23 ms·

Ask HN: Does SEO still work in 2018?

226 points by jadeydi 8y ago

If it works, which method are you using now?

kristianc 8y ago
It's probably less relevant than it was, due to Google's aggressive internal linking. Google now surfaces more and more information (sports scores, directions etc) without you having to leave Google. If you run a service competing with Google in one of these areas - good luck. Similarly, AMP has kind of changed the game in terms of publisher traffic. Users seem to be assuming that results that do not appear in those carousels are more outdated / less relevant.
deadcoder0904 8y ago
Yes. For SEO related content, I always check Backlinko - https://backlinko.com https://backlinko.com The guy Brian Dean has many years of experience about SEO
- orliesaurus 8y ago
  Funnily enough reading studf from this site's (i.e. rank brain 2018 guide) on mobile makes my phone lag hard (octa core from last summer). I think the 5000+ heavy images content needs some mobile optimizing... Here's a little audit with Chrome's own tools: https://i.snag.gy/eX7IB1.jpg https://i.snag.gy/eX7IB1.jpg
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deadcoder0904 8y ago
    Jesus Christ didn't knew that. Someone told me few months ago that's the SEO guy & the way he talks & all is solid content. Didn't knew it has so bad LightHouse perf.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Really? Sites like that really set off alarm bells for me.
  - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
    Definitely do not check out wickedfire.com
    - IncRnd 8y ago
      That's some pretty good seo right there!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
ilhicas 8y ago
I believe the best methods to remain the same that it has always been, create quality content by delivering value to your visitors and keep your webapp running without maing your page hang on clients as well as presenting a clean interface, that should be cross device.
- amelius 8y ago
  That must explain why w3schools is always at the top of my search results. /s
  - openIce 8y ago
    What's wrong with w3schools?
    - alexmorenodev 8y ago
      https://www.w3fools.com/ https://www.w3fools.com/
      - vinylkey 8y ago
        > Today, W3Schools has largely resolved these issues and addressed the majority of the undersigned developers' concerns. Seems to me like it's a decent resource nowadays.
    - hknd 8y ago
      it is a shitty site which shows out of date shit.
      - openIce 8y ago
        If you can't even point out the faults you are in no position to comment on the content.
    - teddyh 8y ago
      W3fools used to have more detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20110117085131/http://w3fools.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110117085131/http://w3fools.co... Even if w3schools have fixed all these instances since then, that all those errors were ever produced is a bad sign, especially when there were better alternatives even then.
jimmy1 8y ago
Absolutely -- for paid search. Organic SEO is a little tougher. You have to really provide valuable, quality content for organic SEO. If you try to half-ass it at all, it will be snuffed out and mixed in with the other garbage. Provide incentive for users to browse your content and don't make it obvious that you are just having a cheap marketing page with a couple of blurbs any idiot can google to figure out the information you are providing. I think that is why sites like Bankrate and NerdWallet are good at organic SEO -- they have nice tools and good information.
- Azkar 8y ago
  > You have to really provide valuable, quality content for organic SEO This is the key. Google wants to make sure your readers are getting their questions answered. SEO is constantly changing, but high quality and valuable content will always be king.
always_good 8y ago
As long as there is search, there are ways to appear towards the top of it.
gscott 8y ago
The new SEO is really branding just over a long period of time. Expect SEO to take 6 months to 2 years.
- TheRealPomax 8y ago
  If it takes you 6 months to 2 years to become prominent in local searches, something has gone very wrong. The answer to the original question is really one of "over how big a part of the internet?" first. Global SEO is a slow process, local SEO should be a matter of months at most, if the site you're optimizing for isn't "yet another one" in a saturated local market.
  - gscott 8y ago
    Local SEO can be very competitive depending upon what you are doing. Having a physical address is good and so signing up for a cheaper local listing manager (cheapest I have found is from Vistaprint https://www.vistaprint.com/digital-marketing/local-listings?couponAutoload=1&GP=04%2f17%2f2018+12%3a04%3a38&GPS=4974675686&GNF=0 https://www.vistaprint.com/digital-marketing/local-listings?...) will get someone's website on 20-30 sites with authority immediately. Then having long articles and having keywords that focus on the local market. But depending upon what you are doing that might not be enough... for example local insurance agencies there is a lot of competition sometimes with up to 100 insurance agencies in a tight geographical radius. Time helps to rise above when there is a lot of local competition.
    - LoSboccacc 8y ago
      Could one do that landing users on a facebook page instead of a real site? I got some question from a friend owning a local business but it’s quite outside my competency and was just looking around for info when this hn popped up
      - gscott 8y ago
        Instead of Facebook I would suggest focusing on getting a lot of positive reviews on Yelp. If your friend can get 20 or 30 reviews on Yelp he will totally dominate the whole local market with a number 1 listing organically on Google without hardly any effort.
orliesaurus 8y ago
I've been doing SEO as a side gig for many smaller local websites. The amount of traffic you can generate from locally ranking higher than your competitors is astoundingly high. You can literally bring tens of thousands of dollars of extra business to companies i.e. electricians, vet doctors, dentists, gardeners... honestly it's worth every penny.
- petra 8y ago
  How do you do it on the side? Isn't it a very dynamic, very competitive field, so it requires a lot to get good results?
  - amelius 8y ago
    I guess it takes a lot of time. Change a thing, wait for Google to crawl your site, then inspect the results and repeat. Most of it is waiting for Google. So yes, I suppose you can do it on the side.
    - Reedx 8y ago
      How long is that cycle for sites that Google crawls daily? Can you determine the results of a change right after the crawl, or is there lag time?
      - user5994461 8y ago
        The google webmaster tools give you the detailed search results for your site on a daily basis. I'd say you can make week to week comparison at best.
    - petra 8y ago
      So you just read about seo from time to time, get a few ideas and select one that you think will fit your circumstances, try it , and wait ?
      - orliesaurus 8y ago
3pt14159 8y ago
Yes it does, but a little goes a looooong way to Google. I've also been starting to notice that having custom HTML / CSS is boosting things more than before for smaller sites. Also, even if using JS for SPAs doesn't matter to Google there is a reasonable long tail of other web crawlers that may or may not be helpful to your ends and you'd be surprised at how many of them just use mechanize or nokogiri instead of something more robust. Basically it comes down to cost, last time I was in the custom crawler trade it was around 50x more expensive to do things with a virtual dom than it was to either straight parse the HTML or figure out the main API calls JS was making from the browser that actually had the data I needed and just run those.
- devin 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, what options beyond nokogiri, mechanize, etc. are you referring to? Something open source, commercial, or custom?
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    Well I've done it a bunch of different ways, and granted this take is about three or four years out of date, so take it with a grain of salt. Selenium / headless Firefox with JS running in the browser waiting for things to load / resolve. This is the worst case scenario. Sometimes you can use a layered approach, first do a normal mechanize request then if the page doesn't 404 you can try to parse it there. If you detect that its relying on infinite scroll try to run the JS command via Ruby Racer then if that isn't [semi-]automatically possible put the URL in the "requires full DOM queue" all of this on a bunch of code that lights up different servers to evade log analysis. Some URLs are behind a CAPTCHA, and some people will then add those urls to the "Use a human to do the work" queue, but I've never really felt right about doing that. To me a CAPTCHA is basically someone saying, "no seriously, bugger off" plus I don't want have some poor soul waste their life copying and pasting text. It's easier to just convince a client that last 0.01% of data isn't worth getting. What's really funny is the meta game that stores have. There is no "price" any more for many of these people. There is "the price you happen to see" and they use a bunch of tricks to try to figure out if the traffic is real or not because they know that other places are dynamically setting their price to undercut them by some optimal amount. It's just an arms race, but you know what arms races are really good for? Arms manufacturers.
