January 2008

Building Content For Search

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 17, 2008 in Content Theory

A few paragraphs of text can go a long way. For example, you could write a 1000-word essay and post 250 words across each of four pages and slather those pages with AdSense. That’s what conventional SEO wisdom tells us (at least, it’s advice still being given out in a popular SEO forum).
Personally, [...]

The Theory of Search Engine Optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 16, 2008 in SEO Theory

Search engines organize the data they collect according to indexing criteria and ranking criteria. Indexing criteria determine what information the search engine will store and how that information will be handled. Examples of indexing criteria include: indexing only pages that pass one or more quality tests, omitting portions of page content, etc. [...]

SEO algorithms - Which SEO algorithm works best?

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 15, 2008 in SEO Theory

If you were taking an English language test today, or a mathematical test, and you were asked to define “algorithm”, what definition would you provide? Do any of the following match your idea of what an “algorithm” is?

A process for completing tasks
The means by which the end is reached.
A problem for which there is [...]

Optimizing with complex pages

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 14, 2008 in Content Theory

In terms of link relationships, there are three kinds of Web pages: those that link to other pages within the same “site”, those that link to other sites, and those that link nowhere. You should never create a page that doesn’t link out.
Every page on your site should link to at least one other [...]

Link Trend Analysis made simple

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

How do you assign value to the pages that link to your own content? If you were to create a scale ranging from 0 to 20, how would you rate your own pages, the pages where people give you links without your interaction, and the pages where you are somehow involved in creating the [...]

What other people’s queries teach you about SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 10, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

If you’re in the real estate business one of the best things you can do for yourself is to pick a few queries related to the care and feeding of bears and watch them.
If you spend most of your search results page analysis time looking at your own queries you develop an insular point of [...]

The Great Link Building Mystery Unplugged

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 9, 2008 in Link Theory

Links are not THAT important to SEO. If you find yourself agonizing over how to build links to your Web site, you’re not engaged in search engine optimization.
I’ve said that many times before. Some people are struggling with their search placements right now because they didn’t do a very good job of placing [...]

Optimizing through community activism

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 8, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

Sharing what you know about search engine optimization resources is dangerous because either the spammers or the stampeding herds of wannabe optimizers inevitably overrun all good resources, abuse them to death, and ruin them for everyone. Responsible SEO sharing requires that you be careful and not endorse any idea or technique that you actually [...]

Wordpress spam hack - unauthorized include file class-mail.php

Posted by admin on January 8, 2008 in General

So we got hacked. Thanks to our visitors, who noticed another problem and looked under the hood, the hack was identified pretty quickly.
Someone managed to inject a file into our includes directory that inserted a lot of scarfy links to allebia.something. Simply renaming or removing the file eliminates the links. Other files that were modified [...]

Optimizing time for search

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 7, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

Web site aging has gone out of vogue for, as every good link baiter knows, all you need to do to sidestep the Google Sandbox Effect is to attract a lot of trusted links to your site quickly.
Trust and diversity are the keys to building solid search visibility with new Web sites.
However, Google’s recent war [...]

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