Are You Patient Enough to Challenge the Search Engines?
June 22nd, 2009 by Irina
A spider’s tale
You won’t be surprised to learn that the web is inhabited by spiders. If you’re afraid of spiders, don’t worry - these spiders are completely harmless and can even become our friends.
Unless, that is, we treat them badly.
We’ve already mentioned search engines in several of our other articles. In Internet terms, the spider is the part of the search engine mechanism that “crawls” around web, following links and retrieving information from the sites as it goes. The information collected by the spider is stored in the index and is then processed by the ranking algorithm of the search engine.
You want spiders to visit …
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is something of a new science. SEO (Search Engine Optimisers) are people who know how to make a site spider friendly and (most important) ranking algorithm friendly. If you’re considering specialising in SEO, the first thing to ask yourself is “Am I patient enough?”
The problem is this: the basic rules of SEO look so obvious that people often assume that simply following them will guarantee success. Good, keyword-rich content, effective links, optimal site structure and fair play - at a glance it would appear that that’s all we need. It’s even possible to have one’s naive efforts rewarded with early success after simply optimising for a few chosen words. A top search ranking after a month can make you wonder what all the fuss was about.
In truth, it is probably the case that the key phrase you used to test your ranking is totally uncompetitive and brings no visitors. Just swallow the bitter pill and start again from scratch.
Only when we have accepted that there are no shortcuts can we start competing for really valuable search terms.
… but eventually humans will have to go there too
With a little help from keyword suggestion tools such as WordTracker, and also free tools provided by Google or Overture, you’ll no doubt find that some of your chosen phrases are far too competitive to challenge and that others are far too specific to be useful. Some of them, however, may be perfect in your pay-per-click campaigns, but you just can’t imagine how to write page copy based on those words … but at last you’ve found the best phrases.
One of the most challenging tasks is producing readable content that is well saturated with key phrases. You want your copy to be informative and entertaining, so randomly inserting optimised phrases will not do. There is no simple answer to this conundrum - you either need to know what you’re doing or hire someone who does. Good SEO copywriters are hard to find, but the light-handed fluidity of their optimised copy is the result of using their writing skills to piece together your key phrases.
Where signposts point, travellers tread
Even the best content is not enough to get good rankings in major search engines (such as Google). To rank well for competitive search terms you need to have inbound links (links pointing to your site), particularly those from other well ranked sites. Put starkly, if your site isn’t linked to, spiders won’t know it exists. Since it is beyond your control to just go and add them, you have to build them.
Judging by our inbox, the simplest way would seem to be to spend days looking for potential link partners and emailing them offering to swap links. There are even site-scanning robots that do this job automatically. Unfortunately, link building requires more patience than this. A step in the right direction is to visit the site of your choice and write a personalised letter which will show you are genuine. When the site contains a list of contacts, it’s easy to personalise your letter. When there’s no such list it’s a good idea to find a page you want your site to be linked from, note the URL of this page in your letter and describe some pages or articles you’ve found on the site.
There is of course no guarantee that your offer will be accepted. Why should your competitors link to you? On the other hand, a complementary business might be perfectly related to your site from a human’s point of view, but not from a search engine’s. And too many reciprocal links may be considered bad SEO, unless your link page grows into a well-categorised directory with good descriptions, intuitive navigation and really useful information.
Choose your friends wisely
There are certain risks in building a reciprocal campaign. Ignorance can lead you to participate in link farming (Free For All - FFA). Be warned that your domain could well be blacklisted by SEs, especially if you make the mistake more than once. Link farms are becoming harder and harder to detect. The huge, pointless pages that contain nothing but links are things of the past. Modern link farms come in disguise, pretending to be legitimate directories by adding descriptions. Of course, they always require a reciprocal link. They get away with it because many innocent directories do exactly the same thing.
Look closely, though. If this so-called “directory” is just 20-30 uncategorised pages, you know for sure that it has been done with the sole purpose of building link popularity. Usability is of no concern to link farmers. Would you use a directory where web development companies are mixed in with rhododendron suppliers or Viagra resellers? Certainly not. So think twice before you ask for a link exchange.
Once a reciprocal link agreement has been made, it’s not unusual to receive an offer to make several other exchanges. If there are 100 such offers in the list it’s obvious that they are just trying to entice you into their link farm. But what if there are just two or three other exchanges offered? Should you assume it is a link farm? This is the point at which a healthy suspicion and your eye for opportunity should guide you. We mustn’t tar every offer with the same brush. Just be alert, and do not let yourself get tempted by deceptively easy solutions.
Check your link partners. If a site that used to have a good Google PageRank has suddenly lost it completely, there is a good chance that those behind it have been penalised for SE spam. Get rid of your link to them as soon as possible. Write a polite letter telling your partner the exact reason why you have decided to drop their link. Say that they are free to do the same thing with your link, but do not assert from the start that the partner’s site is penalised. The domain might well have changed owner that causes a PR to go zero in case it had expired previously.
Great content attracts inbound links
Another way of link building is writing articles and publishing them on the Net. The only drawback is that writing articles takes knowledge and writing skills. If you only have one or the other, think about hiring a professional to fill in the gaps.
A whimper, not a bang
Assuming you have done everything properly, there could still be several months before you start getting results. During that time you’ll see your competitors ranking well for exactly the words you target. Very frustrating, especially if you catch them using dishonest methods. You could report them to Google as spammers, but Google is not going to do anything about it and the spammers steadily remain #1. Patience! Just hang on with your good work.
Once a month (on average) search engines fulfill a procedure called an “update” or a “dance”. That’s when they add freshly spidered pages to their main databases and distribute the gathered information between various “datacenters”. While dance is in progress, you can see all sorts of results. And seeing your hard-fought rankings drowned is not a very pleasant experience. Patience! Data update is not the worst thing you’ll encounter. Algo dance possibly is.
Google whacked
Since mid-November, 2003, the worldwide SEO community has been experiencing hard times caused by a major algorithm update in Google. Controlling (until recently) about 80% of the world search market, Google suddenly started producing unpredictable results, moving obvious spam to the top and sinking good sites to nowhere. Several waves of the shake-up were accompanied by a considerable amount of crying, whining and cursing directed at Google at all major SEO forums. The search results improved after a while - only to become worthless again a month later.
Some specialists believe that Google is up to something great, so there’s no need to be in panic just yet. We will have a new, improved search engine when the dance is over. In the meantime, however, it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that numerous would-be SE optimisers are giving up in favour of less trying occupations.
The optimum career choice?
Do you think you have a future as an SE optimiser? If you do, good luck. Your patience and experience will eventually pay off and bring you the sort of satisfaction recognised only by experts in a field… Convincing your clients that good rankings take time will be difficult at first - but that’s just another skill you can look forward to developing.
Tags: SEO