hashsalt 8y ago
Depends on the market. Google's move to 'entities' over keywords means broad search seo is beyond the abilities of "2 guys with some adwords experience" type agencies that were popular circa 2011/12. Quality well thought out sites that (theoretically) align with intent fare better. That said, if you're targeting a certain city, definitely still works. Most local sites are poorly optimized.
- siruncledrew 8y ago
  Yes, content should be much more closely paired with SEO. Googlebot's algorithms change a lot[0], so there is always going to be a lagging trend trying to keep up with it, which is why good SEO should be an iterative process. You get what you pay for (or for the effort you put in) with SEO. [0]: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
dmtroyer 8y ago
Can someone post or link to strategies for optimizing for local google seo?
- discussedbefore 8y ago
  The basic option for local lead gen is encouraging happy customers to leave glowing Google reviews. After that comes paying for AdWords to get those reviews in front of more eyeballs.
arnon 8y ago
SEO works but actual focused content is better.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  Thats what I thought was SEO. Everything Calories Per Dollar bring in hundreds of people to my website a day. As a result, I studied more restaurants Calories Per Dollar, studied Calcium Per Dollar, and other things like Caffeine Per Dollar. All relevant to my website, all quality content IMO. Google is easily my best source of traffic.
brosirmandude 8y ago
I'm a little biased because I currently work as an SEO Manager at an agency, but I would say yes. It REALLY depends on the type of business, what stage the business is at, their goals, and probably a few other things. SEO should almost always be a part of a larger overall marketing strategy. If you're an ecommerce shop optimizing product and category pages - SEO will help. If you're a plumber and ranking higher than your competition will bring in new leads & jobs - SEO will help. If you're an established SaaS company launching a new product - SEO will help. If you're a brand new SaaS startup - SEO is probably not the best thing to spend money on. That money is likely better spent on PR getting press mentions, and on PPC ads promoting your brand. The main problem I see many small businesses making is relying solely on SEO to bring them leads while having no other marketing strategy. This may have worked well for them back when you could spam websites to the top of SERPs, but it's not the case today.
- jachee 8y ago
  Give us some more counter-examples? Where will SEO definitely not help?
  - user5994461 8y ago
    It doesn't work where the results are already cornered by high reputation sites or loads of junk. High reputation sites: travel, hotels, the popular marketplaces. Junk: drugs, mattresses, pills to grow your hair back, cooking recipes, SEO.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    If you’re doing something completely new, there might not be too much organic traffic. E.g when AirBnB was launching, the users were not googling for ”home accommodation”, they were looking for hotels. Same for Twitter, nobody was looking for ”sms blogging platform”
    - davemel37 8y ago
      Thats not an SEO argument thats a keyword choice argument. If demand is minimal optimize for competitors brands or comparisons to related solutions to what your audience needs when they are potentially in the market for what you offer.
vidyesh 8y ago
In my opinion, SEO will always work because Google will keep trying to be build the perfect system (search engine) and it will never stop mainly because Google has to keep evolving depending on the current human understanding. And you cannot have a perfect system. The changes Google will do to their algorithm will sooner or later be gamed, SEO 'experts' will beat a small subset of the system, Google will penalize them and adapt making it vulnerable to more exploitation. The search engine is interacted with by humans so no matter what Google does, at the end humans(SEOs) on the other end will try to present their content first the way they see fit for humans.
codingdave 8y ago
SEO works, and always will. However, trying to figure out the latest tricks is a losing game. Even if you do figure out how to make something work today, algorithms will change and you'll be punished for having gamed the system. Instead, write 'honest' content. Write it well. Write it for humans. If you find yourself adding content in hopes the search engine will pick it up, that is a short-term gain for long-term pain. Do have your title match your content. Do try to write unique phrases that are applicable to your content. And try not to copy/paste content around your pages. Do all that, with clean markup, and your SEO will be good enough to beat out local competitors. (Even if agencies tell you differently.)
- thatgerhard 8y ago
  This is it. I was a seo person in the early 2000s and, like now, it was lot of snake oil. The one thing that is timeless, that works, is good content. If you write good content you will get far. Flooding pages with keywords and link farms doesn't get you anywhere in the long run.
- pascalxus 8y ago
  I think the advice should be: write good content that google can recognize.
- cookiecaper 8y ago
  I don't run a web agency and make 0 dollars from selling SEO. This is not true. Google has been gamed for well over a decade. On a past enterprise, I believed the lie "write good content and it will magically rank" and paid a content writer for about 9 months. She posted lengthy original content about 3 times per week, all highly relevant to the search terms we cared about. I did the same about once a week. A competitor with a private blog network and professional spam apparatus started outranking us just with "link building", i.e., posting links on the PBN they controlled, within 1 month of launching (we had about 15 months of content at this point). They had no content on their site at all, just a landing page that included a few of the keywords they were using in their link building. There was no blog, there was no "well-written, honest content for humans". Google had no qualms ranking them based on the link text despite their lack of supporting content. This competitor brutally beat us in organic search traffic until both businesses were shut down due to legal threats from a F500 cowering behind the CFAA. Our blog is still online. There is no significant search traffic to speak of. While the content may have aged some, it's still the best resource for a lot of the things we posted about. It's buried pretty deep on Google's search. Transparent spam and plagiarized content are easy for Google to detect, but private blog networks are a major component of modern SEO, as are several other non-organic schemes that Google has no simple algorithmic method to detect (barring slip-ups that make it obvious, though even in those cases, Google seems reluctant to punish domestic PBNs). I know of entire offices staffed with "link builders" whose entire job is to figure out how to get backlinks, and to be fair, "write really good original content" is somewhere on their list, but it's not very close to the top. Just a counterpoint. "SEO" is still a thing. Google is a high-value target and it's worth a lot of money to game them. It is quite naive to believe that they're impervious to it. You can rank OK with "honest, well-written content for humans" as long as no professionals are competing with you.
dazc 8y ago
If you have industry knowledge (outside of tech) you can rank very well for expert content because the stuff you need to beat is often written purely for SEO benefit by someone who's done 30 minutes of research and then bluffed their way through it. From what I see, in the UK at least, small businesses aren't doing this. Either they can't be bothered or are afraid of giving away knowledge they think they could be charging for?
myth_buster 8y ago
At it's core SEO boils down to a protocol for helping search engines make sense of your website/content. If you look at it that way, then yes SEO still works in 2018. But more often than not, SEO is an umbrella term which encapsulates both the good and the bad practices. Given the work Google and others have done on weeding out the latter using ML/AI as well as human intervention [0] I would say you can't be sure whether those would work. It's contingent on Search Engines being aware of the practice and penalizing that behavior. So it may work today but not guaranteed to work tomorrow. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658
ezoe 8y ago
Yes, at least for Japanese. Currently, most Japanese Google search results are garbages. It's all boilarplate texts(but produced by very cheap human labor writers so you can't easily filter it out) with keywords in it. SEO won, Google lost.
