A few words on SEO
On the way to the office this morning I heard a report on NPR about a web retailer who was upset about the Google Panda update. The article on NPR even casts Google as a bad guy of sorts. I really think this is unfair. Google has extensive documentation on their goals and enough about their methodology to make informed decisions about how to construct your website and have it perform well.
Like many topics, the more you know about it the more complicated it can get. But a little common sense mixed with a little knowledge will go a long way. Google’s goal is to provide a quality search result for it’s users. Meaning you type in a search result and the first thing comes up is not only relevant but quality content too.
Funny thing is, people try and game the system. One way is by scraping content. People do it to this site all the time – go figure. This means they lift content off of one site and make it appear on theirs. Pretty lazy, huh? You might even have some more colorful words for it.
You’d also be right to think this usually creates an unoriginal poor web browsing experience. And this is exactly what this poor guy was doing. Pulling text from partner websites for 35,000 different items. Too bad he learned the hard way that Google actually means it when they say they rank original content higher. He just got lucky until now.
So how does one do well in search rankings?
Read what Google has to say about it. Really, go to their site. They spell it out and the forums are great.
Build your site in a search engine friendly architecture. WordPress is great for that. Flash is not.
Tag it properly. It boggles the mind how many people don’t do this. Your home page is not “home.”
Most importantly, make it worth reading and linking too.
Don’t take any short cuts like “link farming.” They will figure your cheat out sooner or later. Google is smarter than little old you.
