The straight bit
Rock Dodger is built by Cultured Digital, the independent SEO consultancy of Dean Cruddace. Dean has worked in SEO since 2001, from the UK, and builds with plain HTML, ACF and custom WordPress code rather than page builders. You can read his own account of that, with less sarcasm, on his about page at Cultured Digital.
This site exists as a working example of building for search properly: every page is server-sent HTML, there is no client-side JavaScript, every page has its own title, description, canonical link and structured data, there is a sitemap that updates itself, and the pages are quick. View source and check. The asteroids are real data from NASA. The jokes are all ours.
Asteroids and SEO: a completely unscientific comparison
Everything from here to the end of this section is made up. It has not been peer reviewed, unless you count a cat looking at it.
After years of staring at both rankings and near-Earth objects, Dean has noticed that they have a worrying amount in common. Both involve large, indifferent forces, both are monitored obsessively by people with spreadsheets, and in both cases a very expensive plan can be undone by something nobody saw coming.
| In SEO | In space | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Crawl budget | Lunar distance | Finite, measured in units nobody uses outside the industry, and always a bit less than you hoped. |
| A core update | An extinction-level event | Arrives without warning, flattens the landscape, and a few small furry sites on page one inherit the Earth. |
| Backlinks | Gravity assists | Free momentum from something much bigger than you. Do not attempt to buy one from a stranger. |
| Keyword stuffing | The asteroid belt | An enormous number of rocks in one place, and not one of them going anywhere. |
| Thin content | A very small asteroid | Technically present, noticed by nobody, burns up on entry. |
| Duplicate content | A binary asteroid | Two objects, one orbit. Google picks the one it prefers and the other one learns about it later. |
| A canonical tag | Pointing at one rock and saying "that one" | Search engines will respect your opinion in the same way a comet respects a speed limit. |
| A redirect chain | A gravity slingshot | Several long detours to arrive slightly later than you would have done anyway. |
| Rank tracking | Planetary defence | Watching something move, mostly so you feel better about it. |
| A 404 | The gap between Mars and Jupiter | Where something definitely used to be. |
The Asteroid Ranking Model
Rank = (Authority × Content) ÷ (Distance from page one)²
The inverse-square term is the important one. Like gravity, it means every position you drop costs you more than the last, and the best way to improve it is to stop being so far away. Results are not guaranteed. Neither is the Moon staying where it is.
Get in touch
If you want search work done properly, by a human who has been doing it for a long time, start at Dean's about page. If you want to report an asteroid, please contact somebody with a telescope.