Originally, this blog was my supposed to by my research checklist for my team. Now, it's ranking well for search terms like, "SEO strategy" (position 21 on Google) and other related search terms. If you are passing through and this is your first time seeing the post, you deserve this explanation.
The fact is that this blog was never intended to be seen. The notes that I've made are research notes regarding SEO elements that relate to some current clients of mine as well as holistic concepts about Twitter, local map optimization, and new types of domain names that deal with the Trust Rank.
To be fair, I'm going to edit the notes so that whoever may land here to read about SEO strategy, they will at least know what I'm trying to learn. Also, I've included an RSS feed to what I believe is a good stream of information over on the right hand side.
So, here is the Zen. I have ranked high without trying to rank high. Why? That is the question. The answer is in the following qualities of this blog:
1. This blog had not real intent to promote anything. In a total of 8 posts, it has only 2 outbound links. What does that mean? Every other promotional blog that is purely designed to rank well on Google almost always has a specific "acceptable ratio" of keywords to links. Thus, those blogs are easy for Google to identify as "referencing" or "promoting" blogs as opposed to blogs that are not trying to game the system but be a quality information source.
2. There are no ads in this blog. Once again, this blog smells like it's not manipulating search engines to attempt to rank high. It just sits here and grows. Content just builds with no outbound linking or ads on the page.
3. I included a link to this page in an article campaign that was released a couple of weeks ago. As the article went out, it build a few low PR backlinks to this page. Did I think that would impact my rankings? No, not much, but consider the ration of inbound links to outbound links. Very few outbound (very little promotion) and quite a few inbound = perceived purity by the bots.
4. Just for the hell of it I bought a $10 domain name. This is theory, but I have other blogspot blogs that are stuck in the sand box that have good content. The domain name purchase may have given this page a small vote of confidence (aka better ranking) because I made a small investment in creating a home for this lonely little blog.
In the end, we're really searching in the dark for Google's philosophy. The philosophy is taught to us through the ranking of the pages we watch and change. So what has this taught me a about Google's philosophy? Create sincere value without much promotion and advertising and our users will like the page so we'll rank you high. Create a page with the intent to promote and we treat it with a greater degree of scrutiny without the liberal application of better ranking (not Page Rank - note this is a PR 0 that has some first page placements).
So, if you want to promote, don't promote - grasshopper.
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