More insights into SEO

For your information, SEO = Search Engine Optimization. Or you can check my knowledgebase for such topic.

Why SEO ?

SEO is important but sometimes frivolous because everything are based on trial-and-error and assumptions. The fact that the BIG THREE (Google, Yahoo, MSN) don't actually provide official guidelines for such. Their reason is that of maintaining search results integrity. ~Good for them~

Anyway, being indexed and listed in popular searches result is an effective marketing tool. Consider this fact.. if you have a great software for doing language translation and intended to sell it around your neighbourhood. You could knock-on all doors doing the promotion, but I can tell you that it won't quite work. However, if you host it online with good search engine coverage, you can sell it better. WHY ? because it is a psychological caveat which impacts people in such a way that whenever an offer is approached to them, it will be a no-go. However, when they have something in mind, Internet is one of the options and there goes Google, Yahoo and MSN (in that order).

Thus, people would buy online for a product which can be obtained next door.

Previous Experiences:

I had been doing trials on SEO as I was intrigued by it as well. Also, couple of blogs had been written based on that:

1. A great way to get indexed to Google.
2. Why Google Base ?
3. SEO Status Report 2.
4. Search Engine Optimization Status.
5. Search Engine Submission to Google.

New Insights:

Just today, I managed to obtain more insights into SEO. Let me share with you.

First of all, let's examine my status in term of the keyword "tech blog". I also provide associating reasons for such reality. It will be in pictorial, very cool.

MSN = No.3

So, MSN has always put high preference for this blog, I am not sure why, but my theory is that it is a result of having indexed to Tan Family & Associates Blog. Just today, I hit No.3 spot for this category. A great achievement. And if we study it deeper, from the cached page, it is noticeable that MSN recognizes that "Mobile" should match "tech blog" accurately, more than others.

Let's take a look at the No.2 for keyword "Tech Blog" under MSN.com

As you may notice, it is still related to Mobile technology. Thus, MSN.com regards "mobile" as something associated with "tech" per se.

Spartial conclusion:
1. You have to be part of MSN.com network.
2. Your cached contents must match the keyword.
3. I also notice that MSN considers frequency of contents update.

Yahoo = No. 100

Thus, we are No. 100 and the cached showed link to "Amazon is How big?", which Yahoo might not consider "Amazon" as having heavy association to "tech".

Let's now investigate the number 1 for yahoo in term of "Tech Blog".

Okay, woo hoo!, Yahoo! considers "Google Earth" as having heavy association with "tech", not a bad choice.

Spartial Conclusion:
1. Have to be part of Yahoo! network. (Similar to MSN, Google)
2. Your cached contents must match the keyword. (Similar to MSN, Google)
3. I do notice that Yahoo uses the META tag for filtering too.

Google=No.149

Within Google, this blog is currently ranked 149 for "Tech Blog", it is an improvement. And it is noticeably due to my most popular blog ever... white house failure google? Which allows direct link to Google's Blog.

The number 1 result for "Tech Blog" from Google is:

Google considers "Typepad" to have heavy association with "Tech".

Spartial Conclusion:
1. Based on my white-house-failure-google experience, it is clear that you have to be part of Google's network (Similar to MSN, Yahoo)
2. Cached contents is important for the filtering. (Similar to MSN, Yahoo)
3. I feel that Google's PageRank also decides for the filtering process. Currently, this blog is still 3/10.

Conclusion:

FAQ:

1. The million dollar question is can we perform SEO over the night ?
I don't think so, at least you have to wait for the search engine to do its business of crawling and that would be, from my experience, a minimum of 3 to 7 days.

2. The next question is can one achieve its SEO objectives within 7 to 14 days ?
My answer would be YES, but not without a caveat; expensive.

I have been doing this for many months and my insights grow thicker each day. But I can assure that it will be hectic and load-full. The fact that SEO is content-based, thus if a client of engineering genre wanted to get its URL SEOed, I would need to research on the engineering segment.

Probably, if the client is willing to pay RM 5K for such job, it can be a good deal. Well, at least RM 3K.

Rules of Thumb:
1. You have to get indexed to each of them, either through URL injection or introduction. You have to get your URL listed on those web sites which these crawlers frequent. One of them is of course this tech blog.
2. You have to be part of their (Google, Yahoo, MSN) mutual and non-mutual networks. For instance, MSN has high preference for me, perhaps it is due to the fact that my URL exists in MSN network more than others.

Perhaps the following might work:
MSN --> Put more comments to spaces' blog
Yahoo --> Put more comments to 360's blog
Google --> Put more comments to blogspot's blog. And you might want to link back to Google's blog.

3. Once you (URL) are being indexed, you have to increase your URL occurences. This is actually having direct relevancy to the first rule.
4. Once you(URL) exist coherently in the search environment, the next thing you should figure out is the contents. Refer to today's insights.
5. Meta might work also, but not all the time.

Electives:
1. If you want to have great searchability, focus on just one topic such as this javascript blog,
2. or you may want to follow liewcf.com style, which is to include just anything as much as possible.

IT-Sideways is having some dilemma because it is not employing either one of the the electives' mode. It is quite on top of the fence.

Revolution:

I strongly believe that blog will revolutionalize web sites.

First of all, Blog is quite similar to forum but different in the sense that:
1. Blog is author-oriented. Means that topics or discussions are initiated by the authors/administrators. While in forums, administrators only manage the content.
2. Forums, provided the administrators are very committed and well-versed with the genre, otherwise suffer lost-touch most of the time. what I meant by lost-touch is that most of the time, someone posted a question which might lead up to either no-one-reply, not-enough-provision-of-knowledge or simply poster-dont-bother-to-come-back-for-the-answer.
3. Forum is harder to manage and can become very messy.

And that some web sites have forums in it while at the same time many have started to adopt blog as well. But it has been a norm that web-sites are anchor to blogs, means that you will usually gotten a web site first before reading its blog.

However, I feel that in the very near future, the reversal will happen. If you look at most of the searches, returned results are mostly blog-oriented. As the number of blogs increases, this will be even more inevitable. Thus, let's call this the bewhere (blogwebsite) page revolution.

Luckily, it has only been the BIG THREE and not the BIG FIVE or six or ten.

This blog has come a long way actually.