“I say the best rule of thumb is to optimize like a drunk guy would. Don’t leave a pattern.” – seomike
I saw this quote over at the SEW forum and about busted out laughing. There’s some truth to it though, especially if you’re doing large linking campaigns.
“When everyone and their mom had a page called links.html Google knew it was time to get tougher on what counted as a good backward link,” said seomike. Here he’s pointing to Google’s ability to spot out patterns. Patterns such as similar link text in your anchor text.
As Webby reported from SES London, identical link text, “looks like (and 9/10 times is) a sign of manipulation of its PageRank algorithm.”
Seomike also suggests that a site have “some pages that aren’t 100% by the book optimized.” This is another pattern buster.
His optimization techniques for Google are “good semantics and heavy duty link pop.” For the Yahoo engines? “Good title metas and h1 and h3 tags.”
I would not suggest the drunken style SEO for any user-facing on page work though – there usability should be your first consideration.
Unless, of course, you’re a severe algoholic.
Here’s seomike’s post from the SEW forums.
Garrett French is the editor of murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
