Hi SEOers,
Some of you know me for using advanced SEO techniques, such as cloaking,
and developing new ideas, such as experimenting with cascading style
sheets and absolute positioning. Everyone is trying to get some sort
of advantage in order to get those coveted high rankings, analyzing
the search engines and the top pages trying to figure out what got them
to the top.
Lately, I've been thinking that perhaps search engine marketing specialists,
including me, have been over-analyzing everything, trying to come up
with some sort of technique, trick, or magic formula that will take
them straight to the top. I've been thinking that maybe sticking to
the basics might be the ticket to the top of the mountain. In this article,
I intend to show you that sticking with the basics and using the KISS
principle -- Keep It Simple, Silly -- can still get you to the top.
As some of you know, a large percentage of our clients are involved
in the online gambling industry, which is extremely competitive. Over
the past few months, in an effort to add more content to our gambling
portal network (top 100 sites) so that we can start submitting these
portals to the directories and get them approved, we developed quite
a bit of content on a variety of subjects, including how to play and
win various casino games, how to bet and win when betting on sports,
and other topics. I had my assistant make generic (read "basic")
pages for these subjects, which we put up on the various sites, with
the intentions of coming back to them when time permitted and do some
specific engine optimization. We haven't gone back to do that yet. But
here are a few of the basic pages that are ranking well:
www.gambling2go.com/casino-games/blackjack-history.php3
This page is ranked in Yahoo Web Pages (Yahoo Google) at #13 for blackjack
history.
www.bets2go.com/casino-games/baccarat-history.php3
This page is ranked in Yahoo Web Pages (Yahoo Google) at #2 for baccarat
history.
www.howtowinatblackjack.net
This site is ranked in both Yahoo Web Pages and Yahoo Web Sites at #1
for blackjack strategy.
www.xfl-fanatic.com/index.html
This site is ranked #4 in Fast and #8 in Lycos for xfl cheerleaders
None of the above pages are cloaked or use any special tricks, and
except possibly in the case of the XFL site, are all highly competitive
search phrases. Each of these pages was created using SE Optimizer,
created and marketed jointly by GRSoftware and the Academy of Web Specialists,
using the generic engine setting as a guide.
How does this relate to traffic? Well, our howtowinatblackjack.net
site pulled in more than 2,000 visitors from the search engines alone
in April 2001. Wish I got a bonus for that site! We also generated almost
2,000 search engine derived visitors split among our 20 gambling portals,
and approximately 600 search engine visitors directed to our 10 online
casino clients in April 2001.
All that is well and good, but I'm now going to show you two prime
examples of keeping things really simple.
The first example is the page I did for my Academy of Web Specialists
Certification Project: www.rookiesnstars.com/class/index.html.
The search phrase is nature activities. There is actually a second page
that is exactly as the first, except I used layers instead of tables,
to use as a comparison in an article written by Robin Nobles. That url
is www.rookiesnstars.com/class/css-p-example.html.
Otherwise the pages are identical. Nothing else was changed.
This page was originally a demo I built for a Web design studio in
San Francisco when I was looking for a job. I took the page and added
the content, changed the title tag, added a little more image alt text,
and called it good. If you look at the source code, you'll see that
there is actually very little search engine optimization at all: there
are no meta tags except the charset tag; there are no keywords in the
image alt text (at least none in all lower case, which I should have
done since most people search using all lowercase); none of the images
are named after the search phrase; the table structure pushes the content
way down the page, etc.
This page was never submitted to the search engines, has only one incoming
link from the Academy and no outgoing links. So it should have absolutely
zero link popularity. The page was crawled through that one Academy
link.
So take a look at this Web Position Gold report, http://www.rookiesnstars.com/class/PageKey-67.htm.
In addition to what you see on the report, the page is also ranked #17
in Northern Light.
So, did I do anything special to get these rankings? Not on your life.
