BASIC CONCEPTS OF SEO
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008There are some basic concepts that all search services have to follow. They all follow certain concepts because they are all driven by humans and humans are governed by certain laws of nature. While there are many things different about spidering engines compared to human reviewed directories, specifically in terms of scalability, there are some very important things that are the same. They are the same because whether it is a human doing the indexing and categorizing or a computer program, such as a spider, the spider was programmed by a human and therefore, it can only do what a human told it to do within the limitations of the technology available at the time. The spider is going to do it’s best to emulate what a human would do. It will do whatever it is told to do by a human much faster, but without the skills that are unique to the dominant species.
The moral of the story is, if you want to achieve top placements within an index, whether spider based or human reviewed, you simply have to “think” like a human as opposed to trying to “think” like a computer program. Logic, common sense and human civility towards your fellow man, will win out over any computer language every time. You will get more traffic, (and much, much more importantly — sales), by accepting that you are dealing with a real person, not that different from yourself, instead of thinking you are just a username and password trying to trick a computer.
That is not to say that spidering engines do not have weaknesses that can be exploited, (same goes for human reviewed directories but more on that a little later). they certainly do. It is only saying that to really “see” those weaknesses for what they really are, and “see” how to best take advantage of them to enable you to achieve your own placement objectives, it is a great help to be able to first understand how silly things like hidden text, re-directs and a lot of other on page goofiness is. Once you accept that you are dealing with a human being, although it may be once removed, it is easy to understand what that human being was likely trying to accomplish when they programmed the spider in the first place. Understanding and accepting that gives you a huge advantage over your competitors and opens a lot of doors into the mind of the person or persons creating the index.
It so happens that I am one of the most successful placement specialists on the planet. I’m not claiming to be “the best” or to be some kind of “guru”. I am simply telling you that I have a lot of experience in this field and I have a reputation within the industry for a reason. I really can tell you EXACTLY how to get a number 1 spot on virtually any keyword. I’m willing to bet that there are some reading this even now who can attest to my ability by pointing to their own pages at the top based on something I had addressed. I was able to start doing that by learning and accepting those basic concepts I mentioned earlier.
As long as we are going to open a topic like this, I will help where I can and I believe the best help I can give is to share those basic concepts. What you do with those concepts is up to you. One of my favorite quotes is, “I don’t mind telling you where I think the gold is buried but you have to do your own digging”.
I have said many times in the past that I accept no responsibility whatsoever if you use any advice I give and it doesn’t work. I have no control whatsoever over any action that any search service other than SearchKing may take. I have no inside deal with any service outside of the same PPC deal or trusted feed deals than any one of you could get. So, if you do anything based on what I say and it goes badly, don’t blame me!
On the other hand, I have also often said I am more than happy to accept as much credit as you are willing to give if my advice does help. Still, the purpose of my telling you anything that could apply to search service top placement is more in the way of offering some insight into a different perspective rather than just milking a little verbal pat-on-the-back out of someone. I am only relaying my take on things based on my own personal experiences in the hope of motivating grey matter and intelligent discussion, (present author excluded).
As any discussion of techniques used to get to top spots on search services tends to be heated arguments at worst and lengthy, convoluted and self-congratulatory at best, I will try to keep my offerings at a “reasonable”, (completely subjective term), length. I will discuss the few concepts I am relatively sure of one at a time and only start another discussion after the one has run its course. So here goes the first one.