SEO Theory

Posts about SEO Theory in general.

The high human cost of specialized SEO skills

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 28, 2008 in SEO Theory

As the demand for experienced SEO technicians increases over the next few years, the industry may feel pressure to increase specialization. Skillset specialization offers advantages and disadvantages that don’t necessarily cancel each other out. For example, working only with specialists improves an organization’s ability to focus resources where they are most needed; thus, […]

SEO Experiments Anyone Can Do

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 24, 2008 in SEO Theory

SEO experiments are an important part of the learning process in SEO theory but as we have no industry standards people don’t agree on how to structure SEO experiments. An SEO experiment should test a hypothesis OR it should generate data for analysis. Sometimes you can accomplish both tasks but I think that […]

The n dimensions of search engine optimization analysis

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 16, 2008 in SEO Metrics, SEO Theory

You can map search engine optimization across a variety of mathematical models. For example, traditional organic SEO is concerned with promoting a single URL to the highest possible position in the search results for a keyword. You can measure your position by drawing a line with 1,000 points numbered from 1 to 1001. […]

Hakia introduces QDex - Proves Semantic Search Is A Failure

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

Hakia proudly announced its QDex-based search on its blog. What is QDex? It appears to be a human-edited crawl-seed directory.
In fact, it appears to be a publicly visible human-edited crawl-seed directory (like Yahoo! and DMOZ). Hakia claims: “hakia’s pioneering vision is to bring quality search results from vertical domains by ensuring the […]

Brokering search engine optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 13, 2008 in SEO Theory

There is a certain irony in the etymology of the word “broker” when one combines it with search engine optimization. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces broker back to medieval French, Portuguese, and English idiom for wine merchants.
A broker is a reseller, a middleman. He brings the buyer and the seller together, often helping […]

Gaming semantic search

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 11, 2008 in SEO Theory

The impetus to adopt semantic markup standards in Web page content has faded off, an inevitable consequence (I feel) of the clash between the proposal for structure and the reality of the chaos that is today’s World Wide Web. Although semantic Web advocates remain passionate about their cause they have not yet persuaded a […]

Optimization for the expanding Web

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 7, 2008 in SEO Theory

The Netcraft March 2008 Web Server Survey shows that Netcraft has identified more than 160 million domains. Netcraft first reported 100 million domains in November 2006.
Netcraft reported 50 million domains in May 2004 so it took 30 months for an additional 50 million domains to hit their radar but subsequently only about half […]

SEO specialties, groupings, and classifications

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 3, 2008 in SEO Theory

Trying to hire someone for search engine optimization is not easy. As an industry we have no standards and I don’t know of any university study programs that offer specializations in search engine optimization. In fact, I would regard any such degrees with grave reserveration and suspicion despite the fact that I have […]

The SEO Theory self-test

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 2, 2008 in SEO Theory

Some of you have been reading this blog a long time, and many of you have downloaded our SEO white papers including our SEO theory ebook. So how well do you think you know SEO Theory (as opposed to the topic of this site, which is “seo theory”)?
Here is a simple test. […]

Search engine optimization secrets

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 31, 2008 in SEO Theory

Every now and then someone gets up on their soapbox and claims there are no secrets to search engine optimization. I would have to say that because 90% of all SEOs appear to be following the limited advice given out on SEO blogs and forums there are probably relatively few secrets in the […]

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