ELWsoftware.com

Multiobjective optimization means simultaneously finding a good solution that works for multiple measures of success.  Is Google currently using this idea to determine page rankings?  Can ELW reverse engineer Google’s search algorithms by assuming they are using these techniques?  The trick would be to figure out what Google wants to improve.  Obviously, Google makes money when searchers click on ads next to search results.  Directly optimizing search results to increase revenue would probably lead to crappy pages taking up the first few positions.  This would increase the number of people clicking on ads instead of search results.  I’m not so sure Google would do this, since the extra revenue may be at the cost of losing those customers next time.  The only alternative left is for Google to try to maximize long term revenue by maintaining the quality of organic search results.  This is a multiobjective optimization problem!

First, let me say that this is only speculative.  Anyone who has read my other articles can figure out what my basic view on Google are.  I suspect that what Google does is much less sophisticated than any theoretical optimization problem would allow.  Good optimization techniques are slow, and don’t scale well to anything near the size of Google.  It sure is lucky for the world of computer scientists that simple and fast ideas work so well.  Sometimes “dumb” solutions actually work better!

Forget everything you think goes into a search engine’s ranking algorithm for a minute.  How would you compare the quality of two different algorithms?  You need to actually put them into practice and look at the click-through data!  Which ranking components lead to the most clicks on the first few results?  Which bad ranking components lead people to enter a different query, or look at search results on the second and third pages before they find what they want?

I have done quite a bit of experimenting on this, and have developed a combined algorithm for improving search engine ranking algorithm quality by optimizing for positive click feedback.  Contact ELW if you have a few million dollars and want to give Google a serious run for their money!

This morning Google turned off some of the less used mechanisms for obtaining search results.  The search result scraper Scroogle.com is temporarily unable to provide search results.  The site used to be a useful tool to get search results without any warping due to location and user info.  A quick check of the SEO tool Rank Checker shows that search engine rankings are not provided for the Google column anymore.  There is no possibility that this is a coincidence.

I can only speak for ELW, but I hope that the world sees this for what it is.  Google only wants you to use their services when they control the medium.  This makes some sense if they were losing money from scrapers, but we know that isn’t true.  This truly is an act of aggression against professional SEO firms everywhere.  Don’t get me wrong, ELW has not been inconvenienced at all because our research doesn’t rely on the same back doors as Scroogle and rank checker.  Maybe this is a good thing, and no complaints are necessary?

There is much more to this outage than meets the eye.  I’ll save the real conspiracy theories for our paying customers!  More to come.

There was a typical Slashdot article today about how Bing lost the search engine “war” because they didn’t focus on the long tail.  Since nobody should take things on Slashdot too seriously, I rarely do more than scan the comments.  This article contained a comment from someone about how “Bing sucks” because his website which is the absolute authority on a very obscure keyword is #5 on Bing.  Some professional SEO replied to that comment and called the guy a moron.  I have to agree.

Maybe the guy should call up Microsoft and tell them that searching for some obscure keyword doesn’t bring up the most authoritative result.  I’m joking of course to make a point.  Should the search algorithms for Bing be changed because some moron’s site doesn’t show up where he thinks it should?  By his own admission the keyword is obscure, so what would be the point?  I don’t know!  I witness the same thing with Google and Yahoo as well.

Is it at all surprising that SEO has a bad reputation?

I don’t think it is a mystery at all.  SEO has a bad reputation because the public has little or no understanding of how search engines work.  Is there fraud being committed by less-than-honest SEO companies?  Of course!  I don’t necessarily think this is the problem.  The vast majority of customers we get at ELW have problems with their websites that are so easy to fix that people don’t think we deserve our pay.  The bigger problem with SEO reputation is that people think there is magic involved when there really isn’t.  Should the SEO community start bullshitting our customers more?  Content, metacontent, and links.  Everything else is blackhat.

There really isn’t any value left in being an expert in search engines.  Having a graduate degree in computer science isn’t very useful if all your customers have the same problems:  No titles, text, or links.  There really isn’t much that can be said about the situation.  The reason Amazon.com shows up #1 in a search for “online bookstore” isn’t because they know some secret about SEO that you don’t.  I don’t know what else to say.

