Syracuse Web Design, Website Development, Hosting, Offsite Data BackupEverything I Needed to Know About SEO, I Learned in Science Class
SEO is more than just a bunch of computer geeks sitting in their parents’ basements and taking wild guesses on what will help a website reach the top of Google. It’s a science, one that takes a lot of experimenting, studying and research before it can be done correctly.
And, like any science, you need to experiment. But you need to have an idea of what you are doing, first. Remember the kid who always mixed the chemicals wrong? BOOM. Yeah, don’t be him.
When you perform a science experiment, you begin with something that you’re trying to prove. Will changing your meta tags to include more of your keywords improve your page rank? Just like in science class, you form a hypothesis, and then move on to creating the experiment. In this case, you need to add in the extra keywords. If your rank goes up, you’ve proven that your hypothesis is correct, right?
Not really. Unfortunately, unlike physical sciences, there’s no way to control all of the outside forces. Maybe your rank went up because an outside site linked to you, or maybe some recent content additions are responsible for the increase in page rank.
When serious SEOs want to test out how a certain technique or change on their sites will affect the page rank, they don’t use their main, money-making site. They use the lab rats, “test” domains that are very similar to each other. They’ll change something on one site, leave the other site alone, and then measure the results.
If you want to experiment with a new SEO technique, what should you do? Start by making sure that the advice you’re following is actually good advice. What’s the source? If your cousin’s college roommate swears that putting keywords that are unrelated to your site, but well-ranking, into your meta keyword list, pass. If an SEO guru is blogging about a new method, but you don’t quite understand how it is implemented, or why it works, pass. However, if the idea is coming from a trusted source, if it makes sense, if it’s not spammy, and if others have been using it with success, give it a try. Wait a few weeks, and then check for any changes in page rank or traffic. If it’s working, keep using it.
If it’s not working, you have two choices. One, assume that the method isn’t quite right for your site– SEO is not one size fits all– and move on. Two, tweak it. Change a few things, and then sit back to monitor the changes. A few small changes to the original method might work better for your site.
Whatever the result, remember that SEO is a science. It takes a lot of experimenting to get everything just right.
And then, unlike traditional sciences, the rules will change (thanks to a change in search engine algorithms), and you’ll have to tweak everything again.
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Tags: blog, SEO, SERPs