Hot SEO Topics in 2009

The following list of topics are taken from the search referral data for this blog, so they only represent the topics that are hot for content included on SEO Theory. It would be a good exercise for those of you who write SEO blogs to compare these queries to your own blogs? query data.
Keep in mind that with the exception of ?SEO Theory? none of these keywords really means anything to me. If you want to optimize for them, do so, but you?ll miss out on the object lesson in this article.
In fact, there are several object lessons. The first is that your recent ?hot? referral data should match your rankings pretty well. Unless you are totally into the long tail of search (even I optimize for brand value, so that takes me out of the long tail on occasion) you will have pages that are optimized for targeted expressions.
If you find a ?hot? query for which your rankings suck, ask yourself how you managed to pull in that much search traffic (this is what I call the Golden Page Effect). But before you start optimizing with dollar signs in your eyes, do some keyword research to see if you benefitted from a spike or if you?re sniffing the leftovers from a productive query. That?s lesson two.
Lesson number 3: Do not optimize for spikes that you cannot predict well in advance. Clients often ask us how to optimize for upcoming news events ? events that will happen next week, tomorrow, or (my favorite) ?this afternoon?. I always want to say, ?You got a blog??
The immediacy of the need for search optimization limits your available resources, but if you control a blog network (and if its hub is a pretty popular blog) you could probably link-bomb your way to some sort of mediocre overnight success. Do that too often, however, and you?ll pay the piper one way or another.
So let?s look at these referral strings:
SEO Theory - ?SEO theory? is consistently the expression with the most search referrals month-by-month, usually day-by-day. That tells me that there is brand value in the name ?SEOTheory? (although it did not exist when I started this blog over 2 years ago on Blogspot). Brand referral data can help you gauge how popular and relevant your brand is to the market. If you see a growth in brand referrals or a decline, you know your brand value is changing.
Google meta tags - There are months when this query brings in a lot of traffic to SEO Theory and there are months when it?s way down the list. It probably spikes more often after Google reconfigures itself than at any other time. Google has been very erratic since early January (in my opinion) and we?ve seen a consistent amount of traffic for this query.
SEO Theory does not presently rank in the top five results on Google for ?Google meta tags?. I suppose I could optimize for that expression (for example, I could link to a relevant Google meta tags article) but anyone out there who thinks he can count coup by taking a ranking away from me will probably drop 10-20 links to his own Google meta tags blog post. It?s not worth fighting over, so you?re welcome to outrank me still.
Link-poor site - This is one of those ?huh?? referrals. I?ve discussed link wealth and link poverty in over 100 articles. The query itself tells me nothing about what people are looking for. So what is the point in optimizing for it? I don?t even rank for it right now, so I?m not sure the search engine can figure out what people want.
Maybe this is a query someone can build brand value in. Think about the irony you can play on, writing a link bait article about how you are running a ?link-poor site?.
Seo tips - Everyone and their pet dog wants to rank for ?SEO tips?, although I honestly don?t know why. Many years ago I searched for ?SEO tips? and found the same crappy advice dominating the search results. The advice may have been upgraded a bit but it?s not like someone ranking for ?SEO tips? is going to be able to help me improve my search traffic (the tips you find still pretty much suck).
The really curious thing here is that this blog ? which is NOT an ?seo tips? blog ? gets a lot of traffic for ?SEO tips?. It probably has more to do with the annual ?20 Hard-core SEO Tips? articles than anything else.
I?ve always been curious about how much money is to be made in giving out free SEO tips that can be found on every other SEO blog and forum?.
Nofollow SEO - Search Engine Roundtable did a live poll during one of the sessions of SMX West last week and 50% of the respondents said they were ?sculpting PageRank?. To date, no one has published any credible evidence which shows that ?nofollow SEO? works as advertised. I?m sure it does something, but I?m equally sure it does nothing useful.
I?m still waiting for someone to deliver a believable case study on ?nofollow SEO?. All the SEObloggers who just say it works appear to unbelievably convinced of their own rightness, because they sure ain?t offered any data to back up their claims. None of the case studies I have read have made their cases.
Good luck with your ?nofollow SEO? queries. There?s still nothing but bad advice out there on the topic.