Ask the SEO Guru

                                 Who Looks Better Naked? Veronica, Betty or Jughead?

I enjoy cruising seo forums as much as the next unemployed, errrr, I mean SEO, but to be brutally honest it may be the LEAST effective way to get better placements in the SERPs.

Killing time in forums and telling yourself you’re researching is not completely void of value mind you. Without seo forums I probably wouldn’t know to call the list of urls returned for a search --- SERPs.  But in all honesty, outside of being able to use cool sounding, industry specific jargon to try to convince my mom I really do have a job, calling stuff SERPs and watching dogs “do it” pays about the same.

I’ve made the biggest time consuming mistakes of my online career following the unsubstantiated observation of some unemployed, errrrr, I mean seo, who said something that sounded logical even though I knew in my heart it made as much sense as arguing over who looked better naked, Veronica or Betty or maybe even Jughead.

                                                          Quote for the Day

Many’s the time I wished I could have the last hour of my life back that I just spent reading circular debates posted by members of the ignoratti.

I’m certainly not downplaying the importance of staying informed, but I am suggesting that there are ways to gain better positions in search engines other than spending all your time in forums and on social media sites looking for where you can squeeze your avatar in. Without making a genuine contribution or at least having a set objective,  that is NOT staying on top of your game. That is simply wasting time and avoiding work.

                                                       Ever Had an Epiphany?

Some of you may have noticed that you rarely see my name in a forum or blog that wasn’t put there by someone else.  It’s just that about 5 years ago I had a minor epiphany. (I’ve liked that word ever since watching Dr. Huxstable’s daughter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Bonet) do the nasty with Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092563/). Hubba hubba).

The epiphany wasn’t how much worthless crap was littering the net and how difficult it was to find anything where the signal to noise ratio was at least 50/50. It was that I far too often was only contributing to the crap.

I made a personal commitment to myself that from then on I would only post when I genuinely felt I had something that would contribute to the site I was posting at or to the community at large. That was the day I decided I was going to stop posting just to hear the sound of my own fingers clicking the keys. It was also the day I resigned as moderator from SEF.

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{sidenote}

                                                        Knowledge is Power

The point is simply that the reason I don’t post much is because I try hard to speak less and say more out of respect for the industry, the internet and the people I admire. That philosophy does not apply to my blog of course. I believe on a man’s own blog he can make the noose as long as he wants. Then it’s up to you to put it around your neck.

As I started reading more and saying less, I noticed by avoiding pointless discussions that offered little return, I was able to spend more time actually learning. I also started using the extra time I had been wasting to start reading more real books and documents and thinking about what I had read. It didn’t take long to notice that placements were coming easier. Knowledge is power.

                          Why Historical Reference Is Such a Powerful Tool For an SEO

One of the primary reasons you want to conserve enough of your valuable time to undertake the often tedious task of reading documents that offer a return, even the technical documents that get released, (or exposed), from the engines themselves,  is to gain an understanding of historical reference.

Maybe historical reference doesn’t matter much to you as an seo when we’re referring to a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Even though that quote is related to the US entering into WWII which led to the national paranoia and interment of Asian Americans which led to increased funding to the NSA and CIA, (and other various spook gangs), which helped lead to the cold war which made the American military scared of having communications knocked out by Russian spy satellites which led to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPAnet), which led to the internet which led to Google and ended up here with this post.

But what DOES matter is what that quote illustrated was a shift in direction in the minds of decision makers. Once a direction becomes an executed policy, it becomes embedded into the fabric of all the related policies that come after it.  Without question things change and nothing stays the same BUT the changes are typically on top of the primary underlying foundation which means the more things get piled on top, the more difficult and expensive altering those foundations become. Usually, the founding principles can be traced back through historical reference to a defining moment. That moment gives you insight into the basic driving force of whatever it is you’re trying to get a handle on.

                           How Some Things Change and Some Things Stay the Same

In the context of Google and gaining an advantage over your competitors through a better understanding of how Google works, let’s look at just one example.

In the book, The Google Story by David A. Vise, (http://www.amazon.com/Google-Story-David-Vise/dp/055380457X I recommend the hard cover as you’ll want to refer to this book more than once), on page 56, and I quote:

As Larry Page revealed a bit more about what made the Google search engine better than others, the Stanford students and professors hung on every word.

