SEO Reading — Some Great Picks

SEO has been top of mind for us the last couple of weeks and we’ve both written a bunch on the subject and as curated some external sources that we really like. I thought I would put them all in one place so that anyone reading up on this subject in particular can find them in one place; here.

Image Credit: mistilittle @Flickr

First, some of our writing on the subject:

• SEO is B.S. (on our blog), covers our take on why SEO for hospitality (including hotels, inns, and B&Bs) is 99.99% B.S.
• SEO Over-Optimization (on our blog), covers a very likely culprit for SEO ranking and traffic disruption, at the hands of too much monkeying around with word density, backlinks, and other “SEO agency” tweaking.
• SEO Vendor Segmentation, on my personal blog, which is my own personal send-up of the multi-billion dollar industry that feeds on the even bigger Google search industry.
• SEO of Multi-Channel Publishing, which covers themes related to back-links, duplicate content, and Google’s guidance on this subject.
• The SEO Obsession, on Lodging Hospitality.com (industry online magazine covering professional lodging industry of all types) my guest post which expands on the themes in a limited length post (thanks to the many folks who have contacted me on this one with favorable comments).

And, my favorite writing by others including the superb New York Times coverage of Google’s monopolistic power in the search industry and the many bizarre consequences of that power on the way business works online:

• The true SEO guru’s ninja-like ability to monetize traffic by any means they wish, even devious ones: Picking the Lock of Google’s Search Jul 2011
• What happened to the guy that treated customers badly on purpose in order to juice his organic traffic!  A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web in Nov, 2010 and then later Online Seller Who Bullied Customers Pleads Guilty in May 2011
• The Dirty Little Secrets of Search (in which JC Penny first succeeds and then gets brutally punished by Google) Feb 2011
• And a recent post which resonated with us, by Jill Whalen