A lot of search engine optimization (SEO) sites talk about what what you should do to optimize your site with such conviction that you assume their theories are based on solid analysis. However, this isn't always the case as there are many theories that don't quite have enough supporting evidence to be considered fact while other theories turn out to be outright myths. This section covers some of these theories and myths.
Following on the heels of Eric Lander's NoFollow: An SEO Red Flag?, I thought I'd pose the question of whether updating inbound links may also be a red flag.
Google uses inbound links to assess the value of content, but it wants those links created naturally. Don't get me wrong. Naturally doesn't necessarily preclude a marketing effort, but it does mean that the person that created the link was free to choose what URL and anchor text to use. Overtly manipulating those two items is entirely unnatural and I would think Google would want to devalue the impact of such behavior. Read the rest of this entry »
As the debate goes on about the decreasing importance of PageRank, another measure continues to gain traction in the SEO world commonly called TrustRank. The idea behind TrustRank is that Google (and other search engines) assign a level of trust to a web site or maybe even a web site owner which in return can help with index inclusion and rankings. Read the rest of this entry »
It's sometimes fun (well, if you're involved with SEO) to look at how optimization theories sometimes form and seem to be truthful, but even years afterwards are still being discussed. Such is the case with Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. Read the rest of this entry »
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