Who’s the coolest guy on the planet?
UPDATE: According to Google, I am now the "coolest guy on the planet."
According to Google, the coolest guy on the planet is SEO Expert, Brad Fallon. Search at Google for "the coolest guy on the planet" and you'll see what I mean.
However, Brad is NOT the coolest guy on the planet according to Yahoo and MSN. Why?
This goes back to Google's modifying its algorithm in January to prevent "Google Bombing" (or "link bombing"). The famous "miserable failure" search that used to point to George W. Bush's biography page is an example of how it used to work.
You'll notice that both Yahoo! and MSN still point to Bush's page for that phrase, but Google does not.
This holds the key to a lesson for you if you're trying to rank well in Google. It used to be that all you had to do was get a whole lot of links pointing to your site with your keywords and you would rank well for those keywords..
Now, however, it appears that Google is checking your page content against the link text used to point to your pages.
Since Bush's bio page does not have anything to do with the phrase "miserable failure", it does not rank for that phrase in Google, no matter how many links point to it with that phrase.
On the other hand, Brad Fallon's page does actually contain the phrase "the coolest guy on the planet"--and that's all it took for Google to see the links pointing to his blog with that phrase as being legitimate.
So be sure that you're getting links pointing to your pages using anchor text that you want to rank for, AND make sure that your page content is actually relevant for that phrase.
