The Power of the Search Engine (with a small ode to myself)

I'm beginning to realise more and more, the power of Search Engines and Search Engine Optimisation. Over half the traffic to Cowboys and All Scrubbed Up (blogs from the me.com stable) comes from Google specifically. Generically popular articles, seeded sneakily with keywords... Mmmm.

But when you can get ranked on a pretty popular word (TV show to be particular) and come first? Well, somethings up. And its blogworthy.

Scrubs is an extremely popular medical comedy - I'm sure you've seen it here. Bloopers are when things go wrong, actors muck it up - and get loaded onto YouTube. Generic enough for you? So... how the hell did sister blog All Scrubbed Up achieve what you see below?



A coup? I think so.

So. The more important questions. How and why? How can a 3 line article from a blog that gets a micro fraction of the traffic of ranking competitors, perform that well on the SEO front? And when I say perform, I'm talking about beating YouTube and MoveMistakes.com... Those aren't exactly lightweight sites.

Here's my theory - but I would appreciate some outside input - because honestly, as much SEO theory as I throw at this, it still doesn't add up.

SEO is about a lot of things. But relevant keyword rich content, inside a relevant content site seems to perform above other fishwife theories.

Let's investigate. The article mentions the word Scrubs three times (Scrubs Scrubs Scrubs - keyword stuffing to test what happens with this Cowboys post!). It also mentions the word Bloopers twice (Bloopers Bloopers - stuff stuff...). That's counting the article headers, the text and the labels.

All Scrubbeb Up is a medical blog - so the content sits within a relevant framework. And, it's got 50 or 60 inbound links on the Technorati link count. With all due respect (to myself) - that's NOTHING when compared to the might of YouTube or MovieMistakes.

A glipse in the algorithm? Not sure. I'd like to hear some other opinion. What do the the SEO experts (ahem, Mr Stokes?) think about this? Is the science of SEO so shotgun in its approach that you can sneak under the rules?

[Check here to see if I'm still winning the "scrubs bloopers" race on Google...]

Comments

  1. It doesn't seem like any of the sites ranking for that phrase are really optimising intently for it. So my guess is that its a low volume phrase and you just lucked out by matching the search phrase with a good domain (blogspot and importantly the word scrub which is unique amongst your competitors) and some keyword rich inbound links.
    Love that long tail...

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  2. Kind of ego-deflating, but most likely true :)

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  3. It has been noted that blogs rank higher in SERPs than a lot of other sites. YouTube is video content where as blogs are text / image content which is probably ranked higher than video content because most people are still searching for things to read.

    My 2c.

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  4. Does that not prejudice other sites vs blogs?

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  5. Blogs themselves don't rank any better than sites (what is a blog anyway?). But the nature of most blogs causes them to rank well. This includes good spiderability, more, fresher content (on a feed), and of course more natural inbound links.

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  6. Interesting point. Because blogs are structured one post per page, links repeating in a left include, title presents the keywords and text repeats and embellishes upon them - they rank well. A blog is a site. Just a well seo-ed by default site.

    I wonder what this means for content portals? Who prided themselves on presenting a multitude of options to the audience and linking in from that. Certain issues with keyword density may arise I'm sure...

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  7. Btw, just checked, not sure if it makes any difference, but there are 120,000 results for "scrubs bloopers" on Google. That's not hectic - but it's a few...

    I guess I'm just wondering if blogs have added another variable to the practice of SEO, that, because of their opinionated nature (and that's why we luv em) - they cause more trouble for marketers than before....?

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