michaelbuckbee 8y ago
Others are saying: "SEO Works" but Google is steadily moving towards a pay for placement model.
austincheney 8y ago
SEO is more interesting now that search engines are seeking greater engagement and insight on user preferences. I maintain a small application at http://prettydiff.com/ http://prettydiff.com/ and both Google and DuckDuckGo have widgets or features available that come up in the search results depending upon the search terms. This saves the user time because they may get what they need directly from the intelligent search engine result data so that they don't have to enter my site. On the other hand Google makes deep links into the site immediately available as "sub-results" so that a user can enter the site more directly without wasting time on an entry point.
JeremyMorgan 8y ago
Yes, definitely. But not in the traditional "hacks" sense. I get a lot of search engine traffic to my blog, with the following strategy: Stage 1: Technical - Clean up your act. If you structure your site properly and make it accessible, search engines will crawl and index it properly. Make your content accessible from a technical standpoint. Clean up your HTML Make your URLs reflect your content, cleanly Build and submit sitemaps Make the navigation on your website simple and effective Make your website load quickly Stage 2: Content - Make great stuff. If you build great content, people will share it. They will link to you. Build great content Make things that help people Stay within a niche if you can Create content that helps people, even if you're giving a little of your service away. (For example, a roofing company featuring an article about how to choose a roof, even if it sends them to your competitor, or some DIY stuff) If you do these things, you'll do well in search engines. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but this is way more effective than keyword stuffing, link purchasing, etc. Just keep it honest.
- jwr 8y ago
  I could repeat everything that was written above. Exactly my experience. Just do the right thing and SEO will happen by itself. As a side note, I noticed that simple quick-loading pages seem to have more of an advantage recently than people think.
  - JeremyMorgan 8y ago
    Yep, Google has been quite public about page loading speed being a factor in rankings. It's not a "make or break" and it won't instantly put you on page 1 for everything, but it makes a difference.
chx 8y ago
The tricks people used to call SEO stopped working amost 15 years ago with the Florida update. The next big one was also long ago, Panda in 2011. Writing relevant content (especially if there is new content frequently) works. Nothing else works and nothing else have had for a very long time. Most SEO services are selling snake oil. In a sense Google won and if you want to be featured at a high place in the result list you need to be relevant to what's being searched. No tricks.
chuckgreenman 8y ago
I worked for a company that does internet marketing, what I can say about SEO is that there is only one strategy that will work. If you want to be featured at the top of search results you need to have content that is actually relevant to the search term. It has to be genuinely relevant and of high quality and ideally, linked to by other respected sites. You can spend all the time and money you want on the gimmicky stuff, google will update the algorithm and wash away any progress you make.
- eitland 8y ago
  Not a "SEO person" and can't say if it works or not in 2018 but I've helped with a couple of web projects and it has surprised me how little work it took to get ahead of local competition (basically write something meaningful) - and how unenthusiastic business owners are to do this.
seanwilson 8y ago
I believe it does. If you write quality content people want to read and share, configure your pages so they can be easily understood by search bots and get quality backlinks, you're going to rank well. You should follow what Google actually suggest you do about SEO (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en) but I don't think it's a good idea attempting to game Google by trying to figure out what they're measuring behind-the-scenes because their algorithms can changes. Plugging my own project but based on the above principles I wrote a guide containing on-page SEO rules that authoritative sources say are important (e.g. Google) and created a Chrome extension that tests your site follows these rules: https://www.checkbot.io https://www.checkbot.io
jeffnappi 8y ago
Yes it does! However, now that the algorithms are all grown up it's about FAST sites with high quality content. There are no more games to be played. It is important to do your keyword research to understand the market you are attempting to reach, but that should only inform your content production and outreach plans. High quality content isn't cheap and you have to be in it for the long game.
deleted 8y ago
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spamwatch 8y ago
I thought I'd try my usual check to see what the state of the art is. Googled "rivonia plumber" (where I live) and got pages like this: http://plumber-plumbers.co.za/index-rivonia-plumbers.html http://plumber-plumbers.co.za/index-rivonia-plumbers.html http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plumbers-plumbing-rivonia/ http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plum... That is so gamed. Keyword stuffing, repeated exact pages. I assume it's better in the US but surely the algos are run over the whole dataset? Is this a worldwide problem? When I first did that search I found nests of sites using exactly the same content and styles, with different areas. Same phone number across many sites, cross-linked out the wazoo. I don't have the interest to check now but it doesn't seem much better.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  Google can’t rank properly repost farm that reformat stackoverflow content, giving them more rank than stackoverflow itself! If something of that profile can’t get ahead of pages gaming pagerank, independent blogs focusing on content have zero chance without at least doing some legwork on backlinking and keyword optimization.
rokhayakebe 8y ago
I do SEO for lawyers, mostly Family Law. I can tell you SEO works as in: Proven Measured Positive ROI, to the point I wish I was allowed to own a law firm. One thing I would say though is SEO should be one part of your marketing strategy but not all of it. You should have a diversified approach. Edit: Let me offer a different way to look at it. Does having a well organized website help turn visitors into clients? Yes. Well that's SEO, a well organized website. Does having useful and well written information about the services and products you offer, or you industry, help your business? Yes. Well that's SEO too. Can sharing your knowledge online across different relevant forums help you grow your brand and business? Yes. Well that's SEO as well. It is just that people who do not know SEO think it is things such as keywords and metatags and url structure, but everything above and more is SEO. And all these things work to your advantage, therefore SEO works.
- brosirmandude 8y ago
  This 100%. SEO is often more jumping between things that don't fit most peoples preconceptions of SEO than it is about editing a title tag or submitting a sitemap.
- SnowingXIV 8y ago
  I also do SEO work for lawyers, primarily PI and mass torts type stuff. It does work - to an extent. There are certain technical things you need to get right and that alone can rank you decently, especially locally. There is low hanging fruit that can put you miles ahead of the competition and I've done this time and time again. The problem with SEO and why I have a grudge against the industry is past success by gaming google with PBNs has led to hoisting up a few sites that can dominate because of their past. Those sites used spam tactics, then ranked high, that led to actual relevant backlinks, google got confused, and now keeps them at the top for any new content. Others must also utilize these dicey methods and pour serious money into it to do well. At least nationwide. I'm praying for the day that house of cards comes tumbling down. Until then, having a better site, with better copy (done by a professional writer not farmed out), and using Adwords typically is the go-to.
  - 8y ago
blairanderson 8y ago
Valuable Content on the internet is a fairly good approach. Outreach to related media companies to cross promote is a good approach.
jasonlotito 8y ago
Yes. SEO works. The mistake is believing that SEO is just about Google. SEO is also important for places like Etsy, where carefully crafting your listings is important. And despite the belief that SEO is slimy, it's really all about ensuring that your product gets in front of the person that wants your product. So for Etsy, it's not just about the number of people seeing your product, but the number of seeing your product that want to see it, and are willing to buy it.
davemel37 8y ago
