Information is Power; When you have it
Information is power…when you have it.
“Information is the currency of the internet. As a medium, the internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not.” (Levitt & Dubner 2005 p.68)
What economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner are talking about here in their wildly popular book Freakonomics, is the empowerment of the consumer via the availability of information. Typically within specialized industries or disciplines there are experts and then there are the consumers who need the expert advice. The experts are considered such due to their experience and the information they’re privy to. With the advent of the internet, this imbalance of information or what economists call ‘information asymmetry’ is no longer so.
Professional search marketers absorb an excessive amount of daily data via blogs, campaign results, and traffic logs in an effort to stay up to speed with search engine performance changes and to stay ahead of the competition. However, the search marketer is constantly at a disadvantage since the search engine programmer is the only one with absolute knowledge pertaining to their search engine’s mechanics. In a strange twist, the internet, in all its grand execution of information deliverability can only shed a dim light on the full scope of search engine functionality.
Since search engine complexity and operation can only ever be surmised. A search marketer constantly tests their theories about how a search engine delivers its results. Those whose theories are most accurate are going to deliver the best results for their clients.
So even though the internet has decreased the gap between those who know and those who do not, the search marketing industry will always be a cat and mouse game between the search marketer and the search engine programmer.
Are you making a contribution? The search engine programmers are keenly aware that people are constantly attempting to exploit how search engines collect and display their results. Since the whole purpose of the internet is to deliver data relevant to the end user’s query, search engines must test and implement methods of delivering this information in the most relevant way possible without being augmented by known methods of exploitation.
The more time passes the more fine tuned the relevancy filters become. Search engines now have the capability to detect most exploitation techniques. Since this is the case, the best way to increase rankings (after building a site that is architecturally sound) is to publish quality content regularly. If your domain is making a significant contribution to the progress of the internet’s objective then you will be noticed.
Five things to consider for optimal ranking
1. Domain name research (involve keywords if possible)
2. Sound and easily crawled site architecture
3. Allocating best keywords for site focus and future keyword density
4. Means of facilitating content generation (blog, corporate or personal)
5. Social media marketing
References: Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner (2005) Freakonomics, New York, NY: HarperCollins