Jay Rosen has many interesting things to say about the New York Times acquisition of About.com. He also explains the weblog approach to search engine optimization:

And they’re finding themselves without much knowledge of how to show up in search. I’m a blogger, not a company. I couldn’t tell you if this page has the proper meta-data– or any. My search engine optimization method is to get a lot of links by writing something original and useful that people will elect to recommend at their own sites. It works (sometimes.) But only because my links don’t expire.

Anil Dash has already proven that this approach works. For what it’s worth, Anil’s entry is still the number one result in Google for nigritude ultramarine.