“Whenever you query with more than one word, we’re looking at the distance between words {on a Web page}, “ he said.

That innocuous statement was made in 1998 to a small group of intellectual elites. What it illustrates is that very early on as the algorithm was first being developed, the importance of the distance between words for a multiple word query was embedded into the foundation of the algorithm. After a year or two or three, and with something that was growing as fast as Google, to go into the core of the program and remove or alter this aspect would be incredibly difficult and expensive. So it can be assumed that the distance between words is a factor even a decade later.

All right, let’s take a look at another example that had an influence on how I have sites built that has resulted in better positions.

[0002] Grouping users into clusters is done for a variety of purposes. To achieve user personalization, for example, one of the well known techniques, collaborative clustering, involves clustering users and recommending to a user items that other users in the user's cluster have expressed interest in. Conventionally, a user may have been taken to have expressed interest in an item in various ways, e.g., by clicking on it, purchasing it, or adding it to a shopping cart. The recommendation can take a variety of forms, e.g., presenting to the user as part of search results, showing as news stories the user may want to read, identifying items the user may want to purchase and so on.

I added the bolding for emphasis.

That is just one paragraph from  Google Patent # 20070038659 (http://www.arnoldit.com/lists/google-patents/pat20070038659.pdf)

This paragraph is the one that got me to see that there is still a natural progression in the evolution of a quality score assignment to links. It convinced me that inbound links are as important as ever in terms of ranking but it is becoming more about trusting the historical references assigned to an individual as well as calculating the quantity and quality of inbound links to establish authority sites. In other words, Mrs. Consumer who doesn't know a toolbar from a  titwilow can simply mention your site in her favorite diapers-for-less forum, (or gmail), and place you in the top 10 of results for more people LIKE Mrs. Consumer than a PR 8 link from an authority site.

This also validates, (for me at least), what I have been saying for years. To get top placements, it helps if you realize you are not dealing with a relevancy finding machine and accept that you are dealing with an ad delivery machine. That is why making Google look smart is so important.

( http://massa.techndu.com/default,month,2008-01.aspx#ab01586ee-9401-47ea-8f5f-cb6b13d8ff53)

One final example I would like to point out and then I’ll let you go outside and play with your friends.

Aaron Wall published a post a few days ago publicly releasing a Google manual meant only for Google quality control personnel.

Full Text of Google's General Guidelines for Remote Quality Raters from April 2007

http://www.seobook.com/full-text-googles-general-guidelines-remote-quality-raters-april-2007

While it lacked any technical details and it pretty much covered the basic, common sense kind of stuff, the significance for me was in exposing how the upper level engineers think about quality and relevancy.

When you take the time to read and understand what the underlying concepts and effects of the documents mean, you can start seeing patterns that can be applied to how and why you should apply specific techniques to improve your sites visibility. It is not about beating Google as much as it is about understanding them and working with them. --- kind of.

And consider how your reputation points will go up when you start posting in forums about Google books, Google patents and Google documents. You could quickly become recognized as a well-read professional as opposed to looking like just another twitter gitter.

So, you want better placements? You really want to learn something about SEO? Ok, then go get this this book and read it:

The Google Story by David A. Vise, http://www.amazon.com/Google-Story-David-Vise/dp/055380457X

Then go read the Google patents here:

http://www.arnoldit.com/lists/google-patents.asp

Yes, all of them. But I’ll give you a little tip. If you’re not a mathematician, then reading all the equations probably won’t do much good. It doesn’t help me much.

So reading the first 5 or 6 paragraphs in depth and then just glazing over the entire document is probably sufficient. Certainly better than not reading them at all but still giving your opinion in forums anyway.

Finally saving the easiest for last, read the SEObook post:

Full Text of Google's General Guidelines for Remote Quality Raters from April 2007

http://www.seobook.com/full-text-googles-general-guidelines-remote-quality-raters-april-2007

download the pdf and read it all and not just the spam guidelines stuff. There are some real gems in there.

It’s work I know, but if you’ll just do the work, you will see the impact on your success with your own eyes. If you are not that serious about your craft, no problem. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean you have to sphinn another twitter ditty.

Peace Y’all

G

Damnit! There’s kids in China who’re starving and you don’t like Brussels sprouts.
Well, you’re going to sit there until you finish everything on your plate!