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SEO is like ad-tech, a net negative to our society. There's no white-hat SEO, in the same way that there's no unintrusive ad tech.
by uddoe 7y ago
SEO is like ad-tech, a net negative to our society. There's no white-hat SEO, in the same way that there's no unintrusive ad tech.
- amelius 7y agoAdvertising is like hacking the free market and should be illegal. Not the best product wins, but the one with the largest advertising budget.
- coherentpony 7y ago> Advertising is like hacking the free market and should be illegal. Not the best product wins, but the one with the largest advertising budget. Who decides what is the 'best' product? If advertising were illegal then how do people find out about products? Seems to me if advertising were illegal there would be no free market.
- ahoka 7y agoThe same way I find out about non-advertised yogurt. I go to the grocery shop and choose one based on information displayed on the packaging (which you can count as advertisement if you are pedantic) and my needs. If it was good then I keep buying it and tell my friends and family about it. "Good wine needs no bush."
- lotsofpulp 7y agoIt’s not pedantic. People have limited time, and stores have limited space, so how do you propose a product get chosen to occupy this time and space versus the competition? At some point, someone has to market, advertise, or convince someone else that their product or service is worth the other person’s time, money, and space. Whether or not it’s between grocery store and brand, or brand and consumer, it’s still advertising/marketing. Of course, it can be taken too far, but with rules such as requiring objectively true disclosures, we can strive to strike a balance.
- tracker1 7y agoStores actually charge for preferred locations within the store/product section. They also charge for end-cap locations etc. There are lots of marketing options for within the store alone, and is generally even then still less biased than typical advertising. The problem is between advertising and inconsistent/misleading studies, you cannot trust any person, product or company at this point and imho the system itself will fall over eventually and there will be restrictions and regulation that follows.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoHence taxpayers should vote for sufficiently funded pro consumer organizations such as FTC, CFPB, FCC, FDA, EPA, etc. that hold those responsible for fraudulent claims.
- tracker1 7y agoA lot of the problem is some have, others go over the top. Also, taxpayers don't vote on funding and even then, most federal spending is poorly organized and structured. I'd rather see more legislation that lets more private consumers and private orgs sue for violation instead of only relegating enforcement to those oversight orgs alone.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoQuality of life for everyone has been greatly improved by those working in America's civil government organizations. Obviously there will be corruption and the pendulum swings too far at some point, but given the list of recent crises, over regulation is clearly not the problem. If we want accountability, then we should demand transparency. Data should be posted online so that it can be vetted and double and triple checked.
- tracker1 7y agoI'm absolutely in favor of more transparency... In fact, as far as I'm concerned any orgs that do political advertising or funding of any kind should be required to have 100% transparent funding and not be able to accept donations from companies that aren't. Same should apply to all politicians running for high-level offices. For the most part minimal government with restrictions on corporations to ensure the most broad transparency and limited collective "rights" would be best IMHO. I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian. A lot of people equate that with being Corporatist or anti government. I just feel that most people would be better off finding private solutions for the most part. Any time a large corporation and/or governments get involved it feels more likely to end up for the worse. The driver being when corporate bodies and politicians lie.
- jcfrei 7y agoAdvertisements exist to inform you about yogurts that your local grocery shop doesn't have.
- Kaiyou 7y agoIf my local store doesn't have it, it might as well not exist.
- tikkabhuna 7y agoHow do I then find out about new products? New ideas that myself or my friends don't know about? Do I rely on the creator's friends spreading the word until I see it? Word of mouth only works so well. Also, the supermarket analogy falls short when the number of "products" is extremely large and you rely on search. Seems more like the equivalent of going to a very large supermarket in the dark with a flashlight.
- Kaiyou 7y agoWord of mouth. The same way you learn about all those other things you didn't want to know, like who dies in the newest Avenger flick.
- Kaiyou 7y agoThe same way they found out before ads and the same way people that block all ads find out.
- dmitriid 7y ago> The same way they found out before ads So, as they did in stone age? Ads have been around for as ling as there has been commerce.
- brlewis 7y ago>The same way they found out before ads From vendors shouting out a list of their wares in a physical marketplace? >the same way people that block all ads find out From friends who don't block ads? How will this work?
- Kaiyou 7y agoI'm someone that blocks all ads. It works perfectly well. Whenever I have a need to buy something, I do the research myself. I do not buy things I do not need.
- Y_Y 7y ago> If advertising were illegal then how do people find out about products? Can you really not think of any way?
- ekianjo 7y agoSpreading awareness is essential when you want to sell anything. This happens since the dawn of human society in the street when shopkeepers call out passersbys to sell their wares. What other means do you have?
- nitrogen 7y agoImpartial organizations (maybe like Consumer Reports?), providing dispassionate listings of products and product categories for a fixed listing fee to evaluate the claims made by a product.
