Star Wars is a fantastic series that has spawned a whole universe of fiction. The reach of Star Wars has moved from the big screen to games, books, comics, and so much more. Give the vast nature of how Star Wars fits into our culture it isn’t surprising we can tie it into just about anything. Below is how I relate star wars factions to the many different sides of SEO.

When we talk Star Wars initially Jedi comes to mind. With their wise and zen-like ways they truly are masters of the force. A natural bacteria that provides amazing powers to those that know how to tap into its potential naturally. It is because of this holistically natural strategy that I would relate this to the purists of SEO. Those that take into account the genuine user experience and interaction over the blunt optimization for Search Engine algorithms. While this particular strategy is extremely difficult it holds great rewards for those that can master its ways. Just like Jedi it takes time and patience while being in tune with the small things. It also requires the ability to be agile when it comes to your site constantly refining and testing. If you can master the ways of genuinely refining your site you can truly become a Jedi when it comes to SEO.

Of course we can’t overlook the rebel faction within the realm of Star Wars. This outfit is often the “good” folk that are trying their best to maintain and fight the rising tide of the empire. Although they may suffer heavy casualties at times it seems they always come ahead. I would relate this to the White-Hat spectrum of SEO. Often times your SEO gurus or experts fall within this realm. They provide the invaluable research and strategies needed to succeed online within expected guidelines. Every once in a while you have your true rock stars like princess Leia and Han Solo that show everyone how things need to be done but these heroes don’t come along too often. At the end of the day though this is where you want to be if you are looking to optimize your site of the search engines doing everything you can to do the right way.

A huge highlight of the Star Wars moving in the series was the Clone Army. This massive army provided the backing the empire needed to try and control the galaxy. This is relevant to Gray-Hat practitioners in my mind, where they don’t necessarily know they are doing anything wrong. Specifically this is where white-hat strategist lose their abilities to be patient. An example of a Gray-Hat practice would be doing something right like building links naturally and going overboard building hundreds if not thousands with the sole purpose of building links. This destroys the natural nature of these links while starting to turn your link building attempts into spamming. Just like Storm Troopers the original goal and strategy may have been for a good cause but eventually fell off the rails and ended up on the dark-side of the force.

Now we get the fun side of the Sith, where nefarious tactics are the name of the game. This side as you can guess is directly in relation to manipulation of the Search Engines. In the beginning these would have been barbaric in comparison to today’s strategies. With things like link-farms, content spinning, cloaking, and various other forms of raw search manipulation these truly are the dark arts of the force. Although the rise to power may be quick and in some cases profitable they always have a quick and even worse ending when all is said and done. If we take Darth Vader once Anakin Skywalker we can see just how the dark-side can promise great reward but eventually takes everything you worked hard for.

So as a quick summary you want to try and be a Jedi. If this is something you cannot do or wait for then your best bet is to join the rebel force helping the light-side of the force and keeping things as naturally as possible. If you find yourself trending the way of a Storm Trooper you may want to reconsider your strategies to avoid joining the dark-side. Finally if you find yourself being a true lord of the Sith you can only hope that it is worth the effort in the end. 

To begin the entire functionality of a search engine is the ability to crawl, index, and grade webpages. This can then lead to the possibility of classifying and searching for relevant webpages based on complex machine algorithms. This complexity is furthered by the open source nature of the internet. At any point in time anyone can upload or post content whether unique or duplicate. This is where Search Engines like Google create guidelines for their services. This essentially creates the standards by which they accept or reject content from their index. 

This filtering is the core component to creating a regulated web. However with this filtered web comes challenges based on human nature. There is a possibility of individuals trying to “game” the Search Engines in order to achieve misguided traffic and sales. There is the potential for this gaming to reach epidemic proportions effectively rendering user and publisher helpless when it comes to naturally allowing search engines to classify and provide query results solely based on content.

Because of this epidemic a new element was introduced to the algorithmic filtering. This new element was the association of links in accordance to content. This element has provided a somewhat self-governing system by which content can be judged based on its popularity and relevance to trusted sources.