So, what can we do to give SEO a better reputation?  Who says we even want SEO to have a good reputation?  Maybe the opposite is true!  SEO should embrace the reputation it has, because we all know some of it is a load of crap.  Be honest, how many of you have optimized sites for keywords that you know nobody will ever type into a search engine?  How many of you have sat back and done nothing, while your client watched in amazement as their site’s ranking improved for no reason?  These examples are true stories I have heard from clients!

The SEO bubble will disappear long before the reputation is repaired.  Search engines are at most a few years away from completely negating all reasonable attempts to influence rankings.  I think they are already there, but many SEOs benefit from the illusion that it is still 1999 technology at work.

I say we try to keep the bad reputation, even if it isn’t deserved.  There are still plenty of sites out there with no text that will keep paying the bills.

Yes, if you are interested in SEO and want to leave a comment, please do so!  ELW software is willing to personally read any comment you leave as long as it is about SEO.  If you want to try and trick us with automated comment spam software, be our guest.  We at ELW are confident that we can detect any junk comments you try to get past us.

If you have read this far, and are human, you probably realize that ELW posted this article as a honeypot to test our spam detection software.  If you really are interested in leaving a comment about SEO, please do.  I don’t expect you will see any spam get through here.

Most search engine optimization articles I read usually repeat the same old information.  How many people out there selling SEO services are really just graphic designers who read a book or took an online course?  How many of them would even understand Google’s search engine patents? If you want to separate yourself from the herd, read a little further.  ELW is about to do some real research into how search engines really work!

SEO firms usually to to promote the myth that search engine algorithms are a big secret.  This serves to make them look like really smart people who know all the secrets about getting your web page to rank higher.  Is it true that search engine ranking algorithms are a secret?  Yes and no!  The actual complete piece of software that decides the final rankings is a secret, but nobody should even care about this!  Does knowing the exact weight that Google gives pagerank really help you as an SEO?  No.  The really important search engine ranking factors are not secret at all.

Do you realize how many patents there are dealing with search engines?

There are at least hundreds of patents specifically related to search engine ranking algorithms.  Reading search engine patents could be what sets you apart from all of the phony SEO firms out there.  That would take a lot of work right?  Who wants to read all of that junk?  Don’t worry, ELW is going to summarize important search engine patents, and how they relate to SEO.  Now you won’t need a degree in computer science to be a professional SEO!  If you are interested in link-building and keyword density, you have come to the wrong place.

Yahoo has an excellent command you can use in their search engine called linkdomain, but Google doesn’t have it.  This command will let you see all of the sites Yahoo has found that link to your website.  This command is very useful, but Yahoo doesn’t crawl the web as thoroughly as Google.  Your results using Yahoo will be missing many of the links on the web to your site.

Google has a link command, but experience suggests that it doesn’t work very well at all!  Think about that for a while, since it doesn’t make much sense.  Why wouldn’t Google want you to know what sites link to yours?  I don’t have an answer.  You should be asking Google.

You can still find out pretty easily who is linking to your site with Google.  You might just have to get a few bogus results included.  Do an exact search for your domain name like: “elwsoftware.com” and see what comes up.  Hopefully your site will be the top result, or you will need to do some more SEO work.  Among the list of search results should also be all the sites on the web that have your domain name somewhere in their text.  This might not include all the sites that link to yours, since who knows what people use for anchor text.

If you want to remove your site from the search results above, you can use Google’s site command like this:

“elwsoftware.com” -site:elwsoftware.com

Now you have a list of every site Google has found that includes your domain name.  It isn’t quite as good as knowing who links to you, but it is close.  If your page titles all have your domain name included (look at the top of your browser when you visit your site) the search results could include many links to you from scraper sites.  These sites scan the web for information, then they post it on their sites.  Usually it is just a summary of your article, and a link to the original.  It is often done to make it look like a site has more content than it really does.  It can also be a good way to get some good links to your site if you approach it carefully, but that is a subject for another article.

I just watched the movie “Funny People” where one of the characters made a funny cat video that got hundreds of thousands of hits.  He then linked the video to his website.  Of course doing this kind of thing doesn’t necessarily get you the type of traffic you want, but it definitely does work.

Generally, you aren’t going to get a followed link from a site like youtube where anybody can post things.  There are opportunities for followed links on video sites, but I won’t go over them here.  The point of getting links isn’t always to increase pagerank.  99% or more users won’t even know the difference.  You should be interested in traffic generated by people watching your video.  If you can get thousands of views on a video you post, you should be able to get a small percentage of them to come to your site!

