请问徐大师

On the one hand it has always been categorized as spam and the perp, (if known), chided for such a vulgar display of their algorithmic wizardry, while at the same time impressing the hell out of the wannabes for obviously having such a firm grip on the dark arts as to command free traffic at will. A kind of upside down feather-in-the-cap of the person who could now appear to be allowing search engines to survive only out of the goodness of their spammers heart.

 It’s that basic premise of thinking it’s unfair but boy, we sure wish we had it,  that allowed me to justify taking the editorial license to use that headline to describe how effective branding your site can be.

 I discussed the power of being  #1 going way back to one of my earliest posts from last week. There is little that can shake the searchers perception that if it’s #1 it MUST be relevant, so how powerful is that perception if you are #1 -2 -3-4 and 5? Makes me salivate like a 4 pound dog looking at a 10 pound roast, how about you?

 I must not be the only one so desirous because the Guru received this email from a crazed fan just the other day.

*********************

I just learned about your website and a little about who you are. I was wondering if you could address a question for me, whether it be by email, or through your posts that I have been dying to know. If you search on Google for “SEO Book”, you will notice that the first result, www.seobook.com ranks #1 with a whole bunch of sublinks under him. How was he able to do that? Any thoughts or tips would be appreciated!

 Jeremy Morris

 Miracle Money Matters

www.miraclemoneymatters.com

**********************************

Google is not spamming their own results and Aaron Wall didn’t do anything to “make” Google do anything. Google WANTs to put those multiple listings there and they would want to do it for your site too and I’ll explain why.

In my opinion, Aaron Wall and the SEO book saga should be the classic case study of online branding. I believe any university that offers any kind of marketing studies and does not address SEO Book is doing their students a disservice.  He stayed on message, worked hard, played it smart and thus has built a virtual death grip on the SEO informational market. The SEO Book is the prerequisite SEO tutorial above all others. Good job !!

He had a couple of breaks with the traffic power fiasco http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050830-152234 which gave Aaron the chance to look like the defender of truth and justice in the face of evil. What a break!

Daniel Brandt had his 15 minutes in SEO circles by almost convincing us he was pretty smart with his whole Google is dying because of the y2k+3 theory. http://www.google-watch.org/broken.html But once the theory failed to produce fruit, we all pretty much realized that being smart doesn‘t mean you can’t be a little crazy too. I mean serial killers are pretty smart but you probably don’t want to link to them. So again, it was Aaron who was able to come off looking like the smart one. He played it well. And I always admired him for that.

But I digress. The point is that he got a couple of breaks that gave him the opportunity to display very brandable qualities which helped solidify him in the market, but I believe there is no such thing as luck when it comes to branding. He was able to capitalize on those opportunities because he had worked hard and smart to make himself ready to capitalize on those types of opportunities.

So now let’s talk about why Google would give a rat’s patooty about that.

Google’s driving purpose with it’s search engine is to deliver the perception of relevancy to every searcher to secure their position in the market. In other words, if they don’t give you what you are looking for, you are going to be looking at someone else’s results, (and ads). So even though Google may be one of the smartest companies to ever exist in the history of human endeavor, they can’t read minds. Yet.

So, when someone searches for something that is a broad term that could have several correct answers they have no way of knowing which answer is best for that person at that time other than having access to a lot of historical data that could be used to indicate a likelihood that one of the limited number of results they return would be the one YOU thought was most relevant.

Let’s look at another example of branding. However this one has spent millions and millions to be able to have the same thing Aaron got for just  --- well --- a LOT less.

Victoria’s Secret has a huge brand, huge catalog and a huge website. When someone searches for that term, Google has no idea of whether you want their catalog, their swimwear or their sexy undies.

So, Google wants to do two things. Show they have the power to find just what you are looking for AND provide a better user experience than their competitors by sending you directly to the appropriate page instead of sending you to the index page and making you dig for what you wanted. SMART! Very smart.

Now back to SEO book for a moment. The same EXACT principle applies to Victoria’s Secret and to SEO Book. Both have huge brands, huge sites and a lot of relevant options that relate to the broad BRANDED term.

Do a search for books about SEO. Now there are no longer 5 results for SEO Book because that query is not the same BRANDED thing. In fact, seobook.com is not even #1. BUT when you search for SEOBOOK, Google knows that others have searched for the tools from seobook.com and they have searched for videos etc.

{pack your bags kids, we’re going on a sidetrip}.

Now for a little conjecture. For the SEO Book search, notice the two references to the same basic thing at different urls. Buy the book at order and buy the #1 rated book at buy now. This indicates to me, (the Guru loves arguing about SEO theories so feel free to chime in), that it is not them knowing what has been searched for as much as they are tracking clicks from links on the site. If I’m right about that, this is huge in terms of knowing how to structure your interior pages to build authority status. They wouldn’t have the data for the clicks on the page without the toolbar installed, (which I doubt Aaron has), but they would have referrer data either way and I believe that could do it. It could also be contextual I suppose but I doubt it. Searches or clicks would be much more reliable especially when there could be dozens of pages about videos or tools on seobook.com the same as there could be a LOT of pages for panties at Victoria’s Secret. The Guru wouldn’t know about that. He’s just guessing. : )

So, there it is. He has multiple #1’s on the first page because Google doesn’t know EXACTLY what you want from a search for a branded term but they know the options to offer that are most likely to keep you coming back to Google for your next search.  Very smart for Google and a very good reason to build your brand.

Build for the people and the engines will follow.