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There are some odd things about this article: 1.) A .marketing tld is an odd choice for someone who claims to run an SEO (or any kind of ad) agency. 2.) The w

by hluska 7y ago

There are some odd things about this article: 1.) A .marketing tld is an odd choice for someone who claims to run an SEO (or any kind of ad) agency. 2.) The writer has gone to great lengths to hide most references to the names of some offending competitors...yet, they left full meta descriptions. In other cases, the author seemed to mock company names. 3.) The article is poorly written and rife with grammatical errors. English is tough and we didn’t all grow up writing so, so it’s in poor taste to point out another’s writing issues. But, speaking as someone who is pretty good at SEO, at this point, the only ‘trick’ that works is to release and promote well written articles. 4.) Nothing in this is particularly black hat. Does anyone believe that setting a link’s height to 0 actually works in 2019? And the rest of the tactics are par for the course in a sketchy industry. Between those four things, I just can’t trust the author. This article was hard to read, uninformative and ultimately serves as a horrible branding device. If an SEO is this poor at marketing him or herself, why??

CaptainZapp 7y ago
Reminds me of an ex-boss of mine (and a pretty smart one, at that). He left the company I was working for to manage IT at his father's smaller company. Needless to say that he soon received a visit by some "SEO specialists". So he received that visit of two well dressed, soft spoken dudes who offered their services asking them: "What's your company name again?" Typing it into Google his next question was: OK, so you're high powered SEO specialists. Would you mind explaining why your own company is not to be found in the first two pages of Google's search results when I search for you company by name?" Let's just say it was a rather short visit.
paulcole 7y ago
> 1.) A .marketing tld is an odd choice for someone who claims to run an SEO (or any kind of ad) agency. One of the biggest SEO myths is that Google penalizes for these unusual TLDs. What’s really going on is that a .com/.net/.org is likely to simply be older and more trusted than a .marketing, resulting in higher rankings. All else equal there is no difference to Google when it comes to the TLD.
- hluska 7y ago
  Let’s look at this particular domain. Serendipz.marketing. Serendipz.net and .org are both currently available. Which would you trust more? I have never seen any research that suggests that a vanity tld like .marketing is as trusted as a generic tld like .net or .org. I have, however, read troves of research that suggest the opposite - that vanity tlds are less trusted.
  - paulcole 7y ago
    I think we’re confusing 2 kinds of trust: personal trust in a business and Google’s trust in a domain for SEO purposes. For SEO purposes there is no downside to TLD: > Overall, [Google’s] systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search. https://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the-new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671 https://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle... As far as personal trust goes, I remember that I am not the audience. Yes, .marketing seems weird to me, but I am not the owner of a small business looking for SEO services. Maybe it is impressive to them? Maybe they never notice the domain because they find the site by Googling and never type it themselves?
    - hluska 7y ago
      I’m sorry, but I’m not talking about whether Google trusts vanity tlds. I’m talking about consumers. I’ll rephrase my last paragraph, though I don’t know how to make it more clear. I have never read one single piece of remotely credible research that suggests that consumers trust vanity tlds as much as a generic tld. However, I have read a lot of research that suggests the opposite - consumers trust generic tlds more than vanity. Can you show me some credible research that says that small business owners are impressed by .marketing? Preferably research released by people who don’t sell vanity tlds.
      - paulcole 7y ago
        I have no research. But we're not exactly swimming in your research that there's a negative to a .marketing TLD either.
jacurtis 7y ago
> The article is poorly written and rife with grammatical errors. English is tough and we didn’t all grow up writing so, so it’s in poor taste to point out another’s writing issues. But, speaking as someone who is pretty good at SEO, at this point, the only ‘trick’ that works is to release and promote well written articles. Yep, this is how I read it too. The whole time this felt like a non-native English speaker wrote this article. It isn't just that it suffered grammatical errors and poor writing, but it certainly reads like it is a non-native English speaker. Since it is an SEO company in Seattle, WA - this seemed surprising to me.

by hluska 7y ago

CaptainZapp 7y ago

Reminds me of an ex-boss of mine (and a pretty smart one, at that). He left the company I was working for to manage IT at his father's smaller company. Needless to say that he soon received a visit by some "SEO specialists". So he received that visit of two well dressed, soft spoken dudes who offered their services asking them: "What's your company name again?" Typing it into Google his next question was: OK, so you're high powered SEO specialists. Would you mind explaining why your own company is not to be found in the first two pages of Google's search results when I search for you company by name?" Let's just say it was a rather short visit.

paulcole 7y ago

> 1.) A .marketing tld is an odd choice for someone who claims to run an SEO (or any kind of ad) agency. One of the biggest SEO myths is that Google penalizes for these unusual TLDs. What’s really going on is that a .com/.net/.org is likely to simply be older and more trusted than a .marketing, resulting in higher rankings. All else equal there is no difference to Google when it comes to the TLD.

hluska 7y ago
Let’s look at this particular domain. Serendipz.marketing. Serendipz.net and .org are both currently available. Which would you trust more? I have never seen any research that suggests that a vanity tld like .marketing is as trusted as a generic tld like .net or .org. I have, however, read troves of research that suggest the opposite - that vanity tlds are less trusted.
- paulcole 7y ago
  I think we’re confusing 2 kinds of trust: personal trust in a business and Google’s trust in a domain for SEO purposes. For SEO purposes there is no downside to TLD: > Overall, [Google’s] systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search. https://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the-new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671 https://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle... As far as personal trust goes, I remember that I am not the audience. Yes, .marketing seems weird to me, but I am not the owner of a small business looking for SEO services. Maybe it is impressive to them? Maybe they never notice the domain because they find the site by Googling and never type it themselves?
  - hluska 7y ago
    I’m sorry, but I’m not talking about whether Google trusts vanity tlds. I’m talking about consumers. I’ll rephrase my last paragraph, though I don’t know how to make it more clear. I have never read one single piece of remotely credible research that suggests that consumers trust vanity tlds as much as a generic tld. However, I have read a lot of research that suggests the opposite - consumers trust generic tlds more than vanity. Can you show me some credible research that says that small business owners are impressed by .marketing? Preferably research released by people who don’t sell vanity tlds.
    - paulcole 7y ago
      I have no research. But we're not exactly swimming in your research that there's a negative to a .marketing TLD either.

jacurtis 7y ago

> The article is poorly written and rife with grammatical errors. English is tough and we didn’t all grow up writing so, so it’s in poor taste to point out another’s writing issues. But, speaking as someone who is pretty good at SEO, at this point, the only ‘trick’ that works is to release and promote well written articles. Yep, this is how I read it too. The whole time this felt like a non-native English speaker wrote this article. It isn't just that it suffered grammatical errors and poor writing, but it certainly reads like it is a non-native English speaker. Since it is an SEO company in Seattle, WA - this seemed surprising to me.