June 2008

SEO Experts and Expert SEO Services

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 30, 2008 in SEO Metrics, SEO Theory, Seo Myths

The new buzzword in town seems to be “SEO expert”. It’s not longer enough for people to tout themselves as professional SEOs — now we’re all going to be experts. Heck, if you don’t feel like an expert, someone will be glad to take your money and teach you to be an expert. [...]

Determining relevance, authority, and accuracy in search engine optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 27, 2008 in SEO Theory

There are many definitions for relevance, some of which have been proposed specifically for search engineering and/or search engine optimization. Any definition of “relevance” that speaks of quality or importance or authority misses the mark, in my opinion. Relevance has nothing to do with qualitative measurements with respect to how much a document [...]

Why your link-building techniques suck

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 26, 2008 in Link Building

Tamar Weinberg at SE Roundtable wrote a brief post today about risk-free link-building techniques. Recapping points posted in a forum discussion, Tamar summed up the basic link-building tips that are still making the rounds in SEO discussions:
There are a number of tactics that can be employed to build natural links (and perhaps a few [...]

The optimization of science search

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 25, 2008 in SEO Theory

There is a new science news aggregator in town. It’s called Eureka!, built on Drupal, and it’s the artificial intelligence behind the new science news resource esciencenews.com (the actual site name is e! Science News). The site’s founder was dissatisfied with the lack of actual science news in Google and Yahoo! news feeds. [...]

Google, Trends, and Obscenity

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 24, 2008 in General

The New York Times and other sources are reporting that Google has been subpoenaed to release Google Trends data pertaining to Florida to assist the defense in an obscenity trial.
If Google complies with the subpoena their release of data may have a long-ranging impact on offline and online social standards in the United States. [...]

Advanced SEO Metrics for Beginners

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 24, 2008 in Advanced SEO, Competitive Analysis

There are no reliable Web metrics tools. People have their favorite tools but they all pretty much suck alike. Nonetheless, some information is better than no information, even if there is a good chance the information will be wrong. In competitive SEO the chief advantage lies with the optimizer who posssesses the [...]

Fundamental Advanced SEO Principles For Beginners

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 23, 2008 in Advanced SEO

In a competitive SEO environment you’ll eventually exhaust your fundamentals because there are only four fundamental principles of search engine optimization:

Keyword research
Content organization
Search visibility
Linking relationships

When you’re learning to do keyword research, you want to understand the fundamental principles of keyword analysis and research. You need to identify and understand the appropriate market. You [...]

Lost Rankings or Drop In SERPs

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 20, 2008 in SEO Theory

I read a transcript of the Google Webmaster Chat this morning and noticed that the Googlers (especially Susan Moskwa) were careful to deflect all questions from people whose sites had recently lost rankings in the Google search results. We just went through a period, a couple of weeks ago, where the Google search results [...]

Online reputation management and the reputation management process

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 19, 2008 in Reputation Management

The SEO industry is not very well equipped to handle online reputation management. The ideas and techniques that have been shared publicly are generally very amateurish and don’t really stand up to close scrutiny.
My colorful online experiences led me down the path to online reputation management several years ago. A small number of [...]

Questions every SEO should be able to answer

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

So you think you’ve got what it takes to be an SEO technician. Let’s test your knowledge and ability. Here are 8 questions that challenge statements or assumptions made by SOME members of the SEO community on one or more occasions. The correct answers are not all immediately obvious. Take your [...]

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