A recent article on Search Engine Land by Danny Sullivan offers advice on search engine optimization for the world’s richest man, Bill Gates. Um , what could Microsoft’s head honcho possibly learn about SEO that he doesn’t already know? According to Sullivan, a lot. This SEO 101 uses Bill Gates’ new blog as a guinea pig. On Google, Gates turns up fourth which isn’t too bad, but the disheartening thing about the placement is that the fake Bill Gates blogs are ranked higher than the real thing. Even worse on Gate’s own Bing, his blog doesn’t even show up at all. Eek! Sullivan goes on to prescribe a remedy to the online ailment and teaches us a thing or two along the way.
Step by step, Sullivan shows Gates and us the importance of title tags, the use of the word “official” along with how it changes a blog’s SEO ranking, and how to employ Bing and Google’s webmaster tools. More importantly, the article goes on to debunk the theory that SEO is really an elaborate spamming and advertising operation. The effects of mastering SEO techniques are real and Sullivan seems to provide evidence to back this up.
But why not see for yourself and after you take the tutorial at searchengineland.com, return back here and report to us! Did you learn anything new? Was the information shocking or did it seem like old hat? Is there an SEO success story or secret that you’d like to share?
Is it possible that Gates is deliberately downplaying his prowess (or, at least, access to it)? Maybe not. But it is kinda fun to see the uber-nerd appear to be over his head.