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Google Results Suck Hard… so does my SEO

I’ve always tried to stay out of SEO/SEM discussions as I’ve invested very little time into understanding the dynamics of search algorithms and the practicalities of SEO. As a content site owner, however, I’m starting to understand that its not just a traffic booster, but fundamental to the survival of my site (upcomingdiscs.com).

UpcomingDiscs has a great crew of reviewers cranking out quality dvd reviews - that Google can’t find. Here’s an example: take a look at the results for “planet terror dvd review” - seems like a natural enough search, right? UpcomingDiscs has a good review of “Planet Terror” - quality, original content.

1. The #1 result from Google is a Netscape/Propeller page with one vote.
2. The #6 result from Google is a Digg page with two votes.
3. UpcomingDiscs doesn’t appear in the index. Rather, I only looked to page 10 of results, but we weren’t there.
4. The first 10 pages are a mish mash of review indexes, reviews, newspaper stories about the movie, and so on.

So - what conclusions can I draw from this little experiment?

1. Google’s algorithm is damaged. Propeller and Digg in first and sixth place are not right.
2. UpcomingDiscs needs some radical SEO.

The first of these I have little control over; the second, I have lots. I figured that producing an XML sitemap pointing to original content with clean URL’s would suffice; apparently not.

google, search, sem seo

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