Received wisdom or the bleedin' obvious?

SEO has become a big industry in recent years. 

Even during the fifteen months in which The Middle Man has been in business the level of awareness that exists just amongst ordinary web-owners seems to have increased massively.  What was once almost a secret shared only by web developers and those in the business of optimisation now seems to be an almost universal topic of discussion.

One casualty of this new awareness would appear to have been the "knowledge" that has hitherto been held by the few and imparted to the many, often for a tidy sum, about how Google and the other search engines incentivise and disincentivise certain practices.  What has always indeed been a closely guarded secret - the algorithms used to decide the ratings that are periodically allocated to every site on the web - has been speculated upon with gay abandon by the great and the good within the industry, and the speculation passed off as received wisdom. 

Now I would like to introduce a new concept to the debate.  It is known as the bleedin' obvious and its methodology is the scientific application of trial and error.

Let me give you an example.  Type the words "The Middle Man" into Google.  At the time of writing there are a total of 669,000,000 returns on this keyword and our own business promotion website is third on the that list.  That is third - two sites in front of us, and 668,999,998 behind us!

Now we like to think we are good, but we are not that good.  As a new business our website at the moment only has a Google PR of 1.  We are quietly confident that with the next assessment we will improve, but as things stand PR1 is where we stand.  So how is it then that we are so high up in the ratings for that particular keyword?

The reason is simple - it is the title of our site.  They are the three words, in that order, that are contained in our title tags.  Many of the sites that are well behind us in the list for that keyword have considerably superior page rank to us.  But this keyword has more relevance to our site, because it is the name by which our site is known.

Even if a high ranking site with Google PR of 9 or 10 were to introduce this keyword into the text of their homepage we would remain above them, because it has more relevance to our site. 

But just in case you think our position on Google might be a fluke, try another example.  Type the words "Accrington Stanley" into Google.  The site at the top of the list is that of Accrington Stanley Football Club, which has a Google PR of 0.  And yet the words "Accrington Stanley" will appear every Saturday on the sports section of the BBC's website, which has a Google PR of 9.  The club site beats it in the authority stakes when it comes to those words because those words are more relevant to the club site, and they feature in the title.

Therein lies the evidence, irrefutably, that relevance is more highly valued by search engines than simple page rank.  If you want the search engines to notice your site, give it a title that is going to create its own authority.

The application of trial and error in pursuit of the bleedin' obvious has led us to another conclusion, equally controversial but also equally evident - the mysterious Google "duplicate content penalty" is a complete myth, although using duplicate content does quite clearly draw less benefit in SEO terms than using fresh content.

I am familiar with a blog, a political blog as it happens, which is updated two or three times each day and has been for at least a few years.  I would estimate that between a half and two thirds of its main page content comprises verbatim reproductions of articles that had previously appeared either in major national or regional news publications, or on other websites.  A prime candidate for the dreaded duplicate content penalty, if such a thing truly existed.  And yet this blog carries a Google PR of 5, extremely impressive for a vehicle of its kind.  It doesn't even boast a huge volume of high quality inbound links.  The reason for its high page rank, one must assume, is the volume of original content generated through the Comments sections by the many visitors to the site.

Here's another example - as a prolific writer of articles I have a standard spiel that I use in the Resource Box when I submit my work to article directories.  When I have tested where this text appears on the listings through Google it is right up there at the top in respect of certain articles, yet much further down the foodchain where others are concerned.  The search engines have read the same text so many scores of times, and have assigned relevance to some over others.  But none of my articles themselves has been penalised for duplicate content.

I do not deride the hard work of SEO experts, but every one of them ultimately opines on the basis of nothing more than guesswork, albeit sometimes inspired guesswork by individuals who have had the opportunity to test the water and to subject their findings to intelligent and logical analysis. 

Where SEO is concerned, there is no more scientific approach to be taken than the patient application of suck it and see.