SEO Code of Conduct
WisdomGroup has received more questions about search engine optimization (SEO) in the last ninety days than ever before. Our position: We don’t like clever schemes. There is a right way to boost your site in the search engine rankings.
Search Engine Dynamics
Google looks at two attributes when deciding how high to rank a site in the search results: PageRank and relevance. PageRank measures the importance of a page, determined by the number of pages that link to it. Each link is a vote, and important pages cast heavier votes than non-important pages. The process is illustrated in the public domain image on the right.
Relevance measures the value of information contained on the page within the confines of the search term. The major search engines use proprietary algorithms to measure relevance.
Legitimate SEO
There is nothing wrong with communicating your message in the clearest possible fashion. Legitimate SEO can help you with this. One place to start: Hubspot. The company offers a free online tool called Web Site Grader that measures attributes such as organization, title placement, and page structure to determine the search engine effectiveness of a site.
If you want to improve something, start by measuring it.
Clever Schemes
Wherever there is a system, you will find people who try to game the system. Spamdexing is one example of a clever SEO scheme. Spamdexing is making a site appear to be something other than it actually is merely so that it can appear higher in the results. One form of spamdexing, keyword stuffing, is the act of repeating a set of keywords throughout the site in an effort to get the site highly indexed for that set of words. The stuffed words may have nothing to do with the actual content of the site. They’re just there to raise the site in the rankings. Spamdexing is easily discovered and nullified by the major search engines.
Other schemes include:
- Link Farms – Pages designed only to link to another page in an effort to boost its ranking.
- Hidden Text – Text that is colored to blend in with the background of a page. Humans can’t see the text, but search engines can. Modern search engines can also tell when such text is invisible to humans, rendering this tactic ineffective.
The SEO and spamdexing articles at Wikipedia have more information on SEO schemes for those who are interested.
Google Is Not Stupid
Why does WisdomGroup oppose clever schemes? Because Google is not stupid. Clever schemes, when discovered by the search engine crawlers, can actually lower your search ranking. In extreme cases, Google may remove the offending site altogether.
The WisdomGroup Way
WisdomGroup’s approach to search engines can be summed up as follows:
- Create a great site with solid, informative content.
- Give legitimate sites a reason to link to you.
- Give visitors a reason to come back for more.
- Track traffic with analytics.
Our experience demonstrates that web sites following this strategy move higher in the rankings over time. And they stay there longer.