I don't know how many of you SEO people have heard of "Nigritude Ultramarine", but perhaps if you are looking to kill a couple of days and to re-awake some underused neurons, you can learn A LOT about the ultra-geek SEO efforts made there...
SEO Super Geek Stuff...
- Thread starter 12BucksFor2Dozon
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Srainwater's article is great stuff. I watched that competition unfold and it was amazing to see the level webmasters would go to to game Google.
The 'winning' sites were mostly keyword loaded spam and lacked much in the way of real content. (Of course, how much content can there be about a nonsensical phrase?)
Srainwater's page ran play-by-play commentary about the horse race. His Judge's Choice prize was well deserved.
AFAIK no one has attempted to hold another competition on this scale. Why? Because Google learned a lot about how they were being manipulated and started adjusting the algorithm to filter out the kinds of pure trash techniques the winners were using. These days, the SEO crowd isn't so anxious to teach the Mountain View team how they are being gamed.
Guess this makes me a geek. :>
The 'winning' sites were mostly keyword loaded spam and lacked much in the way of real content. (Of course, how much content can there be about a nonsensical phrase?)
Srainwater's page ran play-by-play commentary about the horse race. His Judge's Choice prize was well deserved.
AFAIK no one has attempted to hold another competition on this scale. Why? Because Google learned a lot about how they were being manipulated and started adjusting the algorithm to filter out the kinds of pure trash techniques the winners were using. These days, the SEO crowd isn't so anxious to teach the Mountain View team how they are being gamed.
Guess this makes me a geek. :>
Seems like the best place to post this...
SEO Mistake.... Crappy Doorway Pages
Google's Matt Cutts takes apart a florist's site that's using a number of spamming techniques like doorway pages, hidden links and redirects to the game the SERPs. The shop is from Spain but you'll get the idea. Bet you'll love his term of endearment for the SEO.
SEO Mistake.... Crappy Doorway Pages
Google's Matt Cutts takes apart a florist's site that's using a number of spamming techniques like doorway pages, hidden links and redirects to the game the SERPs. The shop is from Spain but you'll get the idea. Bet you'll love his term of endearment for the SEO.
BOSS
FlowerChat Administrator
while were at it...
...here is some good content about homepage design
Six Steps to Help Your Homepage Grow Up
Getting a handle on your homepage marketing will take time, but that’s no reason to delay. Here are my recommendations for working toward a more mature homepage.
Understand your yearly brand directives. Meet monthly with the team responsible for messaging on those directives. Ask for their help in planning campaigns for your website, and start with the homepage.
Think of every pixel as dynamic content. Very little on your homepage — besides the navigation and logo, of course — should be considered permanent. Some items will occupy space longer than others, but as the years roll by, everything should shift and change according to brand directives, seasons, events, mergers, and changes in product offerings.
Divide the homepage into sections representing some of your brand directives. Anything that appears in a section, for whatever period of time, should represent that particular brand directive. For example, a quote from a forum about solving a problem, with a link to the answer, would support a “we share our expertise” directive.
Be concise and direct on the homepage so that the amount of content doesn’t overwhelm users. There are other places, such as section homepages, where you can put additional content.
Assign a marketing manager to each section. Let her run themes, one per month or quarter, with supporting content and links. Assign her parts of other pages, too. This lets her emphasize and balance topics in her sections and experiment with campaigns.
For example, the theme for Product X could be “we support the growth of your business” for the first three months, then “we support your multiple locations” for the next three months, and so on. Supporting content like testimonials could change according to the theme.
Consider creating a section for quick links. Watch your logs and note the most popular destinations according to a predefined metric. Change the quick links to reflect these top destinations weekly or monthly.
Don’t feel obliged to list products. Trust your navigation and product-finder tools. Visitors will know where to look for what they want. Just because you get thousands of hits a day for Product Y on your homepage doesn’t mean you will lose that traffic if Product Y doesn’t appear on the first page a visitor sees.
This living-and-breathing approach will keep your product pages from going stale.
Yes, very corporate orientated but still VG advice for anyone here interested in creating compelling websites.
...here is some good content about homepage design
Six Steps to Help Your Homepage Grow Up
Getting a handle on your homepage marketing will take time, but that’s no reason to delay. Here are my recommendations for working toward a more mature homepage.
Understand your yearly brand directives. Meet monthly with the team responsible for messaging on those directives. Ask for their help in planning campaigns for your website, and start with the homepage.
Think of every pixel as dynamic content. Very little on your homepage — besides the navigation and logo, of course — should be considered permanent. Some items will occupy space longer than others, but as the years roll by, everything should shift and change according to brand directives, seasons, events, mergers, and changes in product offerings.
Divide the homepage into sections representing some of your brand directives. Anything that appears in a section, for whatever period of time, should represent that particular brand directive. For example, a quote from a forum about solving a problem, with a link to the answer, would support a “we share our expertise” directive.
Be concise and direct on the homepage so that the amount of content doesn’t overwhelm users. There are other places, such as section homepages, where you can put additional content.
Assign a marketing manager to each section. Let her run themes, one per month or quarter, with supporting content and links. Assign her parts of other pages, too. This lets her emphasize and balance topics in her sections and experiment with campaigns.
For example, the theme for Product X could be “we support the growth of your business” for the first three months, then “we support your multiple locations” for the next three months, and so on. Supporting content like testimonials could change according to the theme.
Consider creating a section for quick links. Watch your logs and note the most popular destinations according to a predefined metric. Change the quick links to reflect these top destinations weekly or monthly.
Don’t feel obliged to list products. Trust your navigation and product-finder tools. Visitors will know where to look for what they want. Just because you get thousands of hits a day for Product Y on your homepage doesn’t mean you will lose that traffic if Product Y doesn’t appear on the first page a visitor sees.
This living-and-breathing approach will keep your product pages from going stale.
Yes, very corporate orientated but still VG advice for anyone here interested in creating compelling websites.
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