Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts - the Battle for SEO Supremacy
by Kamau Austin
Published on this site: August 19th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
"Why Search Engine Marketing is the Internet's Classic
Battle Between Street Smarts and Book Smarts".
eBizBlogBytes "This Weeks Top eCommerce Commentary"
by Kamau Austin
In this Article
- Search Engine Marketing the Internet's Classic Battle
Between Street Smarts and Book Smarts.
- Does Google Filter Sites for Good Grammar and Spelling?
- Is Google Beginning to Devalue Directory Linking?
As more webmasters learn the advantages of search engine
marketing, the search engines (SEs) will respond to discern
which are the true sites deserving of top organic rankings.
Despite what some Internet Gurus claim, ironically search
engines will not always pick the best sites for their audience.
This is because although Internet searchers are their target
audience, their customers ironically are really Internet advertisers
- that pay the bills.
Google, MSN and Yahoo are publicly traded companies with responsibilities
to their shareholders to make a profit. In this regard it
is in their interest to have a large pool of advertisers buying
space on their digital properties. It really isn't in the
SE's interest to have organic search engine optimization (SEO)
elevating the fortunes of websites for free. The major SEs
would rather eCommerce sites become advertisers in their grand
scheme of things.
This constant struggle for top rankings online has caused
a continuous and contentious classic battle between street
smarts and book smarts online.
Because of the Internet's growing popularity, business without
borders, low barrier to entry, and gold rush hype the world's
smartest marketers are dueling with the worlds top techies
over control of the Internet economy or "eCom-nomy"
valued at close to a trillion dollars!
While many of the world's top Internet marketers have advanced
degrees, like Dr. Ralph Wilson, Dr. Ken Evoy, and Dr. Kevin
Nunley (just to mention a few) from fields unrelated to technology,
the majority are gutsy street-smart marketers. Contrast them
with Googleplex's best and brightest programming and data
research "digerati".
With billions of people in the future online all over the
world the stakes couldn't be higher. Search Engine Optimizers
(SEOs) use inside information and downright common sense to
reverse engineer the algorithms of the search engines.
While on the other hand the search engines employ the worlds
top PhDs and top programmers to keep SEOs from topping out
their results and providing adequate and helpful listings
to Internet searchers. For instance it is obvious to SEO's
that Google is giving a good amount of preference to news,
.gov and .org sites.
Despite the fact that these sites are authority sites at first
glance, many government and nonprofit sites are not as up
to date on their information as commercial sites. Have you
ever tried to read some of the information on government sites
about marketing and the Internet? These sites many times are
just not as up to date in their information as one might need.
Increasingly search engines are penalizing optimized sites
for their proactive marketing with a host of delay filters
and penalties. If you want to learn how to optimize your site
and avoid penalties recently there were two excellent articles
on:
Google penalties and Yahoo! and MSN penalties below:
"Does Google Filter Sites for Good Grammar and Spelling?"
Recently a Grammar and English expert wrote an article in
which he opined how he noticed top ranking sites consistently
seem to have well written content as a feature in common.
He elaborated that top ranking sites seem to have few spelling
and grammatical errors. Then he suggested many SEO obsessions
like PageRankT, and Keyword density just didn't hold up as
priorities in SEO.
I concur with him on his most salient points like Google doesn't
obviously pay much attention to PageRankT anymore and Keyword
density isn't as much of a concern either. His most important
espoused point is a truism in my humble opinion, in that good
grammar and spelling is important to the professionalism of
a site.
Misspelled words and bad grammar is a good indication that
you don't give attention to detail in your business. Many
potential customers will also shy away from a site replete
with spelling errors and terrible grammar. I don't know if
Google has a spelling and grammar filter, perhaps they should
- and this writer has given them a good idea to go along with
their current crop of Killer SEO Filters.
I certainly think, in the very least, you should run your
written content through a spell and grammar checker, is if
Google has this filter already in place. It is the least you
can do for your site visitors.
Is Google Beginning to Devalue Directory Linking?
Directory linking has been a mainstay of link campaigns for
a while. Especially since reciprocal linking is not as effective
as it once was. This is why "one-way" linking from
Internet directories has gained a lot in popularity over the
last couple of years. Now Google is beginning to take away PageRankT from
DMOZ categories for Internet directories.
If you have a website that uses a lot of directory links for
search engine optimization and you noticed your site has lost
ground in the last few weeks - this may be why. I will look
more into this development and get back to you on this latest
algorithm change.
Kamau Austin Helps Small Businesses make more money
by using search engines as marketing and sales channels to
increase their business. He also publishes http://www.eInfoNEWS.com.
For more search engine news visit His New Jersey based site
http://www.SearchEnginePlan.com
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