Filthy Linking Rich

There has been a recent spate of attacks on SEO blogs lately. Now, this is not that interesting in itself but the attacker has mentioned a few things that struck a chord. Search engine algorithms are still largely based on BackRub techniques which favour incoming links from ‘authority sites’. The SEO industry obviously keeps abreast of current techniques and is therefore at an advantage in the search engine results (and rightly so). This advantage is further emphasised due to the incestual nature of SEO companies who link to one another.

This generates pockets of categorised sites that may not represent a true reflection of a site or category authority. To exacerbate the effect, current memes or popular sites (Digg anyone?) ensure the link-rich get richer in a geometric fashion rather than slow growth. Moreover, these hubs or clusters become more like Milgram’s six degrees of separation but only within this tight-knit group. How are smaller sites then able to make headway? Unless the search engines improve their algorithms, this will continue to happen.

Now this has some relevance to an insurance blog (which this is meant to be) in that insurance is a particularly competitive area. Will the market effects even out these anomalies in the industry? Will the Big G do anything?

Perhaps it encourages new sites to really push the boat out and create truly remarkable content? I certainly hope so.

George
Inspired by Mike Grehan