I think the Biggest mistake people make is asking, "does it work" about any marketing strategy! The question itself begs for an anecdotal answer that is completely irrelevant to your circumstances... More importantly, the amount of people who have given up on strategies too soon or because it wasnt done in a way to provide empirical evidence, is staggering... and the amount of misinformation that flows out into the wild built on those flawed premises is really problematic for those without the context of your situation and the relative context of the situation where those opinions were formed. The second problem is that opportunity cost is rarely measured by marketers. The third problem is that your resource allocation relative to your objectives is arguably more important than any other factor or opinion about a strategy. Marketing decisions should be made in the context of your resources, goals, and your broader marketing mix. The idea that you can evaluate a specific strategy and measure its return in a Silo without considering the opportunity costs and other available strategies relative to your specific resource limitations is very dangerous and needs to be killed off! The ideal scenario is to optimize to cashflow relative to lifetime value and time value of money...or get as close as possible to this...and choose strategies within the context of this calculation. You want an SEO strategy? First, figure out if your audience is there and the cost to reach them with paid search and how long it takes to turn into cashflow and the lifetime value of that customer...than evaluate the costs to optimize to rank for that keyword, and how long it will take, than look at your other resources and strategies relative to the likely costs and returns and time to get cash returned relative to those strategies and decide if its worth investing in ranking there... Once you identify a proven keyword and have context for the cost and value and time and oppirtunity costs, than figure out how to rank for that keyword... maybe you buy a site that is already ranking. Maybe you advertise on sites already ranking. Maybe you think about the user and find a way to create a resource that Google will want to rank because of its utility... and than create empirical tests to measure progress and than you invest !!! ------ The shortcut SEO strategy i like is to ask yourself, what resource can I create for my industry that is not online but would offer so much utility that google has no choice but to optimize their algorithms to rank my resource... like wayne gretzky, go where the puck will be in the future... When is SEO is done right, its Google trying to optimize its algorithms to rank your content, not vice versa! Just my two cents.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
I used to have about a dozen clients with the agency I ran with a friend a few years ago. I found out a number of things when I was working closely with my clients. Most were doing ok in the SERPS and a few did really well because of the niche industries they were in. Some things I found out: 1 - SEO helps, but is never the determining factor in hiring any of the companies I worked with. This means you can be #1, #1 in Google and still not get any business because of it. 2 - Tracking contacts is critical. We mandated all of our clients use an answering service. They would contact people within 24 hours of receiving a contact form. The owner would then follow up to set up appointments, consultations, etc. Once we did this, we saw a massive jump in sales conversions which had nothing to do with SEO. 3 - If your design sucks and people can't find what they're looking for quickly, they're going to leave your site no matter how high you're ranking. We found this out with several of our clients who didn't want to redesign their site for various reasons. They ranked high, but their traffic and conversions sucked. We redesigned their site(s) for easier navigation, and prioritized content and got rid of other content that clogged their site. Conversions jumped by 43% over a 6 month period. SEO does matter, but even if with massive amounts of traffic because you're ranking well isn't a magic bullet for success. You also need a good design and content people can find quickly and easily.
nige123 8y ago
Google is not a search engine. It's an association engine. We know what Google is trying to do - associate the best solutions to search questions. To game Google you need to help them achieve their objective - associate their search queries with your solutions. Broadly there are three types of search desire: 1. navigational - the user wants to find a resource or place? 2. informational - the user wants to learn something? 3. transactional - the user wants to perform an action (pay a bill, book a flight, hotel, restaurant etc) If a page satisfies a user's search desire - they won't search for it again. This missing search trail is a valuable signal to Google. It provides some evidence that page A satisfies query B. The more these signals fire the stronger the association. SEO 2018? Ideally make pages that solve your users' search problems without them needing to go back to Google to search again.
- dorgo 8y ago
  .... Or let bots do searches on google, clicking on your link and never search again with same IP/browser/... combination. Or let bots do the opposite for your competitors. As long as google uses a metric to determine how good a page A satisfies query B there always will be the possibilty to optimize for this metric instead of actually to solve users search problems.
jackdaw 8y ago
It is still works like how past time its been working. Some algorithms are changed but technique of the seo is the same. https://www.overnightgraphics.com/ https://www.overnightgraphics.com/
taveras 8y ago
I firmly believe that one cannot be a webmaster and ignore how search engines work.
uberend23 8y ago
SEO is sometimes seen as a dark art to get your stuff to the top. I'ts not. Really, SEO means labelling your content so google understands what it is. After that, it's all about links.
rajacombinator 8y ago
If you can SEO yourself to top rankings for tons of keywords, probably. But you probably can’t do that through pure SEO without strong existing organic ranking. Also highly product dependent if SEO is a viable channel. Probably best to cover the basics, optimize page load, and forget the rest. -t. my impression from dabbling briefly with it.
uday11 8y ago
Yes, seo still works. All you need to do is find out your competitors, do similar on page optimization, replicate their backlinks and keep improving this. And there are ton's of other things to do, but first and foremost step is to make sure the site is technically ready.
gcuofano 8y ago
Disclaimer: I work for WordLift.io, which focuses on Semantic SEO and on-page SEO automation. Thus my opinion might be biased. The answer is SEO matters a lot. Yet SEO today means something entirely different from what it meant a few years back. Back in 2015 when I started my blog, I was writing what would be defined quality content. It was very in-depth, researched (at times it would take me weeks to write a piece of over three thousand words). However, when I hit the publish button I wasn't getting any traffic (at the time a few dozens visits per month!). True, quality content is the baseline, but if you don't have an idea of how search engines work, you might gain traction over a few years time, but the process is quite long and not guaranteed to succeed! However, what SEO means today is different from what it meant a few years back. In the past keywords and backlinks were all that mattered. They still count. However, it will come a day when they will stop working. Why? Since 2012, Google has been building a giant knowledge graph, which main aim is to gather information on the web, structure it in the form of nodes and edges to construct this massive graph. Thus, getting featured within Google's so-called knowledge vault becomes critical for an effective SEO strategy. Thus, if in the past you might be targeting keywords to be positioned on the SERP. Today you might want to be more focused on long-tail keywords that can bring you in featured snippets or inside a knowledge panel. In fact, those are also the avenues to get into the Google assistant, thus voice search. In short, while in the past it made sense to use backlinks and keywords because Google lacked the power to use more sophisticated methods to index and rank the web pages. Now you have to switch from a keyword centered content model. To an entity-based content model. This kind of approach is more holistic and targets not only the SERP, but it allows you to get ready for voice search. What are some practical examples of having this approach? - an internal glossary that targets specific questions your readers/potential customers might have - structured data in the form of Schema injected as JSON-LD (in this way you're giving better data that does not affect the performance of the page) - use a better internal linking strategy, that connects articles to topical pages (like the glossary pages) and back There are more strategies to adopt, but those are the ones that come to mind right now.