Better question still, "How am I getting #12 and #31 in Google
without any link popularity?" The answer? Title and content is
more than likely the culprit. This page was created well before I knew
what search engine optimization was, and "optimized" long
before that snappy little software gem, SE Optimizer, was created, and
at a time when I understood search engine optimization a whole heck
of a lot less that I do now. I was still a greenhorn at the time and
hadn't really had much success.
My second KISS example is my personal web site, Rookies & Stars,
www.rookiesnstars.com. The
site is not even completed, has plenty of broken links and isn't ready
to announce to the world. In fact, I haven't even touched the site since
the end of March 2001. I build each page with general optimization in
mind: adding meta tags, although I haven't gone back and made sure the
descriptions match the page content yet; making sure the titles match
the page content; naming my graphics and pages more or less with optimization
in mind; making sure my content contains my search phrases; putting
as much code (javascript and stylesheet code) in external files as possible;
and using layers instead of tables so I can push the content to the
top of the source code.
However, no serious optimization has been done. I haven't checked the
pages with SE Optimizer, or against any specification charts to make
sure that I have done everything possible to optimize each page. I haven't
even researched search phrases yet, though I know the phrases I want
to target are used in searches. I haven't checked keyword densities,
or anything else you would normally check when optimizing a page. I'm
just trying to get the site finished so I can at least submit it to
the directories and start optimizing in earnest.
I haven't begun to develop link popularity. I have plenty of links
going out, but none coming in. All those I had coming in are pointing
to a free site I once had and is no longer around. And since I haven't
completed the new site, it's not worth the time and effort to contact
those webmasters yet.
Obviously, since I haven't completed the site and there are many broken
links, I haven't yet submitted the site to any search engine or directory.
The site is live on the internet, because I use php3 and server side
includes in some of my pages, and needed to test them out. And I didn't
feel like taking the time to create a robots.txt file to keep the spiders
out. So the site has been spidered. In some cases, quite heavily.
So what's the verdict? Take a look at these Web Position Gold reports,
www.rookiesnstars.com/statistics/menu.htm.
Not bad for minimal optimization, eh? How did I determine the search
phrases if I didn't research them? Well, I have a free version of Web
Trends Live on the site, and I used the search phrases that were actually
used in the search engines by visitors, and these are by no means all
of them. I bet I have a lot more good rankings (maybe even more #1s)
if I added more of the search phrases used by visitors (like Rhett Warrener
- a hockey player, sports humor, and plenty of others).
Speaking of traffic, I had 65 visitors strictly from the search engines
in April 2001, and so far in May 2001 (through 26 May 2001), I've had
114 visitors who found Rookies & Stars through the search engines.
I think this is phenomenal for a web site that has had no concerted
optimization and search engine marketing push. I haven't had anyone
offer to trade cards with me, but that's to be expected, because the
pages that are still yet to be completed are the lists that show what
cards I have available.
So how was I able to achieve the rankings I have without much optimization?
Again, the answer is: titles and content, which happen to be the two
most important parts of the page when it comes down to getting good
rankings in the search engines.
The moral of the story here is that you don't necessarily need to use
every trick in the book to get good rankings, or even any tricks. You
may not even need to optimize for specific engines. You can still get
good rankings by just creating good content and with little or no optimization
at all. Analyzing the competition takes a lot of time and effort. If
you use the KISS principle -- Keep It Simple, Silly -- you can use that
time to develop better content, a better overall Web site for your visitors,
and take some time out to enjoy life. Who knows, perhaps using the KISS
principle will even make your pages immune to the dreaded algorithm
change!
Until next time, remember to KISS your SEO!
Appeared in the June 2001 issue of the Academy
of Web Specialists monthly online newsletter.
***About Bill Gentry:
Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search
Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp
Designs since February 2000. Earning a Bachelor's of Science in Geology
and a Master's of Business Administration in addition to his employment
as an Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist for 10 years contributed
to his attention to detail.
Article may not be reprinted without permission of Look Sharp Designs.
To request permission for reprinting rights, please contact Look Sharp Designs.
