Thursday, June 29, 2006

Network Neutrality

Part of Google’s corporate philosophy is "You can make money without doing evil". So, why is Google currently involved in lobbying in Washington DC? Because another part of their philosophy is "Democracy on the web works." It probably would be more accurate to say that "Meritocracy on the web works". Up until this point the internet has been a place where you were judged on the quality or "merits" of your site, not by how much money you had. If you have optimized your site for certain topics you have been able to rank at the top of the search engines and compete with sites that are much better funded, but not as well optimized. It has leveled the playing field for many small businesses, political commentators and numerous other sites. You may not be able to afford to buy TV commercials during the Superbowl but you can rank #1 on a search engine and reach a large audience based purely on the quality of your site. However, that may all be changing. The internet might be turning into a pay-to-play forum just like all other types of media. And that is exactly what the large telecommunications companies like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast want. And that has the potential to end the internet as we know it.

The large telcom companies have been lobbying hard to get the congress to pass new laws to allow the telcom companies to charge websites for the right to have people access their sites. They want Google (and all websites) to have to pay them fees so that people can use the Google website. If Google won’t pay, they want the right to limit or block access to Google’s site for all of their subscribers. And it isn’t just Google that this will affect. Any website will have to pay to insure that their site is available to all the telcom company’s customers. If this legislation passes it will drastically change the internet as you know it. Which is why Google and groups like Save the Internet have been working hard to make sure the internet remains in its current form. On June 28th the Senate Commerce Committee voted to an 11-11 tie on the latest piece of legislation about Net Neutrality. Following that vote U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) began efforts to block any bill that would not protect net neutrality saying the following:

"The Internet has thrived precisely because it is neutral," Wyden said. "It has thrived because consumers, and not some giant cable or phone company, get to choose what they want to see and how quickly they get to see it. I am not going to allow a bill to go forward that is going to end surfing the web free of discrimination."

And that is the debate in a nutshell. So, if you don’t want to let the telcom companies decide what sites you see on the internet, you might want to stop by Save the Internet and let your elected officials know that you support Network Neutrality. Because as you can tell by the Senate Commerce Committee vote, this is going to be a close call in the Senate.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Link Popularity vs. Page Reputation

Your mother was right – again! Popularity isn’t everything. Your page reputation can mean the difference between SEO success and failure, even if your link popularity is high.

Think of your site as the new kid in high school. It really, really wants to be liked by the cool kids, the search engines. The search engines have strict opinions about who they put on their “Top 10” list. To impress them, your site buddies up to every other site in Internet High School without considering whether these sites are “good.” Pretty soon, your site’s got a poor reputation because of who it’s associating with. Your site is super popular, but not with the search engines, the people who matter. To them, your site looks desperate and they refuse to invite it to parties.

That kind of rejection hurts, but the situation doesn’t need to play out that way. With careful planning from a search engine's point-of-view, you can:

- Associate with sites that have a good reputation (quality over quantity),
- Avoid being “fake” by developing a more natural link structure, and
- Become best friends with the search engines.

Make Friends and Influence Rankings

Increasing the number of incoming links to your site can improve your rankings by building page popularity. Popularity remains valuable, but it needs to be tempered by reputation. Page reputation comes from what other pages are “saying” about your page. If the sites are pointing to you as an expert on a certain topic, that improves your reputation with the search engines. A natural link structure comes in handy here because search engines like variety. If the link descriptions posted by other sites are too similar, the search engines will suspect that something’s up and may count these links against your site ranking.

Incoming links from authoritative pages, such as USA Today or CNN, will do more to help your rankings because they have a strong reputation in the eyes of the search engines. Even incoming links from less important sites can give you a slight boost; however, if you engage in link swapping with less-reputable sites, you can hurt your rankings and possibly even get banned from the search engines. We’ll explore this idea more in a future post.

Search engines respond best to sites with a natural link structure. By following a few guidelines for developing a natural-looking link structure, you can build your site’s reputation while increasing its popularity:

1. The first step in this process is making sure your site offers something that would make other sites want to link to it, such as online resources, frequent updates, or interesting articles.
2. Work toward receiving links from non-competing sites whose themes complement or are relevant to your own site’s topic. For example, if you sell a nutritional breakfast cereal for kids, you’d want links from sites that discuss breakfast food, easy meals, tips for parents with young children and so forth.
3. If you’re submitting your link to other sites, work on varying the anchor text. Try tailoring your descriptions based on the types of sites you’re submitting to.
4. Don’t submit your link to too many sites at once. A gradual increase seems much more natural to the search engines.
5. Avoid reciprocal links. This will improve the quality of your links and help protect against linking to sites that have been penalized by the search engines for policy infractions.
6. Aim for authoritative and trusted pages. One good link from CNN will do more for your reputation and ranking than a collection of links from less important sites.

You can save your site’s social life by choosing friends wisely and taking the time to make real friends. By encouraging a natural-looking link structure that places emphasis on relevant sites, diverse in-bound links and quality-over-quantity, your site can become truly popular with the search engines.