I always wanted to do this - to write case studies about various websites which are ranking very high in search engines and finally I have wrote the first one in my blog SEO Case Study - Mahalo Mahalo is IMO web 2.0 version of about.com created by Jason "I hate seo" Calcanis and I felt any newbie or even seasonal webmasters can learn alot from this case study (and the mahalo has been designed). There is nothing much in it in terms of secrets revealed but I hope you guys find it useful. I will try to write a case study in every 2 weeks time. By the way, how many of your think Mahalo will survive before google finally doing them the "squidoo thing" ? Comments are as usual welcome and we can discuss pointers here. Regards Pushkar
Good case study. I like how you picked a site you don't like, but explored how they are successful. I don't think Google will necessarily penalize Mahalo though. Since they have unique content and space for Google ads, Google will want to keep them around.
I can write probably a 5000 word Case study on Mahalo but I just wanted to put the basics to get the juices flow in readers mind. IF you see the site, you can learn alot from it. As far as like or dislike is concerned, there are lot of sites which I don't like but I still uses them (mahalo is not one of them though). Also Mahalo has very little unique content but has authority and google trust. Please do note that wikipedia too has very little unique content (specially the once which are not in its top 10%) but still google ranks them because it trust it. Lets wait and see, I am not very sure about google will want to keep them around statement though Pushkar
I've checked your complete Blog and you deserved 100% for the Success. and Good Luck for the Future. Really appropriated for your job. Eric