SEO moz had a couple of really good posts up this week about issues relating to linking and how links pass value:
Two Clarifications on How Search Engines Interpret Links - about how link value passed to one page affects the entire site; also talks about temporal link information - basically, that google looks at not just where the links are coming from, but when they happen. More recent links > (potentially) better rankings
The Rising Tide Lifts All Ships - this post explains why certain well respected sites always do well even if the individual pages aren't well linked to. This explains why pages on sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, and the W3C always do well. One implication here is that you always want to keep your stuff on one domain, rather than launching a new domain. Then all the link value goes to one place rather than splitting between two domains (yup, we're guilty of this!).
When you add in the trust factor associated with these sites (people will be more likely to click the result from the site they know) it makes it very hard for a small website to compete. Has any one been in a situation where your site is competing against wikipedia or amazon or other similar sites in the SERP's? How do you deal with that??
How to Solve Keyword Cannibalization - what happens when a lot of pages on your site are trying to target the same keywords. In the same vein as the previous two posts, this one talks about how to direct your link value to key parts of your site, rather than distributing it among many. One strong page is better than many weak pages.
I have to admit, all of this information is rather overwhelming. SEO is so hard! Google has good reasons for doing these things, but it makes it so much more difficult to compete.
Megan
My web design blog
Ahosting.biz posted this at 08:01 — 10th March 2007.
They have: 35 posts
Joined: Jan 2007
Hello. It is a realy good information. I have learned many new things.