Search Engine Optimization

Its The Same Deal For Both Search Engines And Real Estate

It's all about location, location, location!

In the past...back in the days when Google was IT when it came to

natural search results...everyone was very focused (or shall we

say obsessed?) on Google page rank.

Now that Google is a public company and the search business has

become competitive (most notably due to the serious search

capabilities now being offered by Yahoo and Microsoft, via MSN),

Google has become much more "private" or secretive about things

like page rank, backlinks, etc.

As a matter of fact, many are of the opinion that Google is now

intentionally displaying outdated page rank and backlink

information on the Google Toolbar in an effort to mask the true

workings of Google and to frustrate the Search Engine

Optimization (SEO) community, which had become fairly skillful at

"playing the Google game". If this is the case, then Google page

rank fixation is now pure folly.

Another factor that is closely watched by webmasters is the Alexa

traffic rank. This traffic rank is based on three months of

aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar

users.

However, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet

population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be

accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of

the sample.

Alexa's data come from a large sample of several million Alexa

Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately

determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000

total monthly visitors.

Generally speaking, traffic rankings of over 100,000 should be

regarded as not reliable because the amount of data that Alexa

has available is not statistically significant.

Who said the emperor is wearing no clothes?

With the questionable current accuracy of two of the hallowed

benchmarks of search popularity, where does that leave us? It

leaves us exactly where we should have been in the first place,

not obsessing over Google Page Rank or Alexa Traffic Rank, but

instead focusing on the most important thing of all...and that

is, what is your position in the listings when a person searches

for your key words.

For both search engines and real estate, it's all about location,

location, location!

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and

coaches others seeking to start their own home based business.

Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.