Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts -- the Battle for SEO Supremacy

Kamau Austin

"Why Search Engine Marketing is the Internet's Classic Battle Between Street Smarts and Book Smarts".

eBizBlogBytes "This Week's Top eCommerce Commentary" by Kamau Austin

In this Article...

- Search Engine Marketing the Internet's Classic Battle Between Street Smarts and Book Smarts.

- Does Google Filter Sites for Good Grammar and Spelling?

- Is Google Beginning to Devalue Directory Linking?

As more webmasters learn the advantages of search engine marketing, the search engines (SEs) will respond to discern which are the true sites deserving of top organic rankings. Despite what some Internet Gurus claim, ironically search engines will not always pick the best sites for their audience. This is because although Internet searchers are their target audience, their customers ironically are really Internet advertisers -- that pay the bills.

Google, MSN and Yahoo are publicly traded companies with responsibilities to their shareholders to make a profit. In this regard it is in their interest to have a large pool of advertisers buying space on their digital properties. It really isn't in the SE's interest to have organic search engine optimization (SEO) elevating the fortunes of websites for free. The major SEs would rather eCommerce sites become advertisers in their grand scheme of things.

This constant struggle for top rankings online has caused a continuous and contentious classic battle between street smarts and book smarts online.

Because of the Internet's growing popularity, business without borders, low barrier to entry, and gold rush hype the world's smartest marketers are dueling with the worlds top techies over control of the Internet economy or "eCom-nomy" valued at close to a trillion dollars!

While many of the world's top Internet marketers have advanced degrees, like Dr. Ralph Wilson, Dr. Ken Evoy, and Dr. Kevin Nunley (just to mention a few) from fields unrelated to technology, the majority are gutsy street-smart marketers. Contrast them with Googleplex's best and brightest programming and data research "digerati".

With billions of people in the future online all over the world -- the stakes couldn't be higher. Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) use inside information and downright common sense to reverse engineer the algorithms of the search engines.

While on the other hand the search engines employ the worlds top PhDs and top programmers to keep SEOs from topping out their results and providing adequate and helpful listings to Internet searchers. For instance it is obvious to SEO's that Google is giving a good amount of preference to news, .gov and .org sites.

Despite the fact that these sites are authority sites at first glance, many government and nonprofit sites are not as up to date on their information as commercial sites. Have you ever tried to read some of the information on government sites about marketing and the Internet? These sites many times are just not as up to date in their information as one might need.

Increasingly search engines are penalizing optimized sites for their proactive marketing with a host of delay filters and penalties. If you want to learn how to optimize your site and avoid penalties recently there were two excellent articles on: Google penalties and Yahoo! and MSN penalties below:

- For Tips to Avoid Google Penalties
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3524751

- For Tips to Avoid Yahoo and MSN Penalties
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3525086

"Does Google Filter Sites for Good Grammar and Spelling?"

Recently a Grammar and English expert wrote an article in which he opined how he noticed top ranking sites consistently seem to have well written content as a feature in common. He elaborated that top ranking sites seem to have few spelling and grammatical errors. Then he suggested many SEO obsessions like PageRank™, and Keyword density just didn't hold up as priorities in SEO.

I concur with him on his most salient points like Google doesn't obviously pay much attention to PageRank™ anymore and Keyword density isn't as much of a concern either. His most important espoused point is a truism in my humble opinion, in that good grammar and spelling is important to the professionalism of a site.

Misspelled words and bad grammar is a good indication that you don't give attention to detail in your business. Many potential customers will also shy away from a site replete with spelling errors and terrible grammar. I don't know if Google has a spelling and grammar filter, perhaps they should - and this writer has given them a good idea to go along with their current crop of Killer SEO filters.

I certainly think, in the very least, you should run your written content through a spell and grammar checker as if Google has this filter already in place. It is the least you can do for your site visitors.

Is Google Beginning to Devalue Directory Linking?

Directory linking has been a mainstay of link campaigns for a while. Especially since reciprocal linking is not as effective as it once was. This is why "one-way" linking from Internet directories has gained a lot in popularity over the last couple of years. Now Google is beginning to take away PageRank™ from DMOZ categories for Internet directories.

If you have a website that uses a lot of directory links for search engine optimization and you noticed your site has lost ground in the last few weeks -- this may be why. I will look more into this development and get back to you on this latest algorithm change.

About the Author

Kamau Austin Helps Small Businesses make more money by using search engines as marketing and sales channels to increase their business. He also publishes www.eInfoNEWS.com. For more search engine news visit His New Jersey based site www.SearchEnginePlan.com

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