This was a great article. I think a lot of people are chasing their tale trying to optimize a bad site. Gogle will naturally index a good site. A little tweaking here and there, but some people make it their life time job to keep up with the latest SEO, while banging their heads wondering what they're doing wrong. Great article.

I like the spirit of it, but I think you can get in trouble by trusting the engines too much to determine a good site and a bad site.  The reason SEO should exist is to help the engines determine what your site is about and whether it is important or not.  There are sets of rules that we should follow if we want to rank well.

SiteReference wrote:

I like the spirit of it, but I think you can get in trouble by trusting the engines too much to determine a good site and a bad site. 

The reason SEO should exist is to help the engines determine what your site is about and whether it is important or not.

There are sets of rules that we should follow if we want to rank well.

I agree with SR, you need SEO to define what your site is about. Search engines need to know what your site is about so a general theme can be established and my own experience says that it takes a long time and a lot of coddling.

I do not know if you have seen this MSN utility but I find it fairly perplexing because it does not view our site as a commercial site http://adlab.msn.com/OCI/oci.aspx   

Maybe this is a bit off topic, and could be moved to a different section, but I would certainly welcome input on why my site is not considered commercial and similar competitor’s sites are.

I have 6 stores and I'm not considered commercial either. Wonder why?

(I agree with what you both are saying, but I would not put SEO before a good site in my prioroties').

SiteReference wrote:

I like the spirit of it, but I think you can get in trouble by trusting the engines too much to determine a good site and a bad site.  The reason SEO should exist is to help the engines determine what your site is about and whether it is important or not.  There are sets of rules that we should follow if we want to rank well.

Agreed.  I was trying to get that point across in the article with the discussion about keyword density and pointing out that it is in fact important (as are incoming links, etc.) but that we as SEO's and website owners need to stop focusing on over-optimizing sites and chasing "tricks" and spend more time focusing on well-written content (again, while considering keyword densities, special formats, etc.) and build a site that will rank well AND sell well.

Rankings are nothing more than bragging rights if the site doesn't convert.

beatledave wrote:

I have 6 stores and I'm not considered commercial either. Wonder why?

(I agree with what you both are saying, but I would not put SEO before a good site in my prioroties').

I say BOTH. A good site that is had some SEO loving. Can't go wrong.

beanstalk wrote:

SiteReference wrote:

I like the spirit of it, but I think you can get in trouble by trusting the engines too much to determine a good site and a bad site.  The reason SEO should exist is to help the engines determine what your site is about and whether it is important or not.  There are sets of rules that we should follow if we want to rank well.

Agreed.  I was trying to get that point across in the article with the discussion about keyword density and pointing out that it is in fact important (as are incoming links, etc.) but that we as SEO's and website owners need to stop focusing on over-optimizing sites and chasing "tricks" and spend more time focusing on well-written content (again, while considering keyword densities, special formats, etc.) and build a site that will rank well AND sell well.

Rankings are nothing more than bragging rights if the site doesn't convert.

Amen to that!

There has been many instances that <edit>url edited out by Moderator - no link drops okey dokey </edit> fails due to lack of quality content -  a common error that many optimizers failed to grasp.

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Billy Canu, CEO
SEOhaus - Let the world discover your site!
SEO Services| Internet Marketing Strategies

Here here.

Good quality BL's are extremely important to get your site noticed, and for a specific niche. Quality content is important to get good rankings. You need both - content is no good unless you have backlinks, and vise a versa.