prisoners, and they are only invested in their tactics for as long as those tactics work. Spammers have to be flexible and quick in order to avoid being thrown out by theater security. If a spammer is caught he has to leave the theater, come back to the entrance, and pay admission again so he can buy more soda and popcorn.

The SEO practices you rely upon (such as “link building”) create just as much a mess as the tactics of the spammers. You may only be grabbing 10 links a day, maybe no more than 1 link a week, but there are 100 or maybe 1,000 other SEOs like you. Collectively, you leave the theater looking like the kids ran wild and dumped popcorn on every other seat.

You should envision the search results page as a work of art that you are about to create. You don’t just want to see your site hit the top slots. You also want to see everyone else remain uninterested in optimizing for your query. You should treat the search results page as if it is your own. How do you want it to look?

As a query results page becomes cluttered with more advertising, the nature of clientele changes slowly. Some people will use alternative queries to find what they want because spam and advertising are not on their agendas. Other people will use the query more often because they don’t mind the spam adn sponsored results (they may even find such content is useful).

There is nothing wrong with altering a search engine results page. It will eventually change anyway. You might as well position your content so that both you and the people using that query can benefit from a mutual interest in successful search. But you can define successful search by how well a query i positioned amid clutter. One enough advertising and spam will so choke a query’s results page that people will find something else to search for.

And then you’re back where you started: standing in line at the front of the theater, waiting to get in. When you treat the search engines as if they are your own, and take care of your SERPs so that people apprreciate what they find, you improve the search experience for everyone.