SEO Strategy

In a series of blog posts Jonathan Leger has examined some of the more common myths about SEO (search engine optimization). In the post called “Beware of “common sense” search engine optimization!” Jonathan presents concrete examples to debunk what he calls the “The Themed-Link Myth”. This is the claim that links from sites with the same theme are the only way to rank for your keywords. This is usually referred to as the “relevance” criterion: you must have links from relevant sites (those with a closely related theme) in order to do well in Google SERPs.

Jonathan presents a couple of examples that he thinks clearly contradict this claim. He says of submitexpress.com, for instance,

“If you go to Google and take a look at the backlinks pointing to submitexpress.com (using the link: command), you’ll notice that very, very few of those links have anything to do with search engine optimization or marketing at all.”

Jonathan’s point is that you don’t need links from pages with a similar theme to yours. You just need a lot of links.

This seems to square with my own observations - although I admit I have not done an exhaustive study of the situation. It should be pointed out however, that Jonathan’s study is not very exhaustive either. If, as many SEO specialists point out, a link from a “relevant” high PR site is worth significantly more than a link from a low PR “irrelevant” page, than having such a link (one from a relevant high PR site) will skew the result significantly. It is not really satisfactory to draw hard and fast conclusions until such an analysis is undertaken.

What would be most instructive is if it could be shown that there is little obvious difference in link value between a high PR link from a “relevant” site and one from an “irrelevant” site.

My own conjecture is that you would find there is very little difference (and thus I am agreeing with Jonathan’s thesis). But, apart from what I have more or less casually observed, my reason is quite speculative. I don’t think Google (or anybody else) has the ability to make the necessary evaluations about “relevance” to make such evaluations meaningful, and therefore they (probably) don’t even try to do it.

That isn’t to say they won’t have that ability in the future. And if they did, links from “relevant” sources would have more value in the future as a result.

In any event, links from “relevant” sources have other things going for them - the most important of which is to attract traffic from those sources.

Here’s a tool to help you use video as an important part of your SEO strategy. If you want to learn more about using online video to generate direct traffic and improve your search engine rankings, check out Traffic Geyser - a program that will help you produce online videos and will distribute your productions to a large number of the most important video hosting sites. Sites like Youtube, Revver, Google Video, and many others.

 When you upload a properly produced and tagged video not only do you get people watching your video, but you get backlinks to whatever site you want to promote. And with Traffic Geyser distributing your video to many different sites that creates a lot of inbound links very quickly.

 Go here to watch a short video describing how you can benefit from online video.

You can also pick up some free reports about how to use online video for generating serious traffic, along with a Free Video Hosting Web Site Directory ebook—Reviews, tips and insights to more than 30 of the top Intenet video hoasting sites.

Aaron Wall’s SEOBook is packed full of SEO tips and SEO strategies. It is a massive 328 pages in downloadable ebook format, and is full of case studies which describe both his SEO successes and failures.

If you want a detailed introduction to SEO theory, SEO strategy, SEO techniques, and SEO best practices follow this link for more information about SEOBook.

As you probably know, the point of SEO is to get the search engines to send visitors to your website. Traffic is what it’s all about, and SEO is meant to generate traffic.

SEO accomplishes this by helping you come up high in Google’s search results for your most important keyword phrases.

But is SEO difficult? Do you need special skills to be effective? Is it a mysterious art that only a few understand?

Not at all. Getting good search engine ranking is not as difficult as you might think. Even if you have failed miserably in the past, you can be successful right now by applying some very basic principles.

SEO is really just common sense once you understand it.

So how DO you choose the right search terms and then come up high in search engine results pages (SERPs) for your keywords?

You have to think like a search engine.

That’s right. You have to think like a search engine.

And the most important thing to understand is that search engines only read what is there on the page. They do not read between the lines or make assumptions about your content like humans do.

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This blog is called SEO Strategy and is about SEO Strategy. SEO is a group of techniques used to get better results and more traffic from search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and others. This blog will discuss a range of SEO tactics and strategies aimed at “optimizing” search engine results.