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The Artistic Science of SEO

The Artistic Science of SEO™, from RankingLabs.Com begins with four foundations of a quality website.

These foundations should be taken into account prior to building any website, and reviewed throughout the site development process. They will not only make building a high quality website easier, they will make it easier to rank your website, because they all play a role in SEO.

There are also a number of SEO fundamentals to think through and plan to include during the construction phase, because they directly impact a website's rankings.

If you are just beginning to learn SEO, it is good to gain some knowledge about what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, and is not, along with some background information on what SEO was.

Keep the preceding concepts in mind while reading, and understand what is considered SEO to one person could easily be considered 'spam' to another.

What you decide is SEO to you has to do with your level of risk-tolerance, and can play a direct role in how long you stay at the top of the results.

SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)
What it Was, Is & Is Not

Building a website to rank in a search engine today is completely different than it was a few years ago.

Just a short time ago, SEO was stuffing a website full of keywords, and waiting a short period of time for it to show up at number one in Google or Yahoo! or your other favorite search engine.

SEO used to be purchasing links from the biggest forum you could find, putting up a '302 Redirect' and stealing another website's content, or putting the same content on 50 domains and linking them all to one.

Some of these tactics may still work and be effective, but the devastating instant loss of traffic which may result can be crushing. The more advanced algorithms become, the tougher they are to trick, which means it is becoming more and more necessary to have a solid foundation to compete.

Today, SEO has becoming more challenging, because the search engines have become adept at breaking down natural language patterns and detecting unnatural patterns.

'Pattern detection' has allowed a 'filtering' of search engine results, by flagging documents (web pages, websites) containing unnatural patterns as 'machine generated', 'created only to rank without useful information', or in short, 'spam'.

The end result of 'spam detection' has been a 'cleaner' set of results for those visiting search engines, and has caused many who thought spamming was SEO to find another source of income, or re-think their methodology.

In reality, true SEO is not spamming or tricking search engines, it is creating a useful website with unique information, and then helping search engines understand what your site is about, so each search engine can rank it accordingly and appropriately.

Many people think SEO is about finding a way to 'stuff' a page full of keywords or 'key phrases' without the search engines noticing, then purchasing 'run-of-site' (ROS) links from sites with millions of pages or 'blog & forum spamming', so they have more links than anyone else, but those tactics are not really SEO at all, and are not the approach of high caliber SEOs.

Yes, 'ROS Links' and 'forum or blog spamming' may have worked for a time, and may still work to some extent, but these schemes usually come crashing down without notice, and so do your rankings, your traffic, and your site's 'reputation' with search engines, so what may seem to be a good short-term solution is usually toying with disaster.

Links can be critical, so the preceding is not intended to imply links are unimportant, but the right type of links, from the right sources, with the right growth rate can be more effective in the long-run than a single growth spurt of links for a short period of time.

SEO, at the 'scientific art form', is creating quality content, on a quality website and then understanding the web, search engines, basic HTML, the competition and how they all work together in search engine rankings well enough to communicate with search engines, not finding a way to 'trick' them into ranking your site higher than it deserves.

In short, true SEOs can, and do, build or modify websites to rank based on their own merits, not based on schemes or tricks. The difference is often the length of time pages from a site will rank at or near the top of search engine results. SEOs build sites for the long term, not to rank right now, then crumble into oblivion.

Basic SEO Overview
Understanding Search Engines
Algorithms v. Heuristics,
Advancements of Search

Google has what is probably the most advanced heuristic on the face of the planet. For ease of reading, the heuristic will be referred to as an algorithm or algo from here on, but understanding the distinction is important. An algorithm looks for a single correct answer. A heuristic looks for possible answers.

So, for 2+2, an algorithm will return 4, the correct answer, but a heuristic will return 4,3,5. The difference may seem small, but search engines have millions of pages to choose from and millions of people searching for answers, so it makes more sense for a search engine to return 10 unique answers, with the best guess first, and other possible answers following, rather than presenting ten 'correct' answers.

Google, is reported to now have as many as 200 variables used to score documents (web pages & websites) in an effort to return well qualified 'possible' answers, and both Yahoo! and Google have patented scoring methods, such as Google's PageRank, and Yahoo's Link Based Spam Detection, which help make it possible to have an amazing accuracy in satisfying searches, while detecting and eliminating spam.

Over the last few years, advancements in Google's ranking system have included:

• An infrastructure update know as 'Big Daddy', which changed the way Google evaluated inbound and outbound links, and ultimately the way they crawled the web based on the new determinations.
• The ability to predict the presence of phrases and related phrases which should or should not appear within a document (web page).
• The move to a 'rolling index' so results are determined on a more constant basis.
• The implementation of 'Universal Search' where results from it's multiple search engines (news, video, images, local, book) are compiled into the main search results.
• The 'aging' of sites prior to releasing them into the main index.
• Duplicate content detection.
• Making a shift to pattern based rankings.
  Patterns Include:
  • Link Churn.
  • Visitor Behavior.
  • Update Frequency (Web Page).
  • Growth Patterns (Website).
  • Change Percent of Text on a Given Page.
  • Inbound Link Text.
  • Social BookMarking 'Ranks'.
• The ability to determine and score a document based on inception date.
• Determining a 'fresh' or 'stale' state of a document, and scoring (ranking) documents based on this determination, which includes determining the 'freshness' or 'staleness' of other closely related documents. (Stale v Fresh)

Due to the changes in scoring and ranking of documents (pages), 'document inception date' determinations and other advancements made in algorithmically deciphering languages, some respected SEOs will not work on websites less than two years old, and there are others who think SEO is a dying art. But, the reality, is no matter how old your site is or what topic it covers, as long as there is an algo, there will always be a need for search engine optimization, and search engine optimizers.