226 points by jadeydi 8y ago

If it works, which method are you using now?

It's probably less relevant than it was, due to Google's aggressive internal linking. Google now surfaces more and more information (sports scores, directions etc) without you having to leave Google. If you run a service competing with Google in one of these areas - good luck. Similarly, AMP has kind of changed the game in terms of publisher traffic. Users seem to be assuming that results that do not appear in those carousels are more outdated / less relevant.

deadcoder0904 8y ago

Yes. For SEO related content, I always check Backlinko - https://backlinko.com https://backlinko.com The guy Brian Dean has many years of experience about SEO

orliesaurus 8y ago
Funnily enough reading studf from this site's (i.e. rank brain 2018 guide) on mobile makes my phone lag hard (octa core from last summer). I think the 5000+ heavy images content needs some mobile optimizing... Here's a little audit with Chrome's own tools: https://i.snag.gy/eX7IB1.jpg https://i.snag.gy/eX7IB1.jpg
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deadcoder0904 8y ago
  Jesus Christ didn't knew that. Someone told me few months ago that's the SEO guy & the way he talks & all is solid content. Didn't knew it has so bad LightHouse perf.
Reedx 8y ago
Really? Sites like that really set off alarm bells for me.
- gm-conspiracy 8y ago
  Definitely do not check out wickedfire.com
  - IncRnd 8y ago
    That's some pretty good seo right there!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

ilhicas 8y ago

I believe the best methods to remain the same that it has always been, create quality content by delivering value to your visitors and keep your webapp running without maing your page hang on clients as well as presenting a clean interface, that should be cross device.

amelius 8y ago
That must explain why w3schools is always at the top of my search results. /s
- openIce 8y ago
  What's wrong with w3schools?
  - alexmorenodev 8y ago
    https://www.w3fools.com/ https://www.w3fools.com/
    - vinylkey 8y ago
      > Today, W3Schools has largely resolved these issues and addressed the majority of the undersigned developers' concerns. Seems to me like it's a decent resource nowadays.
  - hknd 8y ago
    it is a shitty site which shows out of date shit.
    - openIce 8y ago
      If you can't even point out the faults you are in no position to comment on the content.
  - teddyh 8y ago
    W3fools used to have more detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20110117085131/http://w3fools.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110117085131/http://w3fools.co... Even if w3schools have fixed all these instances since then, that all those errors were ever produced is a bad sign, especially when there were better alternatives even then.

jimmy1 8y ago

Absolutely -- for paid search. Organic SEO is a little tougher. You have to really provide valuable, quality content for organic SEO. If you try to half-ass it at all, it will be snuffed out and mixed in with the other garbage. Provide incentive for users to browse your content and don't make it obvious that you are just having a cheap marketing page with a couple of blurbs any idiot can google to figure out the information you are providing. I think that is why sites like Bankrate and NerdWallet are good at organic SEO -- they have nice tools and good information.

Azkar 8y ago
> You have to really provide valuable, quality content for organic SEO This is the key. Google wants to make sure your readers are getting their questions answered. SEO is constantly changing, but high quality and valuable content will always be king.

always_good 8y ago

As long as there is search, there are ways to appear towards the top of it.

gscott 8y ago

The new SEO is really branding just over a long period of time. Expect SEO to take 6 months to 2 years.

TheRealPomax 8y ago
If it takes you 6 months to 2 years to become prominent in local searches, something has gone very wrong. The answer to the original question is really one of "over how big a part of the internet?" first. Global SEO is a slow process, local SEO should be a matter of months at most, if the site you're optimizing for isn't "yet another one" in a saturated local market.
- gscott 8y ago
  Local SEO can be very competitive depending upon what you are doing. Having a physical address is good and so signing up for a cheaper local listing manager (cheapest I have found is from Vistaprint https://www.vistaprint.com/digital-marketing/local-listings?couponAutoload=1&GP=04%2f17%2f2018+12%3a04%3a38&GPS=4974675686&GNF=0 https://www.vistaprint.com/digital-marketing/local-listings?...) will get someone's website on 20-30 sites with authority immediately. Then having long articles and having keywords that focus on the local market. But depending upon what you are doing that might not be enough... for example local insurance agencies there is a lot of competition sometimes with up to 100 insurance agencies in a tight geographical radius. Time helps to rise above when there is a lot of local competition.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    Could one do that landing users on a facebook page instead of a real site? I got some question from a friend owning a local business but it’s quite outside my competency and was just looking around for info when this hn popped up
    - gscott 8y ago
      Instead of Facebook I would suggest focusing on getting a lot of positive reviews on Yelp. If your friend can get 20 or 30 reviews on Yelp he will totally dominate the whole local market with a number 1 listing organically on Google without hardly any effort.

orliesaurus 8y ago

I've been doing SEO as a side gig for many smaller local websites. The amount of traffic you can generate from locally ranking higher than your competitors is astoundingly high. You can literally bring tens of thousands of dollars of extra business to companies i.e. electricians, vet doctors, dentists, gardeners... honestly it's worth every penny.

petra 8y ago
How do you do it on the side? Isn't it a very dynamic, very competitive field, so it requires a lot to get good results?
- amelius 8y ago
  I guess it takes a lot of time. Change a thing, wait for Google to crawl your site, then inspect the results and repeat. Most of it is waiting for Google. So yes, I suppose you can do it on the side.
  - Reedx 8y ago
    How long is that cycle for sites that Google crawls daily? Can you determine the results of a change right after the crawl, or is there lag time?
    - user5994461 8y ago
      The google webmaster tools give you the detailed search results for your site on a daily basis. I'd say you can make week to week comparison at best.
  - petra 8y ago
    So you just read about seo from time to time, get a few ideas and select one that you think will fit your circumstances, try it , and wait ?
    - orliesaurus 8y ago

3pt14159 8y ago

Yes it does, but a little goes a looooong way to Google. I've also been starting to notice that having custom HTML / CSS is boosting things more than before for smaller sites. Also, even if using JS for SPAs doesn't matter to Google there is a reasonable long tail of other web crawlers that may or may not be helpful to your ends and you'd be surprised at how many of them just use mechanize or nokogiri instead of something more robust. Basically it comes down to cost, last time I was in the custom crawler trade it was around 50x more expensive to do things with a virtual dom than it was to either straight parse the HTML or figure out the main API calls JS was making from the browser that actually had the data I needed and just run those.

devin 8y ago
Out of curiosity, what options beyond nokogiri, mechanize, etc. are you referring to? Something open source, commercial, or custom?
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Well I've done it a bunch of different ways, and granted this take is about three or four years out of date, so take it with a grain of salt. Selenium / headless Firefox with JS running in the browser waiting for things to load / resolve. This is the worst case scenario. Sometimes you can use a layered approach, first do a normal mechanize request then if the page doesn't 404 you can try to parse it there. If you detect that its relying on infinite scroll try to run the JS command via Ruby Racer then if that isn't [semi-]automatically possible put the URL in the "requires full DOM queue" all of this on a bunch of code that lights up different servers to evade log analysis. Some URLs are behind a CAPTCHA, and some people will then add those urls to the "Use a human to do the work" queue, but I've never really felt right about doing that. To me a CAPTCHA is basically someone saying, "no seriously, bugger off" plus I don't want have some poor soul waste their life copying and pasting text. It's easier to just convince a client that last 0.01% of data isn't worth getting. What's really funny is the meta game that stores have. There is no "price" any more for many of these people. There is "the price you happen to see" and they use a bunch of tricks to try to figure out if the traffic is real or not because they know that other places are dynamically setting their price to undercut them by some optimal amount. It's just an arms race, but you know what arms races are really good for? Arms manufacturers.