- ekianjo 7y agoThey can never hope to test all products out there. There are more products available every day than they have manpower to test. And even their tests are biased in their own ways. There is no objective measure to test everything.
- anoncake 7y agoThey could if we reallocated the resources currently wasted on advertising to them.
- Kaiyou 7y agoJust making a good product people actually have use for. I can't think of a single useful thing I own that I've disovered via someone advertising to me.
- ekianjo 7y agoWhen you have literally billions of products out there, there is no way one can make a new product and have it sell without doing any form of advertising or sales activities. Plus, what is true for you is not true for just everyone out there.
- mschuster91 7y ago> Who decides what is the 'best' product? Impartial consumer advocacy groups comparing products on open, fair and repeatably measurable factors, for one. > If advertising were illegal then how do people find out about products? Same way people found out before advertising existed: word-of-mouth, trade fairs, product catalogs... and the question is always, does the world NEED the new product? Is it beneficial for society if supermarkets carry literally dozens of different brands of simple plain white yogurt, of which half goes to waste because people mostly buy the cheap white label stuff? Do we actually even need brands as a society? For many common goods the brand is actually irrelevant already. Think HDMI cables - as long as it carries a legal certificate that it conforms to HDMI specs, I don't care if the cable is from Amazon, Mediamarkt, or whatever the name of the Alibaba or ebay shop is. And I won't have any benefit from shelling out 10k bucks for a 20m cable over one that costs 20 bucks. As societies, we definitely need to have a proper democratic debate and vote on how we want to (re)shape the relationship between consumers and producers. The current way is unsustainable.
- jasode 7y ago>Same way people found out before advertising existed: word-of-mouth, trade fairs, product catalogs I didn't downvote your comment but here's a fyi about the pervasiveness of advertising if you didn't already know... Trade fairs are actually a form of "advertising". For example, a trade show selling a 10ft-by-10ft booth is essentially selling a 100 sqft "ad slot". The "ad inventory" for sale is the whole trade show floor. When companies spend money for a trade show booth, they categorize it in their financial accounting as "marketing budget".[0] Product catalogs are often partially funded by sponsors that are featured in the catalog. As for "word of mouth", the 1st person that started the chain of recommendations was often exposed to advertising. [0] https://www.thetradeshownetwork.com/trade-show-blog/the-8-marketing-budget-templates-you-need-to-manage-your-marketing-spend https://www.thetradeshownetwork.com/trade-show-blog/the-8-ma...
- mschuster91 7y agoOf course that are forms of advertising, but these were the tools of the trade for thousands of years. Modern advertising h(a)unting us wherever and whenever we go is a fairly modern innovation, but society and regulations have not caught up with it by far. Widespread influencer marketing for anyone but ultra-big brands able to buy product placements in movies would have been beyond unimaginable until the advent of smartphones where every tiny hotel has the opportunity to have global reach for, essentially, paying a flight and the cost of the stay for the influencer. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Targeted advertising is also something that only got possible and mass-affordable in the last two decades, and the mechanisms that make it work are deeply cutting into everyone's privacy. It isn't actually even possible any more to live any kind of modern life without your data ending up at the big tech companies' silos to be mined for ads - have a brick-style cellphone and give the number to a friend? Facebook and Whatsapp, as well as Google, now know your name and phone number. Order something online? The cloud provider hosting the (mail) infrastructure of the shop has your data and knows what you've ordered. These days one can't even go "offline shopping" anymore as the tape-backed gross quality anti-theft cameras got replaced by HD or 4K capable sensors with backend infrastructure that enables real time face identification and motion tracking, probably even eye tracking now, to watch your every blink while strolling through the aisles. Thanks to modern open source libraries I can probably throw together a MVP store tracking system in a day or two. This kind of tracking is a commodity now, in a total free-for-all world, and aside from GDPR society hasn't had any kind of debate on that. And that's just the stuff that you literally cannot evade - the things people do willingly in exchange for reward programs, cashbacks and the likes are even more encompassing.
- packet_nerd 7y agoThere should be a service to research, test, benchmark, and otherwise review products. I'd pay for a service like that, and would expect them to never ever accept any kind of compensation from companies making the products they review.
- ekianjo 7y agoNo, not always. Microsoft spent a ridiculous amount of money to advertise Bing and it brought them no share at all. Where did you get the idea that advertising trumps everything?
