Search Engine Optimization Rap
While I was looking for some sort of scholarly article for this blog post, I happened across an entertaining YouTube video that related perfectly to what we’ve been discussing in class. In the video, the “SEO Rapper” talks about search engine optimization and PageRank: a Google-developed method for determining the importance of a website.
The rap claims that establishing a strong network of hyperlinks is one of the most important methods of search engine optimization. According to the SEO Rapper, inbound links, or backlinks, are the most important links for a webpage to have. These are the links that come back to your site from other webpages; the more of them you have, the more reputable and important your website appears to a search engine. There are several ways of getting more inbound links to your site (purchasing, swapping with other sites, etc.), but the most preferred way is to simply have good content on your webpage; this will bring in the most high quality links to your page, and therefore best optimize your site for search engine use. Another important aspect of search engine optimization mentioned in the rap is the use of keywords and key phrases. Search engines like Google scan the content of pages, so having important words and phrases in your text will make your page stand out more and list higher during a search. The SEO Rapper says to avoid overstuffing your text with keywords, though, because “if you doing that you’ll get stuck like a cactus.” Too many keywords will detract from the readability of your page, and this will make your content less appealing to viewers.
I thought this video was quite refreshing, for it brought generally boring webpage science into an entertaining form of media. And best of all, the rap doesn’t just relate to what we’ve been discussing in class, it is what we’ve been discussing in class! It outlines the most important methods of search engine optimization, and therefore complements our lecture material perfectly. To see it for yourself and learn all about PageRank and search engine optimization from the SEO Rapper, check out the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnSJBpB_OKQ