hashsalt 8y ago

Depends on the market. Google's move to 'entities' over keywords means broad search seo is beyond the abilities of "2 guys with some adwords experience" type agencies that were popular circa 2011/12. Quality well thought out sites that (theoretically) align with intent fare better. That said, if you're targeting a certain city, definitely still works. Most local sites are poorly optimized.

siruncledrew 8y ago
Yes, content should be much more closely paired with SEO. Googlebot's algorithms change a lot[0], so there is always going to be a lagging trend trying to keep up with it, which is why good SEO should be an iterative process. You get what you pay for (or for the effort you put in) with SEO. [0]: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

dmtroyer 8y ago

Can someone post or link to strategies for optimizing for local google seo?

discussedbefore 8y ago
The basic option for local lead gen is encouraging happy customers to leave glowing Google reviews. After that comes paying for AdWords to get those reviews in front of more eyeballs.

arnon 8y ago

SEO works but actual focused content is better.

mkirklions 8y ago
Thats what I thought was SEO. Everything Calories Per Dollar bring in hundreds of people to my website a day. As a result, I studied more restaurants Calories Per Dollar, studied Calcium Per Dollar, and other things like Caffeine Per Dollar. All relevant to my website, all quality content IMO. Google is easily my best source of traffic.

brosirmandude 8y ago

I'm a little biased because I currently work as an SEO Manager at an agency, but I would say yes. It REALLY depends on the type of business, what stage the business is at, their goals, and probably a few other things. SEO should almost always be a part of a larger overall marketing strategy. If you're an ecommerce shop optimizing product and category pages - SEO will help. If you're a plumber and ranking higher than your competition will bring in new leads & jobs - SEO will help. If you're an established SaaS company launching a new product - SEO will help. If you're a brand new SaaS startup - SEO is probably not the best thing to spend money on. That money is likely better spent on PR getting press mentions, and on PPC ads promoting your brand. The main problem I see many small businesses making is relying solely on SEO to bring them leads while having no other marketing strategy. This may have worked well for them back when you could spam websites to the top of SERPs, but it's not the case today.

jachee 8y ago
Give us some more counter-examples? Where will SEO definitely not help?
- user5994461 8y ago
  It doesn't work where the results are already cornered by high reputation sites or loads of junk. High reputation sites: travel, hotels, the popular marketplaces. Junk: drugs, mattresses, pills to grow your hair back, cooking recipes, SEO.
- nikanj 8y ago
  If you’re doing something completely new, there might not be too much organic traffic. E.g when AirBnB was launching, the users were not googling for ”home accommodation”, they were looking for hotels. Same for Twitter, nobody was looking for ”sms blogging platform”
  - davemel37 8y ago
    Thats not an SEO argument thats a keyword choice argument. If demand is minimal optimize for competitors brands or comparisons to related solutions to what your audience needs when they are potentially in the market for what you offer.

vidyesh 8y ago

In my opinion, SEO will always work because Google will keep trying to be build the perfect system (search engine) and it will never stop mainly because Google has to keep evolving depending on the current human understanding. And you cannot have a perfect system. The changes Google will do to their algorithm will sooner or later be gamed, SEO 'experts' will beat a small subset of the system, Google will penalize them and adapt making it vulnerable to more exploitation. The search engine is interacted with by humans so no matter what Google does, at the end humans(SEOs) on the other end will try to present their content first the way they see fit for humans.

codingdave 8y ago

SEO works, and always will. However, trying to figure out the latest tricks is a losing game. Even if you do figure out how to make something work today, algorithms will change and you'll be punished for having gamed the system. Instead, write 'honest' content. Write it well. Write it for humans. If you find yourself adding content in hopes the search engine will pick it up, that is a short-term gain for long-term pain. Do have your title match your content. Do try to write unique phrases that are applicable to your content. And try not to copy/paste content around your pages. Do all that, with clean markup, and your SEO will be good enough to beat out local competitors. (Even if agencies tell you differently.)

thatgerhard 8y ago
This is it. I was a seo person in the early 2000s and, like now, it was lot of snake oil. The one thing that is timeless, that works, is good content. If you write good content you will get far. Flooding pages with keywords and link farms doesn't get you anywhere in the long run.
pascalxus 8y ago
I think the advice should be: write good content that google can recognize.
cookiecaper 8y ago
I don't run a web agency and make 0 dollars from selling SEO. This is not true. Google has been gamed for well over a decade. On a past enterprise, I believed the lie "write good content and it will magically rank" and paid a content writer for about 9 months. She posted lengthy original content about 3 times per week, all highly relevant to the search terms we cared about. I did the same about once a week. A competitor with a private blog network and professional spam apparatus started outranking us just with "link building", i.e., posting links on the PBN they controlled, within 1 month of launching (we had about 15 months of content at this point). They had no content on their site at all, just a landing page that included a few of the keywords they were using in their link building. There was no blog, there was no "well-written, honest content for humans". Google had no qualms ranking them based on the link text despite their lack of supporting content. This competitor brutally beat us in organic search traffic until both businesses were shut down due to legal threats from a F500 cowering behind the CFAA. Our blog is still online. There is no significant search traffic to speak of. While the content may have aged some, it's still the best resource for a lot of the things we posted about. It's buried pretty deep on Google's search. Transparent spam and plagiarized content are easy for Google to detect, but private blog networks are a major component of modern SEO, as are several other non-organic schemes that Google has no simple algorithmic method to detect (barring slip-ups that make it obvious, though even in those cases, Google seems reluctant to punish domestic PBNs). I know of entire offices staffed with "link builders" whose entire job is to figure out how to get backlinks, and to be fair, "write really good original content" is somewhere on their list, but it's not very close to the top. Just a counterpoint. "SEO" is still a thing. Google is a high-value target and it's worth a lot of money to game them. It is quite naive to believe that they're impervious to it. You can rank OK with "honest, well-written content for humans" as long as no professionals are competing with you.

dazc 8y ago

If you have industry knowledge (outside of tech) you can rank very well for expert content because the stuff you need to beat is often written purely for SEO benefit by someone who's done 30 minutes of research and then bluffed their way through it. From what I see, in the UK at least, small businesses aren't doing this. Either they can't be bothered or are afraid of giving away knowledge they think they could be charging for?

myth_buster 8y ago

At it's core SEO boils down to a protocol for helping search engines make sense of your website/content. If you look at it that way, then yes SEO still works in 2018. But more often than not, SEO is an umbrella term which encapsulates both the good and the bad practices. Given the work Google and others have done on weeding out the latter using ML/AI as well as human intervention [0] I would say you can't be sure whether those would work. It's contingent on Search Engines being aware of the practice and penalizing that behavior. So it may work today but not guaranteed to work tomorrow. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658

ezoe 8y ago

Yes, at least for Japanese. Currently, most Japanese Google search results are garbages. It's all boilarplate texts(but produced by very cheap human labor writers so you can't easily filter it out) with keywords in it. SEO won, Google lost.

michaelbuckbee 8y ago

Others are saying: "SEO Works" but Google is steadily moving towards a pay for placement model.

austincheney 8y ago

SEO is more interesting now that search engines are seeking greater engagement and insight on user preferences. I maintain a small application at http://prettydiff.com/ http://prettydiff.com/ and both Google and DuckDuckGo have widgets or features available that come up in the search results depending upon the search terms. This saves the user time because they may get what they need directly from the intelligent search engine result data so that they don't have to enter my site. On the other hand Google makes deep links into the site immediately available as "sub-results" so that a user can enter the site more directly without wasting time on an entry point.