- specialist 7y agoI have a different take: Advertising is hacking. More theft, less a catalyst for needs fulfillment. We live and function within an attention economy. Advertisement funded business models can only compete for our attention. Preferential attachment leads to power law distribution of activity. The mathematical result is called laissez faire, "winner takes all", fads, last stage capitalism, "the free market". Agree that advertising should be illegal. A conclusion that tortures me. I worked on recommenders for a fashion retailer. As a consumer, I desparately want help finding the products just for me. As an insider, trying to address my own wants and desires, I couldn't even sell "a shirt that fits" to myself. Because in practice, recommenders are just another mirror, filter bubble, echo chamber, preferential attachment redux. If I'm ever presented with a recommendation (advertisement) which satisfies a need -- fashionable, technical, practical, whatever -- it's little more than an accident. Oh well. Maybe the "personalization" craze will fare better. Meanwhile, I soldier on with my foraging skills.
- packet_nerd 7y agoCompletely agree. Especially misleading and deceptive ads and ads which deliver malware. Also I really wish my state would ban billboards. In their place, I want to see (and would pay for) high quality 3rd party product benchmarking, testing, and reviewing.
- mrguyorama 7y agoMy entire life I have lived in a state with no billboards. I still manage to find products and services.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wmeredith 7y agoI strongly disagree. White hat SEO is as simple as making your content easily machine readable and digestible so it can be found.
- jasonhansel 7y agoBut using semantic markup is good for reasons other than SEO (e.g. it's a must for accessibility). "White-hat SEO" just amounts to "producing useful content"--anything beyond that is essentially gaming the system.
- wffurr 7y agoThat's correct. There's a good description of "white hat SEO" uo thread and it amounts to "make a useful well-designed website".
- wpyz 7y agoWhen I worked for an agency, I like to think they pitched 'white-hat' SEO. The sell to clients was that there was no magic snake-oil involved, it was: 1. Make your website easy for Google to digest (which could involve some dev work, fixing bugs and markup, speeding up sites, mobile websites) 2. Understand what your market is and what they might be after (which led to a lot of analytical work) 3. Make quality content that makes you an authority (which involves content strategy, and cross-sells into copy and creative) 4. Properly promote your content for backlinks (the agency had a lot of success with promoting creative pieces to sites with strong link equity, such as Daily Mail Online etc.) SEO is a dirty term, but a strategy for creating what is useful and can actually strengthen brands isn't evil.
- nitrogen 7y ago#3 can devolve into a bunch of competing content farms that end up burying the legitimate information from people who know and care. #4 is just the reality of modern journalism, but it's still pretty darn disappointing that "journalism" is so strongly influenced by and often consists of PR.
- softwaredoug 7y agoStrongly disagree One reason google is an effective search engine is society has incentives to make their stuff findable. It’s not just magic algorithms. The perception of Google’s quality is as much because we all know when we write an article how to make informative titles and content, and knowledge if we’re too spammy we’ll be punished. Eventually black hat SEO suffers in the long run. I work in search, and one huge reason a given companies enterprise or site search sucks is because content authors don’t care about making their content findable by search. A search system is a series of social incentives to make attractive, findable search results, not just technology.
- luckylion 7y ago> The perception of Google’s quality is as much because we all know when we write an article how to make informative titles and content, and knowledge if we’re too spammy we’ll be punished. Errr, I personally hate the top articles google presents me for pretty much every query. Keyword stuffed long-winded texts that hide the information they are promising in the headline somewhere in multiple irrelevant paragraphs or just don't provide it at all. To me, Google's perceived quality has fallen significantly over the past five years.
- Torwald 7y agoThe same here. I usually just click "page 5" and then hit a few "results" that look promising to find an entry into the "sub-bubble" of that particular niche.
- norswap 7y agoWrong, I think white-hat SEO is in making sites that do rank well in search-engines because it fits the criteria the search engines have outlined for sites that are user-friendly: clear outlines, no usability-killing scripts, friendly urls, fast, etc... In other words: sticking to the spirit of the law, not the letter. It's true that SEO in isolation is a bit pathological on its own — it should always be thought as a part of a broader UX strategy.
- luckylion 7y agoIf you want to rank, 95% is links, not technical SEO. I agree of course, that making your site work well is important, but that usually won't get you any top rankings. The latest trend is to simply rent subdomains or directories on large websites (newspapers, magazines, tv stations), including header/footer links from the main page. Works like a charm, whatever you publish there will rank like crazy because of the massive links the main page gets.
- saagarjha 7y agoThis is an unnecessarily extreme view unless you define what your limit of “SEO” and “adtech” is. Is me making quality content rather than garbage SEO? Am I “gaming the system” by using semantic HTML rather than a JavaScript monstrosity to display the content? Is it really an ad if I write about something I found agreeable?
- lallysingh 7y agoNo, they're negative players manifesting in these ways. The good-player version of both are incredibly simple. Producing good content that uses easy-to-find terminology. Putting yourself on directories (e.g. yellow pages), working conferences, handing out business cards, working with trade press, etc.