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> sadly the only game in town for new sites these days is likely facebook traffic, snapchat and youtube. I disagree. I started a new site last year for work, i

> sadly the only game in town for new sites these days is likely facebook traffic, snapchat and youtube. I disagree. I started a new site last year for work, it's an educational site that contains resources for teachers and parents supporting children with a variety of special educational needs. SEO isn't a big deal for us, but I did all the basics, made sure pages were structured properly and the content is good. 12 months later virtually all our traffic is from organic search, and we don't use Facebook, Snapchat and only use Youtube to host a few videos. It seems to me like Google is still doing its job OK.

jacquesm 8y ago
> 12 months later virtually all our traffic is from organic search That is a very dangerous position to be in. If all your traffic comes from a single source you are essentially one algorithm change or a penalty away from non-existence.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Sure, just like university pages die out because students stop visiting them... Oh wait they don't. Despite most being terrible and badly indexed. See, there are secondary deeper sources like word of mouth, aggregators like reddit etc. They do not direct a lot of traffic but they will make a good site (esp. specialist) resurface every now and again. There are also mailing lists and forums which are too diffuse to count in many cases. This is opposed to relatively less worthy news sites or ones depending on ad income to run. Or perhaps the page has very specific content, requiring specific search which means there is little competition except from junk like Quora...
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    He said that virtually all his traffic is organic search through Google. That means you are arguing with yourself here.
- dazc 8y ago
  If you're not gaming the system there is very little risk.
  - WalterGR 8y ago
    Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Individual employees within Google can arbitrarily kill a website by turning on a manual penalty against the site and marking that penalty as hidden from the site owner.
    - acdha 8y ago
      Do you have an example of that happening without cause?
      - WalterGR 8y ago
        Yes. There has been a hidden, manual penalty in place against one of my websites for years. I was only made aware of it when a whistle-blower inside Google informed me.
        acdha 8y ago
        Can you go into any detail about what happened — did you steal someone's parking space in Mountain View, etc?
        jacquesm 8y ago
        That's grounds for a lawsuit if true. Maybe you should substantiate such a strong claim, it is rather poor form to make such a definitive statement without proof or some legal action to go with it. How much worse could it get, after all, according to you they've already done the deed, might as well make it stick now.
        WalterGR 8y ago
        Maybe you should substantiate such a strong claim, it is rather poor form to make such a definitive statement without proof What form of proof would you accept short of a statement acknowledging the penalty, via a venue controlled only by Google? or some legal action to go with it. Do you have advice on obtaining representation competent enough to take on Google? My budget is $0. (Also, is it such a strong claim? I understand the presumption of innocence. But why would the discovery that Google can and does secretely, manually, penalize websites without cause be so shocking?)
- koonsolo 8y ago
  On the short term, yes. On the long term, you can be sure that the most popular search engine presents the most relevant results. So if you make sure you have relevant content, you should show up in the search results.
- Angostura 8y ago
  Sorry, I should have been clearer. About 60% of traffic is direct visits, the remaining 40% is via search engines.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    That's better, thank you for clearing that up.
koonsolo 8y ago
Exactly this! Seems like the original comment is complaining about something he knows nothing about. Search algorithms are hard, and Google is doing a good job at it. If not, I dare anyone to make a better search engine. The people I attract to my site also mainly come from Google. People searching for something and finding it. It's very strong. If you want your article to be shared on social media, you better make sure you have a clickbait title that makes people upset and angry. If you want to be ranked on google, make sure you have a good article. My site is ranked pretty high on important keywords, and I didn't use any of the SEO hacks. My strategy: make good web content, and rely on the search engines that their algorithms need to be optimized to present good web content. So far that has been working out really well. I seriously never saw any quality links on my Facebook feed.
- stevenicr 8y ago
  "he knows nothing about." - I don't know everything about google or seo, but I have been semi-professionally paying attention to these issues with multiple sources for many years. Back "in the day" webmasters associated the google index update with moon phases and a mysterious "googleguy" would occasionally confirm new indexes are now live. So I've watched many keywords and sites and used google for many results for a long time. I've read a lot of other professionals and tried to keep up with things. Dare anyone to make a better engine? Google had one prior to panda and whatever other animal spam eater around that time. Of course this is an opinion and they will vary - as a user I felt google was better at delivering less censored results long ago, as a user I admit their local results are better than ever - but the censored ones are certainly worse for my use cases. I am glad you search is very strong, I hope that continues for you. I really don't care for the long posted advice "have a good article" and google will rank you high. I could write a great article, I could pay Nobel writers and scientists to write a good article. Fact is if you don't have the right places linking to you you won't be found most of the time. In competitive search phrases if you have not gotten placement in a certain group of online portals, then you won't stand a chance. The whole "bad backlinks" can cause you to lose your position has been weaponized for a long time. The time it takes to create the right utf encoded link disavow things is a bad joke, and if you are in a competitive area, you may find yourself trying to figure out how someone gets 100 bad links to your site each month when you can't get 10 good or bad links with lots of trying. You must be an amazing writer to have your site ranked high on "important keywords" just by "mak[ing] good web content". I am glad that's working out well! I rarely see good quality links on fbook, since I only check it a few times a year. However I have watched the trends, and I can say that depending on google as a webmaster or a user is not a wise idea - you have no way to know when they change things and affect what you can show and what can be seen. I have watched facebook and others increase their usage and can say after running more than $100k in google ads and fbook ads, that at one time google was king for quality traffic, however I strongly believe fbook is much better for quality leads / customers for the time or money spent. I stand behind what I said about my experience and current state of thinking in my original comment. I am glad your experience is not the same. I still feel like google is today's yellow pages, and if not for their forced defaults in android would be fading in usage, and if not for their purchase of youtube would be worth much less today and in the future. There was a time when many businesses had to out spend each other in the yellow pages to get business, now you can't give away the thick books. I have the last yellow pages I saw in my city, it's from 2013 and it's quite tiny.

jacquesm 8y ago

> 12 months later virtually all our traffic is from organic search That is a very dangerous position to be in. If all your traffic comes from a single source you are essentially one algorithm change or a penalty away from non-existence.

