Do you think this term is non-competitive?

children’s gifts

Is a top five rank on that term OK? How about boatloads of terms that surround that term?

One could not worry about URL structure, site architecture, anchors, etc. and still do sort of good if he had decent content. But it just wouldn’t be the same as walking the extra mile and optimizing the above mentioned.

I am a firm believer of SEO being a very important part of an industry. Yes, it does bring a lot of traffic. Apparently it’s a trendy thing to write that “SEO is dead”. It isn’t, it’s just evolving, that’s all.

Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh. Keep up the good posting!

That is in large part because google has kept the underlying mechanism that drives it rankings the same in large part for the last 5 years.

Authority.

Everyone blogs about the same thing b/c google hasn’t really changed their ways in large part.

There algo is flawed in that it relies sooooo heavily on backlinks.

Sooner or later this will change. Then people will post about something different.

1) To become an authority you must be there and may work hard for years to stay here till 2010. That’s ok. Linking politic.

2)On the other way, ride the Long Tail.
Generate the more pages and content you can on semantic fields with the goal to be still visible in 3 years when hundreds of billion pages will be indexed.

And to do so you just have to do 4 little things : , and optimization (=fill them with smart words) + repeat 3 or 4 times your keywords in the plain text.

How”s got a 3rd ?

Even some of the top 100-500 retailers often times make the mistake of ‘giving up’ or moving on once those building blocks are in place, so it doesn’t only apply to smaller eTailers.

@ Brian – You make a good point. All the things you mentioned would be considered part of the process, beyond the building blocks.

@ Andy – You are right. It’s not a secret, it’s just difficult to do in most cases. eTailers are getting better at it though and i expect it to become easier once more merchants catch up with technology that can be used for these purposes.

@ Steven – Affiliate model, maybe. I see more eTailers making use of corporate blogs than ever before. Creating FAQ’s, buying guides, how-to’s and other helpful content can help initially, but it can’t be the whole strategy either, only part of the process. It appears to me that many do not avoid it, they just don’t have time, proper knowledge or get intimidated before they begin.

@ Natasha – Good catch on the top 100. you are right, many of them do have authority already or have begun to address it, but not all of them. The top 100 face the same issue, only they are further along in the process. They need to know what’s the next step?

@ Nhu-Chi – Yes, it is highly debated as of late. There are many ways to build authority. There can never be too much, only not enough. As competition grows, so does the need to have more authority, over time. If you find yourself asking if you have enough, keep working. When you think you have enough, keep working. Like Greg said, “it will work well in 2007, but more importantly, will still be working in 2010.”