posted in search engine optimization on 7 January 2007
by Andrew Lang
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Is it Worth It to Follow the Google 80/20 Rule?

Plain English Guide: 80/20 refers to this :- When optimizing your website for search engines, spend 20% of your time with optimizing your actual web pages - i.e. the content and the HTML, and 80% of your time swapping links with other websites.

OK, that's it put in quite plain terms indeed.

Anyway, we think it's a dangerous rule, because it seems to 'de-emphasise' the importance of content - even if that is an unintended consequence of the rule. The bottom line is this: focus on your website content - read here for more info - keep it interesting, informative, unique - this will create both keyword rich content, while providing 'link bait' - unique content other sites actually WANT to link to.

Spend SOME of your time soliciting for link partners (i.e. people to swap links with) - create a 'good habit' of no more than 10/15 minutes a day or an hour or so a week emailing 4 to 5 websites daily / 30-40 weekly requesting a link swap (you can do this quickly using a templated email, and by finding websites that are relevant to your market via directories). You can figure on 1 out of 5 getting back to you - that can add up to 150-250 quality links a year (factoring in holidays and the fact you just won't do this everyday!). At least this way you've hand-picked your link partners and you know they are quality links - all the while you haven't spent a lot of your working day on this - AND your link partners have grown naturally and slowly (important).

The 80/20 rules goes against all the principles of what search engines are about. They want to feature interesting, informative websites that people want to read in their listings. These days, 'internet popularity' via a huge number of relevant links is absolutely no indication of a website actually containing interesting, informative, unique information - and search engines are cottoning onto this too. Spending all your website development/promotion time (or most of it) link swapping is like buying friends to laugh at your jokes down the pub. This might look good and fool some of the people some of the time, but in the end, it's better to develop an interesting personality and gain friends more naturally.

Another problem with the 80/20 rule is the way search engine 'algorithms' (the way they measure a site's worth) change all the time, so you might find your efforts wasted with one small algorithm change. However, you control the actual human worth of your site - the actual value any one visitor gets from your site. You can do this by giving them unique content not found on other websites - by informing them - by giving them a unique service - by standing out.

We found an article which supports the 80/20 rule - and while we don't agree in principle with the disproportionate time spent on link swapping, it does have some interesting things to say on search engine optimization and the lengths people will go to!

Search engine optimisation techniques are constantly evolving. This evolution is in response to the changes of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google in particular has come to be seen as the most sophisticated and advanced search engine.
On-page vs off-page optimisation

Optimising websites for Google is becoming harder and harder. It's now not just a case of adding keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results.

This type of optimisation, commonly referred to as on-page optimisation, will only ever be 20% effective at achieving rankings for keywords that are even mildly competitive. Those of us who aced maths in school will know this leaves us with 80% unaccounted for.

This 80% corresponds to off-page optimisation. Off-page optimisation is all to do with:

* The amount of links pointing to your site and its pages
* The actual linking text (anchor text) of these links
* The quality of the pages which the links are on

Off-page optimisation is now for sure the overwhelmingly dominating factor which decides where a site will rank in Google. That then is what the 80/20 rule means.

Link to full article

Courtesy of webcredible.co.uk

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