Read my latest blog entry: Does your web site help, or hurt your business?.
Subscribe to my RSS Feed or by Email.
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • Blog
  • Contact
Christopher Ross Building better web sites, one pixel at a time.

Why Your Search Engine Rank Depends on Your Competitors.


Welcome to my blog, please feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed or leave a comment.

There was a funny game Web Master’s used to play with Google called Google Bombing. It was a process that was used to associate words, most often popular search terms with web sites which only marginally deserved to benefit from the term. Most often it was used by unethical SEO specialists to get their clients ranked highly but most famously it was used to link the search term Miserable Failure to the official White House web page for George W. Bush.

As you can imagine, nowhere on the White House web site does it refer to George W. Bush as a miserable failure, so how did they do it and why does it matter to you? Nobody is suggesting you take part in subverting the Internet but learning from the process of the most famous diversion on the Internet will help you understand how to market your own web site.

First, you must understand how the con was played and how Google fell for it. As it turns out, it was wonderfully easy in it’s simplicity. Google ranks web sites based on a system called Google PageRank. Every web site is assigned a value from 0 (worthless) to 10 (reliable) and Google uses that value to understand how relevant a link is to the rest of the Internet. For example, a low ranked web site which contained a link describing my site content would hardly influence Google’s impression of me at all but if somebody huge like the The Washington Post or SlashDot took the time to write about me, they would assume my web site was relevant. It’s a little like high school, if the cool kids think you’re cool too then you most likely are.

Now, the second thing to understand is that Google values what others say about you more than what you say about yourself. This is how Google protects itself from millions of people trying to climb the ranks with fake keywords and bogus content. Inbound links therefore matter.

The beauty of the GoogleBomb was that all you needed to do was convince enough people with the trust of Google to insert the words “miserable failure” on their pages and link that content to the official biography of George W. Bush. Now some people think GoogleBombs still work, Google says they don’t. What really matters is how we’re going to use the basic lessons from the GoogleBomb to help your business.

Google loves inbound links, so logically if you want to improve what Google thinks of you (and therefore increase your ranking) you need to generate good inbound links. A few cautionary notes here:

  1. Do not attempt to GoogleBomb. Google will catch you and remove you from their database. I only describe the process to better help you understand how Google thinks.
  2. Do not buy links. Google will catch you … see #1.
  3. Do not get involved in link farms, see #1 and #2.
  4. Be ethical.

So how do you increase inbound links and stay on the better side of the law? First, there’s a great interview with Matt Cutts which you should read.

Here’s my recommendations for how to generate inbound links:

  • Write good content
  • Make your web site informative
  • Build loyalty through quality advice
  • Help support your community with tutorials and materials
  • Generate a reputation for expertise in your field

It’ll take longer than hiring an SEO but it will also result in long term benefits to your business as other professionals in your industry link to your articles. Remember, building a reputation on the Internet is a long game but if you build slowly and surely you’ll generate the trust of not only new customers but also others in your industry and in the end, major search engines.

Other Posts of Interest

  • How to get a Page Rank of 5
  • Making money online the old fashion way
  • Qualities of a good site
  • The dark side of Facebook, how social marketing will go wrong.
  • Donate your links to charity
  • How do you put together a great web site without a web designer?
  • Using CSS to disguise a link.
  • Anybody can register a domain name, it’s quick and easy.
  • You don’t have to be an web expert to setup a great site.
  • What is the most important part of your web page?
Posted on: Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Tags: google, googlebomb, Marketing Advice
Posted in Web Site Advice | | Read more

Did you find this article useful? You're welcome to post a link to this website along with the title but please don't copy the whole article. You can also link back using the following code:

<a http://www.thisismyurl.com/tutorials/web-advice/why-your-search-engine-rank-depends-on-your-competitors/" rel="bookmark" title="Why Your Search Engine Rank Depends on Your Competitors.">Why Your Search Engine Rank Depends on Your Competitors.</a>

About the Author

Christopher Ross About the author.
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. If you don't already know me, my name is Christopher Ross and I'm a web evangelist living in Fredericton Canada. When I'm not writing about the Internet, I'm helping small businesses improve their search engine performance or building better WordPress web sites for clients.

Please feel free to leave a comment below, or contact me if you have any questions.

8 Comments

|
comments rss [?] | trackback uri [?]

8 Responses to “Why Your Search Engine Rank Depends on Your Competitors.”

  1. Make Money Blogging Says:
    October 15th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Good insight on search engine ranking.. I strongly agree that we shouldn’t go link farming unless we want to get banned real badly.

  2. Blog for Beginners Says:
    October 15th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    This actually shows what a failure Bush is… Yet another insightful resources you have here, Chris.

    I couldn’t agree more with you on the importance of inbound links and when it comes to link building, it’s all about quality vs quantity.

    Yan

  3. Armen Shirvanian Says:
    October 16th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Competition sure does have a large effect on the ranking that a site can have. Google bombing sounds like something that must have been enjoyable for individuals that took part in it.

  4. Downloadic Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

    Its a good insight about search engine ranking…

  5. Internet Marketing Do-Follow Blog Says:
    October 19th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

    I completely agree, following white hat strategies is safe and the best plan for long term success.

  6. rob, BtG Says:
    October 21st, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    i’d rather wear the white hat for a long haul then a quick top run with a black hat (and get dumped off google)

    thanks.

  7. Mike Collins Says:
    October 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 am

    Google has made it a lot harder to use those tactics…if you run a search for miserable failure you’ll see it no longer shows George Bush. Instead it shows articles explaining how that result happened in the first place. Anchor text still has an enormous impact on your rankings though and I’m not convinced the method no longer works at all. I remember a similar situation with scientologist keywords going to anti-scientology or unrelated sites.

  8. Pingback: Google’s Webmaster Tricks and Treats :: Christopher Ross

Leave a Reply

Tiger Direct
LEGO - Speed Racer
Total Training DVDs
Nimrod Nation
HBO
Amazon
LEGO - Clone Wars
iTunes
Tiger Direct
Peach Pit
HBO
Best Of
Recent Comments
  • Donace: @ Christopher I agree wholeheartedly all they need is one page; possibly some nice pictures :p I’m like...
  • Electric cars: Very nice post and I gain much more info from this post about, “How to useful my site for my...
  • Internet Marketing Strategies: That is really bad business, with the Internet making the world such a small place,...
  • Adam Love: wtf, that was prety blunt don’t you think?
  • George Matthews: well that’s effective, know of an easy way of title casing static sites, other than...
  • Market Secrets Blogger: At first this one click plugin install worked just fine but now I get the following error:...
  • Rodney@Blogging with WordPress: Nice work Christopher - not too shabby. You must have some pretty good backlinks....
  • david forex trading online: Thank you for letting it slide. I know it is annoying when people use keywords as their...
  • Ikki at SEO Blog: As Mr. forex trading online (I hate it when people don’t put their names on the Name...
  • David: One more strategy of search engine marketing is to create a buzz about your site in the internet. This can be...
Top Commentators
  • rv for sale (8)
  • Internet Marketing Strate... (7)
  • Electric cars (6)
  • RNB Love Songs (4)
  • Ikki at SEO Blog (4)
  • forex trading online (4)
  • Make Money Online (3)
  • Donace (3)
  • Webkinz (2)
  • Blogging Tips (2)
© Copyright 2009 Christopher Ross. All rights reserved.
  • Follow my posts:
  • RSS
  • Comments
  • Email
  • Other:
  • Privacy