AstralStorm 8y ago
Sure, just like university pages die out because students stop visiting them... Oh wait they don't. Despite most being terrible and badly indexed. See, there are secondary deeper sources like word of mouth, aggregators like reddit etc. They do not direct a lot of traffic but they will make a good site (esp. specialist) resurface every now and again. There are also mailing lists and forums which are too diffuse to count in many cases. This is opposed to relatively less worthy news sites or ones depending on ad income to run. Or perhaps the page has very specific content, requiring specific search which means there is little competition except from junk like Quora...
- jacquesm 8y ago
  He said that virtually all his traffic is organic search through Google. That means you are arguing with yourself here.
dazc 8y ago
If you're not gaming the system there is very little risk.
- WalterGR 8y ago
  Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Individual employees within Google can arbitrarily kill a website by turning on a manual penalty against the site and marking that penalty as hidden from the site owner.
  - acdha 8y ago
    Do you have an example of that happening without cause?
    - WalterGR 8y ago
      Yes. There has been a hidden, manual penalty in place against one of my websites for years. I was only made aware of it when a whistle-blower inside Google informed me.
      - acdha 8y ago
        Can you go into any detail about what happened — did you steal someone's parking space in Mountain View, etc?
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        That's grounds for a lawsuit if true. Maybe you should substantiate such a strong claim, it is rather poor form to make such a definitive statement without proof or some legal action to go with it. How much worse could it get, after all, according to you they've already done the deed, might as well make it stick now.
        WalterGR 8y ago
        Maybe you should substantiate such a strong claim, it is rather poor form to make such a definitive statement without proof What form of proof would you accept short of a statement acknowledging the penalty, via a venue controlled only by Google? or some legal action to go with it. Do you have advice on obtaining representation competent enough to take on Google? My budget is $0. (Also, is it such a strong claim? I understand the presumption of innocence. But why would the discovery that Google can and does secretely, manually, penalize websites without cause be so shocking?)
koonsolo 8y ago
On the short term, yes. On the long term, you can be sure that the most popular search engine presents the most relevant results. So if you make sure you have relevant content, you should show up in the search results.
Angostura 8y ago
Sorry, I should have been clearer. About 60% of traffic is direct visits, the remaining 40% is via search engines.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  That's better, thank you for clearing that up.

koonsolo 8y ago

Exactly this! Seems like the original comment is complaining about something he knows nothing about. Search algorithms are hard, and Google is doing a good job at it. If not, I dare anyone to make a better search engine. The people I attract to my site also mainly come from Google. People searching for something and finding it. It's very strong. If you want your article to be shared on social media, you better make sure you have a clickbait title that makes people upset and angry. If you want to be ranked on google, make sure you have a good article. My site is ranked pretty high on important keywords, and I didn't use any of the SEO hacks. My strategy: make good web content, and rely on the search engines that their algorithms need to be optimized to present good web content. So far that has been working out really well. I seriously never saw any quality links on my Facebook feed.

stevenicr 8y ago
"he knows nothing about." - I don't know everything about google or seo, but I have been semi-professionally paying attention to these issues with multiple sources for many years. Back "in the day" webmasters associated the google index update with moon phases and a mysterious "googleguy" would occasionally confirm new indexes are now live. So I've watched many keywords and sites and used google for many results for a long time. I've read a lot of other professionals and tried to keep up with things. Dare anyone to make a better engine? Google had one prior to panda and whatever other animal spam eater around that time. Of course this is an opinion and they will vary - as a user I felt google was better at delivering less censored results long ago, as a user I admit their local results are better than ever - but the censored ones are certainly worse for my use cases. I am glad you search is very strong, I hope that continues for you. I really don't care for the long posted advice "have a good article" and google will rank you high. I could write a great article, I could pay Nobel writers and scientists to write a good article. Fact is if you don't have the right places linking to you you won't be found most of the time. In competitive search phrases if you have not gotten placement in a certain group of online portals, then you won't stand a chance. The whole "bad backlinks" can cause you to lose your position has been weaponized for a long time. The time it takes to create the right utf encoded link disavow things is a bad joke, and if you are in a competitive area, you may find yourself trying to figure out how someone gets 100 bad links to your site each month when you can't get 10 good or bad links with lots of trying. You must be an amazing writer to have your site ranked high on "important keywords" just by "mak[ing] good web content". I am glad that's working out well! I rarely see good quality links on fbook, since I only check it a few times a year. However I have watched the trends, and I can say that depending on google as a webmaster or a user is not a wise idea - you have no way to know when they change things and affect what you can show and what can be seen. I have watched facebook and others increase their usage and can say after running more than $100k in google ads and fbook ads, that at one time google was king for quality traffic, however I strongly believe fbook is much better for quality leads / customers for the time or money spent. I stand behind what I said about my experience and current state of thinking in my original comment. I am glad your experience is not the same. I still feel like google is today's yellow pages, and if not for their forced defaults in android would be fading in usage, and if not for their purchase of youtube would be worth much less today and in the future. There was a time when many businesses had to out spend each other in the yellow pages to get business, now you can't give away the thick books. I have the last yellow pages I saw in my city, it's from 2013 and it's quite tiny.