An Object Lesson In Search Engine Optimization
I've started getting a significantly increased number of visitors via search engines (anyone else noticing this phenomenon?) and one entry from my referer log caught my eye this afternoon. It was a Google search for "rodrigo rodriguez guitarist."
The Gazette comes up in the #1 position for this search, thanks to this post made last January. What's really interesting about this search result ranking is that my post is six places above Rodrigo's own website.
This raises all kinds of interesting questions, including the oft-discussed one about whether blogs are "polluting" search engine results (something I also posted about in January). But I'd prefer to focus on some practical truths rather than debating things I can't control.
The truth of the matter is that Rodrigo's website is simply not search engine friendly. The home page is the dread Flash Splash, and while the page title is good ("Rodrigo Rodriguez"), it's not ideal (much better would be "Rodrigo Rodriguez - Classical Guitar" or "Rodrigo Rodriguez - Christian Classical Guitarist"). The next two pages of the site are also Flash, with the only indexable text being the "Next Page" links. The fourth page has the main navigation links, but they are contained in a single image map (with no alt tags to give a spider a clue about their content).
The first time the visitor (or search engine spider) encounters Rodrigo's name in text is in the content pages...four or five clicks from the home page (and even then, only his first name shows up in the text for the most part).
I'm not trying to pick on Rodrigo's website, and I'm sure he's not at fault for its shortcomings in this area. He's a musician, and an incredibly gifted one at that, and has better things to do than stay current on search engine optimization. But he's been let down by his designer, who let artistry get in the way of usability and accessibility, with the result being that a simple country blog in west Texas outranks the musician on his own name and profession.
I've never subscribed to the "blog pollution" theory, although I can see how some search results might not be as helpful when blogs are included. For example, I get a lot of hits from people seeking information about fire ants. I know that my site is not what they're looking for (although I've given them a good link in my blogroll for "real" fire ant info).
At the same time, the searchers should have the responsibility of employing a little common sense in assessing the relevance of search results. When they search for "fire ants" and see "The Fire Ant Gazette - A Midland, Texas Blog" in the results, it's mostly their fault if they click on that link and don't find the technical info they seek. I figure if they visit my site anyway, their curiosity has been piqued.
On the whole, I've had very few searches that I felt were improperly skewed due to blog hits. And, as you point out, often the information provided by bloggers is either more current or more relevant or just more useful (because of personal experience) than what you find on commercial sites.
If porn is skewing your search results, I suggest turning on the "safe search" feature that most major SEs now employ. Google's works extremely well; I've never felt that I've missed any legitimate search results, and the few that might have been missed are more than offset by the multitude of garbage that I don't have to wade through. One might call it censorship; I call it an effective time-management tool.
Posted by: Eric at April 26, 2004 10:09 PMAbout the publisher
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The Neighborhood:
West Texas Blogs:
[Midland unless otherwise indicated]
Other Texas Blogs:
The Business:
The Church:
The World:
This raises all kinds of interesting questions, including the oft-discussed one about whether blogs are "polluting" search engine results.
...and anyone taking that position is going to be treated to a very long (even by my standards) and exceptionally caustic diatribe detailing all the hard to find things that Google detects only on other people's blogs and not on regular sites.
For starters, I found the very first Rosalinda Celentano fan club in existence through a blog run by an interesting guy in Midland, Texas. Before that site even appeared on its own merits, the search engine detected it on a blog.
People griping about search engine pollution should fixate on all the porn sites out there. Especially the ones using "teaser texts" in their pages to ensure their sites always appear. They're just the opposite of Rodriguez. Those sites have ensured that it's almost impossible to run a search on anything without some amazingly sleazy stuff coming up.
Posted by: Mr. Freen at April 26, 2004 04:20 PM