It is very easy to become a recording artist these days.  If you have any talent you can probably publish your own songs or comedy for download.  Have you ever noticed when you type in the title of an old song, the first search result is usually a wikipedia entry?  Have you ever looked at the wikipedia entry?  The cool thing is that almost all wikipedia entries for songs have a list of who has covered the song including a link!  Again, this probably won’t be a followed link but nobody will notice.  Anybody can edit a wikipedia page.

The point of this article is that people become so obsessed with getting followed links, that they ignore opportunities for nofollowed links that will likely get them better traffic!  You need to expand your link building horizons.  Every single link can be clicked by interested people.  Keep your eyes open!

The secret to generating very large quantities of content for your web site is to get others to do it for you.  Not everybody is willing to spend their own time writing about the same topic every day.  As long as writing articles or blog entries has a positive effect on search engine rankings, there will continue to be a need for this service.  There is no question that regularly writing articles on a blog will help your site.  Possibly even more than getting inbound links.  The best mix of articles to have on your site should include a wide array of perspectives on a central theme.  Obviously the central theme on the ELWsoftware.com blog is search engine optimization.

People get tired of reading the same stuff over and over again.  It gets boring even if the subjects change every day.  Listening to the same side of the story will drive away listeners.  I suggest trying to outsource your content generation.  There is no shortage of writers out there who are willing to produce articles for you like they are going out of style.  I suggest looking at options that include talented English-speaking writers from another country.  Not only can you get articles written for less money, you increase your site’s familiarity in foreign countries.

Never overlook an option to get more content on your site!

Haven’t you heard of outsourcing?  Through the magic of the internet, anybody can have work done by the lowest bidder as easily as hiring someone locally!  Obviously, all things being equal, you will get your work done by the lowest cost provider.  Wouldn’t it be great if all of your SEO work could be done this way?

ELWsoftware.com tried to be a provider on the Elance website, but soon we realized that we couldn’t compete with the prices offered by an SEO in India.  Instead of crying over this news, we see it as an opportunity!  Simple economics suggests that our ability to sell SEO services at $100 an hour combined with an SEO in India doing the work for $10-15 an hour is smart.  Take a few minutes to think about that!

Think about the current SEO situation and how it works.  A while back I described an idea for an SEO crowdsourcing website.  The idea was to allow users to recommend changes and improvements to a website.  Typical SEO thinking would say that this would mean giving away the secrets of the trade.  My opinion is that there aren’t any secrets.  Everybody knows about keywords, titles, and link building.  Everything else is either black-hat or speculative.  The crowdsourcing part would come in when the site owner would discover that everyone was offering the same or similar services.  At least this would result in a better understanding of their problems.  Maybe it would prevent them falling victim to some graphic designer charging them $1000 for putting some keywords in html tags!

Can you really get 10x the work done for your money with an SEO from India?  I’ll be doing it as an experiment, and I’ll let you know the results in further posts!

The SEO trick for today is a list of chores you might be putting on your list of things to do tomorrow.  I suggest taking a day off and getting some things done.  Let’s do some SEO housecleaning.

1. Do all of your html page titles contain what they should?  Spend a few minutes actually browsing your site to see if everything is up to date.  Are you trying to rank for the same keywords as when you made the page?
2. Are there current links to your best blog posts?  People will only click a finite number of links before they give up looking.  Do you have good articles buried deep in some archive?
3. Can you summarize some of your articles on a free press release site?  Can you write an article for ezinearticles instead of your blog?
4. Can you spend as much effort leaving a comment as you would on a blog post?  I think you would be surprised how willing people are to approve posts that are obviously not spam.
5. Have you written enough blog posts to fill a solid ebook?  Why not put one together and give it away free.
6. Can you add some screenshots to improve an old blog post?
7. Are you currently tracking all the information about users that you could be?  People might be finding your site with queries you aren’t even imagining.  ELW can provide excellent website visitor tracking in PHP.  This means that it can also track users who block Javascript.
8. Do a quick survey of pages that link to your site.  Give some of the better pages a mention in your blog.
9. Try using a different search engine for a while to look up your site.  Searching for a key phrase and clicking on your site in results can’t hurt.
10. Give someone else a link at random.  You can always delete it later!