In the early days of "hypermedia" relevant content would be easily and freely linked

Recently I answered a question on a forum by pointing the questioner to a site I work for, adding an html link. You know, those things the Web is supposed to be made of? Oddly, the forum’s owners allow links to be active, no questions, no nofollow, no problem. The backlink probably helped the ranking of my client’s site a little… but what else happened was a bit unusual. The link referred scads of traffic to the client’s site. As in, noticeable amounts. In fact, nearly as much as the site currently gets from Google for generic search terms.

Pretty cool.

….But then again that’s what good backlinks are supposed to be really about. I mean, right? If a link is relevant to the rest of the content on the page and useful to the page’s visitors it ought to improve the rank of the page linked to. Right? Yet, I doubt that this is accounted for in Google’s algorithm. A link is either nofollowed or followed and that’s probably as sophisticated as Google gets. I’m speculating but with good reason.

Anyway, what’s sadly surprising is that I’m surprised.

How did we get here, I wonder? How did we get to the point where a backlink that actually directs traffic is noteworthy and out of the ordinary? Why do some sites refuse to allow links that ought to drive web traffic (yep, you again, Yahoo Answers). Is it all Google’s fault for over-determining links and not coming up with a way of better grading them algorithmically?

Maybe.*

But anyway, for now, I’m happy that my client is getting so much traffic from a legitimate link to their site.

Do you honestly think Google grades links algorithmically in terms of how effective they are at driving traffic to the target site? Incorporating things like bounce rate, time on (target) site, etc? How much weight do you think they put on any of those variables versus plain old, easy-to-understand follow vs. nofollow?

*Off topic: but some people who I don’t agree with think that links are bad. (This is a whole other argument, of course.)

People expect security
Don’t be afraid to create a login for your application or ask mobile users to login. Make this easy (say, ask only for a user name) but protect user security while they are mobile. Mobile usability consultants are sure that users like this or at least don’t mind it.

Don’t worry about iPad applications
The iPad is still running along nicely on all the hype it has had this year but you need an iPad app like you need a hole in your wallet. Seriously, if anyone tells you about their expertise in designing for the iPad, start walking away. Web browsers work fine on the iPad and as long as your website works well on a laptop it will work fine on the iPad.  (Update Oct 27, some confirmation from eMarketer: “mobile device users appear to think browsers offer the better user experience” even beyond the iPad.)

Get listed locally
This ought to be your number one SEO concern when it comes to mobile and it may be the only one you’ll ever need. Most SEO best practices for mobile are the same as they are for desktop but local (e.g. Google Places) has gotta be hu-u-uge for mobile.

If you think about it, there’s every reason to think that Google created local listings partly in anticipation of mobile’s growth. If Google’s local listings are not already generated based on your GPS signal, Google will be rolling this out soon, you can bet.

Quick tip about Google Places: If your company or chain has multiple offices or stores, be sure to list the office or outlet closest to the city centre. There are a number of SEO people who advise that local listings are ranked to some degree based on proximity to city center. I’m not saying this will help your ranking in Google Places but I’m 100% sure it won’t hurt.

One more thing: I’ve had to tell this to a number of people lately: Google Places is free. Free, no cost, I’m 100% sure of that. Oh, and you should also list locally with Bing and any of those other guys, too.

This is a very young demographic
That doesn’t mean you only focus on trendy 2.0 graphics and all that. This means that you understand that this group behaves fundamentally differently in many ways.

They think differently. Here’s one example: younger users are much less likely to want to use a call center and if they do they are going to be ashamed to have to do it. Make help available and make it easy for them to help themselves and figure out how to do it on their own.

Note that a significant portion of this demographic is using their parents’ money. They may need their parents’ approval to buy certain things or do certain things. Figure out how to use this in your mobile site or application without it being intrusive or embarrassing.

Ensure usability if you’re serious
The best way to be sure that your site or application is mobile ready is to hire an experienced mobile usability company

Long gone are the days when you could cajole naive webmasters into giving you a link for free. Everybody knows the value of a link now and webmasters routinely request a return backlink or they ask “how much is it worth to you?”

On the other side, Google threatens to penalize people who buy links or sell links. You can get away with it, until someone rats you out and then you have a long climb out of the rat hole you’re in. So as an SEO, you’ve blown some money on link buying and then actually lost traffic. What kind of a reputation does that give you, and the industry?

Today, many SEOs are singing the praises of flat site architecture; that is something I espouse as well. But how long before a well crafted flat site architecture becomes commonplace? It does not matter the age of pages involved or the age of the site. Once Googlebot can quickly find all or most of the pages on most sites, the SEO playing field, at least in the sphere of architecture, will be once again even. Mind you, that day is some ways off.

However, when looking back at the past, at the present and into the foreseeable future, my favourite strategy is still long tail content development. I have no doubt that Google values sites with many more pages. In fact, I see sites with relatively high PR, seemingly garnered only from the fact that they have a significant amount of content, whether or not that content has copious or strong backlinks from other sites or not. This is one area where you can’t fake it – either you have the original content or you don’t.

Of course, it is not enough to simply have content – that content has to be crafted to meet the long tail. Good SEOs know how to properly wind in some latent semantic indexing, with just the right mix of keyword rich content and actual substance that might get you some organic links. This is the one area of traditional SEO where you can still work and know that you are doing what Google in fact wants you to do and can have more confidence than most marketers and corporations that you know what you are doing and they very likely will not.

I see over and over again, opportunities to work with company’s developers, marketers and editorial staff to leverage their already existing content to create copious pages that target the long tail of content – that long list of keyword variations related to their particular industry – where it is easy and relatively cheap to do so and where they do not know the value of this strategy. I’ve seen lots of websites grow traffic significantly simply be creating copious pages that meet their potential users down the long tail.

I’m getting those pages online ahead of other SEOs, getting backlinks to those pages ahead of them, and having those pages age (gain authority) ahead of other SEOs.

I see the long tail content strategy I implemented on some old built-for-SEO sites – built long before Chris Anderson started even blogging on the subject – still working very well for those sites.

In my humble opinion, long tail content development is a sure fire SEO traffic-building technique that still really does not get enough attention and respect in the SEO industry. It’s something lost on many companies and web businesses and it’s something that still requires some SEO expertise and experience.

I did a redrawing of his flat site map for a client today. My graphic skills suck. But the concept is definitely smart.

Hitwise’s Bill Tancer’s blog touches upon this quite often. But, still, SEOs seldom discuss this. Is there anything that lets you know more about ‘what makes people tick’ than deep research into keywords for any subject or industry?

I’ll never forget looking up video game keywords a few years back, and trying to parse out keyword searches related to the then-hit (and since made into a movie) Hitman game. I found it really hilarious that there were at least 50 searches a month for ‘hire a hitman.’  I found out there were even sites devoted to the subject of hiring a hitman that supposedly protected identities and “set you up.”  I suspect that  howhirehitman.com/ might very likely be a sting operation, but in 2004, South Korean police arrested a college student who offered assassination services by operating a ‘killer-for- hire’ web site.

According to Yahoo’s keyword tool back then, the number of people typing the keywords “hire a hitman” into a search window was 50 per month. According to Google’s keyword tool (I just checked) that number is now 1900 per month.  Now what does that tell you about the world today?

It’s interesting what you learn about people when you are doing research…… just one of the reasons I absolutely love being in this industry.