Five Secrets to Bad Search Engine Rankings
Written by kelbycarr from Kelby Carr on September 4, 2007
There are lots of tips out there on optimizing your site for search engines, but one of the key things is to avoid doing things that sabotage your efforts to get great search engine rankings. In case you hate getting visitors, like to end up on page 20 of Google results for your site’s keywords, and prefer to be a starving blogger, here are five secrets to bad search engine rankings:
- Ramble in your blog posts - Hey, who needs a topic? I mean, it’s your blog and if you want to cover politics, sex, celebrities and that weird dream you had last night, all in one post, who’s to stop you? Have fun. I’m not sure what title you’d give it, but I’m sure lots of people are searching for terms like “my random thoughts today.”
- Only write about what’s relevant right now - Evergreen content’s for sissies! I’m sure lots of people still want to know about Tom and Katie’s wedding, or the 2004 U.S. presidential election. By the time your post gets spidered by the search engines, no one will be searching for those hyper-timely items. C’est la vie!
- Be anti-social - Don’t link to other bloggers. Don’t have a blogroll. Don’t comment in other blogs. Don’t join groups at social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon. You are a blog island unto yourself. I’m sure you have the lack of inbound links to prove it.
- Don’t do keyword research - What are you, a librarian? You just wanna blog, so just blog. Who cares if more people are about twice as likely to search for the term photo than the term picture? You want people to work really hard to find you so they earn a spot as a reader.
- Write sporadically - You want to keep those readers, and those search engines, guessing. Don’t post daily or even weekly. Just post when the mood strikes you. Maybe it’s daily this week, and then you go a month without posting. Hopefully, the search engine will spider your blog right when you’ve had a long delay. That way, you can be sure the creepy spider stays away for a nice long time. And as a bonus, you will be sure readers get turned off. Seeing a most recent posting date that is, well, dated, is oh-so enticing.
Shaun | September 4th, 2007 at 1:59 pm #
::chuckles:: Man…I have to admit, those seem like pretty good tips.
::tries them::
Matt Jones | September 4th, 2007 at 2:19 pm #
LoL at the sarcasm… however writing about whats hot can still be effective providing your blog is trusted by Google. Blogging Fingers gets indexed every day or every other day at the latest.
Jennifer | September 4th, 2007 at 7:43 pm #
I do all these except 3 and 5. I am still ranked. I need a some recommendations that is relevant to me, come on now.
RV | September 5th, 2007 at 7:30 am #
Thanks for the great (funny) tips!
Allie | September 5th, 2007 at 9:49 am #
New and need every tip…many thanks.
islam abas | September 5th, 2007 at 10:00 am #
it is amazing thing
Leon | September 5th, 2007 at 1:30 pm #
Thanks a lot! Those tips were awful! As they should be! Keep up the good work.
James Joyner | September 5th, 2007 at 1:59 pm #
I’ve been blogging mostly about the “news of the day” for nearly 5 years and been reasonably successful at it. As Matt Jones notes above, Google spiders top blogs several times an hour.
Furthermore, you’d be surprised how much traffic there is for “old news” items like the TomCat wedding. People are constantly looking for things to jog their memory and blogs, with their permalinked content, tend to outlast the newspapers and others who quickly archive their old material.
Tinu | September 5th, 2007 at 7:56 pm #
lmao to “What are you, a librarian?”
Jay Wilson | September 6th, 2007 at 12:21 am #
I agree with all of the mentioned points, but I have to say that I get a steady amount of my traffic from items that were “news of the day”…such as the Coney Island Mermaid Parade which I covered on my site months ago. I think if a topic is “news of the day” but has enough interested parties, you can still see success with it.
SkaKri | September 9th, 2007 at 5:42 am #
Brill!