Hugh is currently working on a new site, so he obviously wants to get it right from the beginning.
Like so many other "net savvy" entrepeneurs Hugh knows that the search engines are crucial to his venture's marketing strategy. If the spiders don't like his site it may not be as succesful as he would like.
So what is the secret?
How can you find the grail?
Of course a glance at the metaphors give it all away. It is the "grail", the ultimate challenge. Some rise to meet it, others die trying.
A few months ago I conducted a couple of experiments with SEO when "playing" with a blog. I played around with the position of titles, the juxtapositioning of keywords and phrases, mod_rewrite etc., etc. Links from sites that already had regular crawls were placed - in short I used most of the "tried and trusted" techniques.
Was I successful?
Maybe to some degree, maybe not at all.
SEO is part science, part art, part luck. No matter what you do intentionally you still seem to find that your accidents are bringing in more organic traffic than you would have expected.
For example this blog. Although I may have put some effort into basic SEO I haven't really bothered doing a lot of actual work. I may post on some topics more than on others and I am all too aware that I will never be able to make any cash from google ads, affiliate links or anything else in this space. However, having said that, I am always amazed at what the engines pick up on.
For some odd, quirky reason I keep on getting top results for the most outlandish queries:
- apache2 configuration - what do I know about that???
- skype ubuntu (or derivatives) - see above question
- sugarcrm outlook
Hmmm...you're probably being picked up for these expressions because in the case of the apache one...
1. There are not a lot of competing sites (and next to no PPC jostling for them)
2 Your spelling of apache2 (as opposed apache /space/ 2)
3. Matching page title and content.
apache2 has an average count of just 3 searches per 24 hour period so you'd be considered quite the Apache Meister for that :O)
Peter
The amount of traffic some of those posts get is quite silly:
skype on breezy 4715
just to choose one random example. I know why some of those entries do so well, but considering that I am not trying to get traffic for them I find it highly amusing/bemusing :)