Actually the trick isn't going for common search words, its going for specific long-tail search phrases. "How do I make tacos with ground beef" instead of "tac

Actually the trick isn't going for common search words, its going for specific long-tail search phrases. "How do I make tacos with ground beef" instead of "tacos beef howto". Currently google will rank a near-exact long-phrase-string match above a less exact more bunch-of-keywords one with more inbound links. Tech people, sysadmins in particular, have been living with this in the form of Experts Exchange for a long time. However since they're usually the second or third link among a pile of mailinglists and forums you just learned to skip them. The popular fad in "Q&A" sites (stackoverflow, answers.com, yahoo answers, quora) exists specifically to exploit this revenue/traffic opportunity. But thats for tech stuff/people. When it comes to general consumer searches the real 800lbs gorilla is Demand Media. If you want to really wrap your brain around how silly this has gotten, read this: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/ In a way this is all backhandedly from the success of google. We all got so used to it being so good at finding what we wanted, we learned to just "talk" to it, but writing into the search box pretty much exactly what we'd say out loud.