JeremyMorgan 8y ago

Yes, definitely. But not in the traditional "hacks" sense. I get a lot of search engine traffic to my blog, with the following strategy: Stage 1: Technical - Clean up your act. If you structure your site properly and make it accessible, search engines will crawl and index it properly. Make your content accessible from a technical standpoint. Clean up your HTML Make your URLs reflect your content, cleanly Build and submit sitemaps Make the navigation on your website simple and effective Make your website load quickly Stage 2: Content - Make great stuff. If you build great content, people will share it. They will link to you. Build great content Make things that help people Stay within a niche if you can Create content that helps people, even if you're giving a little of your service away. (For example, a roofing company featuring an article about how to choose a roof, even if it sends them to your competitor, or some DIY stuff) If you do these things, you'll do well in search engines. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but this is way more effective than keyword stuffing, link purchasing, etc. Just keep it honest.

jwr 8y ago
I could repeat everything that was written above. Exactly my experience. Just do the right thing and SEO will happen by itself. As a side note, I noticed that simple quick-loading pages seem to have more of an advantage recently than people think.
- JeremyMorgan 8y ago
  Yep, Google has been quite public about page loading speed being a factor in rankings. It's not a "make or break" and it won't instantly put you on page 1 for everything, but it makes a difference.

chx 8y ago

The tricks people used to call SEO stopped working amost 15 years ago with the Florida update. The next big one was also long ago, Panda in 2011. Writing relevant content (especially if there is new content frequently) works. Nothing else works and nothing else have had for a very long time. Most SEO services are selling snake oil. In a sense Google won and if you want to be featured at a high place in the result list you need to be relevant to what's being searched. No tricks.

chuckgreenman 8y ago

I worked for a company that does internet marketing, what I can say about SEO is that there is only one strategy that will work. If you want to be featured at the top of search results you need to have content that is actually relevant to the search term. It has to be genuinely relevant and of high quality and ideally, linked to by other respected sites. You can spend all the time and money you want on the gimmicky stuff, google will update the algorithm and wash away any progress you make.

eitland 8y ago
Not a "SEO person" and can't say if it works or not in 2018 but I've helped with a couple of web projects and it has surprised me how little work it took to get ahead of local competition (basically write something meaningful) - and how unenthusiastic business owners are to do this.

seanwilson 8y ago

I believe it does. If you write quality content people want to read and share, configure your pages so they can be easily understood by search bots and get quality backlinks, you're going to rank well. You should follow what Google actually suggest you do about SEO (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en) but I don't think it's a good idea attempting to game Google by trying to figure out what they're measuring behind-the-scenes because their algorithms can changes. Plugging my own project but based on the above principles I wrote a guide containing on-page SEO rules that authoritative sources say are important (e.g. Google) and created a Chrome extension that tests your site follows these rules: https://www.checkbot.io https://www.checkbot.io

jeffnappi 8y ago

Yes it does! However, now that the algorithms are all grown up it's about FAST sites with high quality content. There are no more games to be played. It is important to do your keyword research to understand the market you are attempting to reach, but that should only inform your content production and outreach plans. High quality content isn't cheap and you have to be in it for the long game.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

spamwatch 8y ago

I thought I'd try my usual check to see what the state of the art is. Googled "rivonia plumber" (where I live) and got pages like this: http://plumber-plumbers.co.za/index-rivonia-plumbers.html http://plumber-plumbers.co.za/index-rivonia-plumbers.html http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plumbers-plumbing-rivonia/ http://www.plumbersgauteng.co.za/gauteng-plumbers-areas/plum... That is so gamed. Keyword stuffing, repeated exact pages. I assume it's better in the US but surely the algos are run over the whole dataset? Is this a worldwide problem? When I first did that search I found nests of sites using exactly the same content and styles, with different areas. Same phone number across many sites, cross-linked out the wazoo. I don't have the interest to check now but it doesn't seem much better.

LoSboccacc 8y ago
Google can’t rank properly repost farm that reformat stackoverflow content, giving them more rank than stackoverflow itself! If something of that profile can’t get ahead of pages gaming pagerank, independent blogs focusing on content have zero chance without at least doing some legwork on backlinking and keyword optimization.

rokhayakebe 8y ago

I do SEO for lawyers, mostly Family Law. I can tell you SEO works as in: Proven Measured Positive ROI, to the point I wish I was allowed to own a law firm. One thing I would say though is SEO should be one part of your marketing strategy but not all of it. You should have a diversified approach. Edit: Let me offer a different way to look at it. Does having a well organized website help turn visitors into clients? Yes. Well that's SEO, a well organized website. Does having useful and well written information about the services and products you offer, or you industry, help your business? Yes. Well that's SEO too. Can sharing your knowledge online across different relevant forums help you grow your brand and business? Yes. Well that's SEO as well. It is just that people who do not know SEO think it is things such as keywords and metatags and url structure, but everything above and more is SEO. And all these things work to your advantage, therefore SEO works.

brosirmandude 8y ago
This 100%. SEO is often more jumping between things that don't fit most peoples preconceptions of SEO than it is about editing a title tag or submitting a sitemap.
SnowingXIV 8y ago
I also do SEO work for lawyers, primarily PI and mass torts type stuff. It does work - to an extent. There are certain technical things you need to get right and that alone can rank you decently, especially locally. There is low hanging fruit that can put you miles ahead of the competition and I've done this time and time again. The problem with SEO and why I have a grudge against the industry is past success by gaming google with PBNs has led to hoisting up a few sites that can dominate because of their past. Those sites used spam tactics, then ranked high, that led to actual relevant backlinks, google got confused, and now keeps them at the top for any new content. Others must also utilize these dicey methods and pour serious money into it to do well. At least nationwide. I'm praying for the day that house of cards comes tumbling down. Until then, having a better site, with better copy (done by a professional writer not farmed out), and using Adwords typically is the go-to.
- 8y ago

blairanderson 8y ago

Valuable Content on the internet is a fairly good approach. Outreach to related media companies to cross promote is a good approach.