The Arts of a Large Scale Website.

 The Artistic Science of SEO
RankingLabs.com

Unlike a 10, or even a 100 page website, a 100,000 page 'web property' requires the use of one or more server side scripting languages to automate web page creation.

Custom coding is recommended for SEO purposes due to some of the issues surrounding 'off the shelf' software, or 'open source' code, which include:

• Security loopholes. Hackers are more likely to concentrate on an exploit, which will apply to a large number of websites than on a hack for a single website.
• Detectability of patterns by search engines due to 'mass use' of software.
• Many leave little room for setting titles, and headings of pages individually. (Two important 'on-page' SEO components.)
• Integration of custom templates is often times difficult and, in general, unless you purchase a design, supplied ‘skins’ lack originality.
• One key goal of SEO should be to build a unique website. Using software everyone has access to allows you and others to build the same website.

Some suggestions for determining the skill of other search engine optimization firms include the following:

RankingLabs.Com SEO Services

Review the SEO Services web page.
Use the web contact form for more information.

The Sciences of a Large Scale Website.

Server Side Scripting languages include SSI (Server Side Includes), ASP (Active Server Pages), ASP.NET (Active Server Pages for the .NET Platform), CFM (ColdFusion Markup), JSP (Java), ESP (Escapade - mainly European use), Ruby, Perl, PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) and others.

(Until recently, Perl was the server side language of choice for many, but has now been replaced in popularity by PHP.)

The ability to use Mod_Rewrite, an Apache Web Server Module (available on IIS via ISAPI_Rewrite) which enables custom 'mapping' of files and locations, to produce ‘Search Engine Friendly URLs’, ‘extensionless websites' and 'error correcting URLs', is becoming as essential as a scripting language.

Many server side scripting languages depend heavily on the use of Regular Expressions.

(Mod_Rewrite is the most ‘regular expression’ dependent, but the ability to use regular expressions is often helpful in PHP, PERL and other 'server side' scripting languages.

Geo Targeting can impact visitor experience, visitor retention, and sales. (Geo Targeting is a method to serve visitors from a location information relating to their area or region specifically, rather than ‘National’ information.)

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) can be implemented to create a unique, smooth, ‘interactive’ visit, by exchanging small amounts of information to change portions of a web page, rather than reloading the entire web page, or loading a new page for small changes in information.

Cloaking* (Serving a different page or information to a search engine than to a visitor.) for lack of a better term, of some kind is often used on large websites.

Cloaking ranges from (generally) ‘acceptable’ (used to keep from ranking for certain terms, or to repeat necessary, on topic text (EG Copyright Graphic), which may appear ‘spammy’ to an algorithm) to ‘unacceptable’ (a deceptive attempt to rank for terms unrelated to the content).

* Yahoo! has introduced a css class, which appears to eliminate the need for any type of ‘acceptable’ cloaking technique, but it has not adopted it into their algorithms yet.

CSS Style is another necessity to having a well integrated, visitor appealing website. The application of CSS Styles usually makes the difference between a ‘black & white’ website and a ‘full color’ design. Similar results may be accomplished via HTML but the implementation and management are more difficult, and management can be challenging.

(If you view the source of this page, you will notice there are no tables present for formatting. Everything is done through the use of CSS positioning, which also makes the fixed footer ‘Navigation Bar’ possible.)

Page Load Order can be a ‘behind the scenes’ SEO technique to help search engines interpret the importance of a subject on a web page as related to the overall content of the page.

HTML Tagging is essential. Knowing, understanding and applying different tags to ‘on-page’ text is necessary. Tags such as <strong></strong> and <b></b> which both (generally) cause text to appear the ‘bold’ in a browser, are not the same to a text reader or to a search engine.

URL Structure is also important. Picking a consistent structure and naming convention, then sticking with it for directories (/directory/), page names (/page), the use of underscores or hyphens (there is a reason for each), page extensions or extensionless, and planning capitalization or lower case characters are all important, not only for website rankings, but also for visitor experience and usability.

MSN, Yahoo! & Google
Patent Applications
(Patent Links Open in a New Window)

• General Indexing & Scoring Patents
  • PageRank (Google)
  • Click Data Personalization (MSN)
  • Link Based Spam Detection (Yahoo!)
  • Trend Analysis (Yahoo!)
  • History and Age Data (Google)
  • Human Editorial Input (Google)
  • BoilerPlate Detection (Google)
• Google's Phrase Based Patents
  • Phrase Based Searching
  • Multiple Indexes
  • Generation of Descriptions
  • Phrase Identification
  • Spam Detection
  • Duplicate Content Detection
• Google's Document Scoring Patents
  • Traffic Association
  • Query Analysis
  • Link Based Scoring
  • Document Inception Date
• TrustRank
  • TrustRank Paper (Google, PDF)