What is SEO, and will it make me nuts?

Last Updated on Sunday, 04 October 2009 05:10 Written by Administrator Sunday, 04 October 2009 00:45

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The short answer:  seo stands for "search engine optimization".

The long answer:  SEO is the art and practice of massaging and manipulating the data in your web site in such a way as to attempt to influence how a search engine ranks your site in search results.

Like everything else in life, there are some things to watch out for.

You can't beat the big boys.

There are some things you and I will just not be able to affect.  For example, if you and I started a new company to make cookies for a niche market, and called it "Crazy Bob's Insanely Good Yum Yum Cookies", we might get a lot of local business.  But people in Singapore use U.S. search engines too.

Let's face it, Keebler cookies are always going to rank higher than ours.  First, because we don't have any elves... but mostly because Keebler paid to have theirs higher than ours.  And you have to sell a lot of Yum Yums to get the money to beat Keebler's bid.

The 10,000 maniacs syndrome.

No matter what my system is, there are 10,000 people who will call me an idiot.  If I listen to those 10,000 people and change my secret formula, a different 10,000 people will think I'm an idiot.  And boy oh boy, am I glad they don't have my phone number, because they flame each other in tens of thousands of pointless arguments all day.  It's even worse than the Kirk vs. Picard debate.

So how do you know which ones are the idiots?  Well, to paraphrase an old adage...

One man's genius is another man's idiot.

It's possible that we're all maniacs.  It's also possible that we're all correct. This is one of those situations where there is more than one right answer.

Gather as much information as you can.  A nice, sane way to do it would be to make a list of 5 or 10 (no more) ways to do SEO.  Try each of them, and see what works best for your site.  Because what works best for you may not be what worked for any of the maniacs.

(Pause for author's maniacal laughter.)

Search engines work differently.

Give it a try, if you haven't already.  Enter "camaro" in both Google and Yahoo search, and compare the results.  Not the same.

Sadly, this also means that the SEO technique that works for one may not always work for the other.  The good news is that there is middle ground.  There is such a thing as SEO that works kinda well for several.

Who do you target?  The big boys, of course.  If you and I take time off from our Yum Yum business and make a search engine, is anybody going to use it?  Pfffft.  Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Bing all have engines that do exactly what they were designed to do.  Use the one you like the best, as long as it's one of the big ones.  Because most of the big ones already index the entire search result database of most of the small ones.  That's right:  if you make it work for 2 or 3 big boys, you also make it work for all the search engines that Google sucked up.

But, you may ask, isn't that backwards?  Well, it would be if the search engine business made any sense, but it doesn't.  Many of those smaller search engines are just wrappers for somebody else's search engines.  If you use Louie's Mega Search because your sister used to date Louie and he had a really cool Zapata moustache, there's a good chance that Louie is pushing his search through Google and pretending the result is his.

Don't be afraid to change your mind.

You have to.  The search engines change the way they work quite often.  Things that make you King of Cookies this month may not even get you on the front page next month.  Don't be afraid to throw out everything you did if (or when) it stops working.

Will it drive you nuts?  Probably, but you'll be in good company.  Visit SEO CPM CTR HQ often, or sign up for the RSS feed.  You'll end up crazy like the rest of us... but if you get real crazy, it pays well.