jasonlotito 8y ago

Yes. SEO works. The mistake is believing that SEO is just about Google. SEO is also important for places like Etsy, where carefully crafting your listings is important. And despite the belief that SEO is slimy, it's really all about ensuring that your product gets in front of the person that wants your product. So for Etsy, it's not just about the number of people seeing your product, but the number of seeing your product that want to see it, and are willing to buy it.

davemel37 8y ago

I think the Biggest mistake people make is asking, "does it work" about any marketing strategy! The question itself begs for an anecdotal answer that is completely irrelevant to your circumstances... More importantly, the amount of people who have given up on strategies too soon or because it wasnt done in a way to provide empirical evidence, is staggering... and the amount of misinformation that flows out into the wild built on those flawed premises is really problematic for those without the context of your situation and the relative context of the situation where those opinions were formed. The second problem is that opportunity cost is rarely measured by marketers. The third problem is that your resource allocation relative to your objectives is arguably more important than any other factor or opinion about a strategy. Marketing decisions should be made in the context of your resources, goals, and your broader marketing mix. The idea that you can evaluate a specific strategy and measure its return in a Silo without considering the opportunity costs and other available strategies relative to your specific resource limitations is very dangerous and needs to be killed off! The ideal scenario is to optimize to cashflow relative to lifetime value and time value of money...or get as close as possible to this...and choose strategies within the context of this calculation. You want an SEO strategy? First, figure out if your audience is there and the cost to reach them with paid search and how long it takes to turn into cashflow and the lifetime value of that customer...than evaluate the costs to optimize to rank for that keyword, and how long it will take, than look at your other resources and strategies relative to the likely costs and returns and time to get cash returned relative to those strategies and decide if its worth investing in ranking there... Once you identify a proven keyword and have context for the cost and value and time and oppirtunity costs, than figure out how to rank for that keyword... maybe you buy a site that is already ranking. Maybe you advertise on sites already ranking. Maybe you think about the user and find a way to create a resource that Google will want to rank because of its utility... and than create empirical tests to measure progress and than you invest !!! ------ The shortcut SEO strategy i like is to ask yourself, what resource can I create for my industry that is not online but would offer so much utility that google has no choice but to optimize their algorithms to rank my resource... like wayne gretzky, go where the puck will be in the future... When is SEO is done right, its Google trying to optimize its algorithms to rank your content, not vice versa! Just my two cents.

at-fates-hands 8y ago

I used to have about a dozen clients with the agency I ran with a friend a few years ago. I found out a number of things when I was working closely with my clients. Most were doing ok in the SERPS and a few did really well because of the niche industries they were in. Some things I found out: 1 - SEO helps, but is never the determining factor in hiring any of the companies I worked with. This means you can be #1, #1 in Google and still not get any business because of it. 2 - Tracking contacts is critical. We mandated all of our clients use an answering service. They would contact people within 24 hours of receiving a contact form. The owner would then follow up to set up appointments, consultations, etc. Once we did this, we saw a massive jump in sales conversions which had nothing to do with SEO. 3 - If your design sucks and people can't find what they're looking for quickly, they're going to leave your site no matter how high you're ranking. We found this out with several of our clients who didn't want to redesign their site for various reasons. They ranked high, but their traffic and conversions sucked. We redesigned their site(s) for easier navigation, and prioritized content and got rid of other content that clogged their site. Conversions jumped by 43% over a 6 month period. SEO does matter, but even if with massive amounts of traffic because you're ranking well isn't a magic bullet for success. You also need a good design and content people can find quickly and easily.

nige123 8y ago

Google is not a search engine. It's an association engine. We know what Google is trying to do - associate the best solutions to search questions. To game Google you need to help them achieve their objective - associate their search queries with your solutions. Broadly there are three types of search desire: 1. navigational - the user wants to find a resource or place? 2. informational - the user wants to learn something? 3. transactional - the user wants to perform an action (pay a bill, book a flight, hotel, restaurant etc) If a page satisfies a user's search desire - they won't search for it again. This missing search trail is a valuable signal to Google. It provides some evidence that page A satisfies query B. The more these signals fire the stronger the association. SEO 2018? Ideally make pages that solve your users' search problems without them needing to go back to Google to search again.

dorgo 8y ago
.... Or let bots do searches on google, clicking on your link and never search again with same IP/browser/... combination. Or let bots do the opposite for your competitors. As long as google uses a metric to determine how good a page A satisfies query B there always will be the possibilty to optimize for this metric instead of actually to solve users search problems.

jackdaw 8y ago

It is still works like how past time its been working. Some algorithms are changed but technique of the seo is the same. https://www.overnightgraphics.com/ https://www.overnightgraphics.com/

taveras 8y ago

I firmly believe that one cannot be a webmaster and ignore how search engines work.

uberend23 8y ago

SEO is sometimes seen as a dark art to get your stuff to the top. I'ts not. Really, SEO means labelling your content so google understands what it is. After that, it's all about links.

rajacombinator 8y ago

If you can SEO yourself to top rankings for tons of keywords, probably. But you probably can’t do that through pure SEO without strong existing organic ranking. Also highly product dependent if SEO is a viable channel. Probably best to cover the basics, optimize page load, and forget the rest. -t. my impression from dabbling briefly with it.

uday11 8y ago

Yes, seo still works. All you need to do is find out your competitors, do similar on page optimization, replicate their backlinks and keep improving this. And there are ton's of other things to do, but first and foremost step is to make sure the site is technically ready.

gcuofano 8y ago

Disclaimer: I work for WordLift.io, which focuses on Semantic SEO and on-page SEO automation. Thus my opinion might be biased. The answer is SEO matters a lot. Yet SEO today means something entirely different from what it meant a few years back. Back in 2015 when I started my blog, I was writing what would be defined quality content. It was very in-depth, researched (at times it would take me weeks to write a piece of over three thousand words). However, when I hit the publish button I wasn't getting any traffic (at the time a few dozens visits per month!). True, quality content is the baseline, but if you don't have an idea of how search engines work, you might gain traction over a few years time, but the process is quite long and not guaranteed to succeed! However, what SEO means today is different from what it meant a few years back. In the past keywords and backlinks were all that mattered. They still count. However, it will come a day when they will stop working. Why? Since 2012, Google has been building a giant knowledge graph, which main aim is to gather information on the web, structure it in the form of nodes and edges to construct this massive graph. Thus, getting featured within Google's so-called knowledge vault becomes critical for an effective SEO strategy. Thus, if in the past you might be targeting keywords to be positioned on the SERP. Today you might want to be more focused on long-tail keywords that can bring you in featured snippets or inside a knowledge panel. In fact, those are also the avenues to get into the Google assistant, thus voice search. In short, while in the past it made sense to use backlinks and keywords because Google lacked the power to use more sophisticated methods to index and rank the web pages. Now you have to switch from a keyword centered content model. To an entity-based content model. This kind of approach is more holistic and targets not only the SERP, but it allows you to get ready for voice search. What are some practical examples of having this approach? - an internal glossary that targets specific questions your readers/potential customers might have - structured data in the form of Schema injected as JSON-LD (in this way you're giving better data that does not affect the performance of the page) - use a better internal linking strategy, that connects articles to topical pages (like the glossary pages) and back There are more strategies to adopt, but those are the ones that come to mind right now.