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> but the SEO people seem to trust these shady sites more. It makes more sense when you realize that the SEO people (with a few exceptions) are usually pretty

by Youden 7y ago

> but the SEO people seem to trust these shady sites more. It makes more sense when you realize that the SEO people (with a few exceptions) are usually pretty shady as well. You rarely hear them recommending that you write better content to get better results, it's always nonsense like "put nofollow on everything so your score doesn't leak".

mnbvkhgvmj 7y ago
This really has not been my experience with SEO people in the 2010s. They have focused on page load, no errors, good redirect schemes etc
Spivak 7y ago
I mean if you're hiring a SEO person isn't this literally what you're paying for -- tricks to increase your search ranking without changing your content?
- SquareWheel 7y ago
  Not at all. SEOs are more likely to find all the ways you're currently hanging yourself. Some common examples I see are: - Putting important text inside of images - Duplicate content out the wazoo - Not making use of canonicals - No sitemaps, html or xml - Page performance issues - Broken mobile support And of course, poor content. You can't rank if you don't have content.
  - actsof 7y ago
    I'd argue most of those are necessary for good content (if we don't view content separately from presentation) > Putting important text inside of images I'm sure the reason for this is that it's hard to parse text from images, and while Google could use their AI to figure it out, they don't bother. But it also prevents blind people from being able to read the text, so it does worsen the experience. > Duplicate content This makes the site harder to navigate for users as well. > Page performace issues Quite obviously makes the experience worse. > Broken mobile support. -..-
  - mikemotherwell 7y ago
    SEO should be a bridge between technical and non-technical people that build out sites. No site's output is 100% because of the tech team - content writers can put in weird code, marketers can add all sorts of stuff to say Tag manager, the robots.txt is likely from 2008. And a site built with code as the primary goal is likely lacking in some marketing oomph somewhere. Someone who's job it is to find the right balance, and aim to maximise the returns from the single largest source of traffic, is pretty valuable.
rafaelm 7y ago
You need to find better SEO people then :) But I understand, there's a lot of snake-oil and "one weird trick to rank first" that brings a bad name to the SEO world. I've seen people go on Fiverr and expect to find top-notch SEOs there. There's more to SEO than just writing good content. There's a lot of technical stuff that can bite you and your awesome content will never rank. Stuff like improving site structure, canonicals, learning to deal with multi-language versions of your content, implementing proper redirects, etc,etc is something that a good SEO should be able to fix and improve.

by Youden 7y ago

mnbvkhgvmj 7y ago

This really has not been my experience with SEO people in the 2010s. They have focused on page load, no errors, good redirect schemes etc

Spivak 7y ago

I mean if you're hiring a SEO person isn't this literally what you're paying for -- tricks to increase your search ranking without changing your content?

SquareWheel 7y ago
Not at all. SEOs are more likely to find all the ways you're currently hanging yourself. Some common examples I see are: - Putting important text inside of images - Duplicate content out the wazoo - Not making use of canonicals - No sitemaps, html or xml - Page performance issues - Broken mobile support And of course, poor content. You can't rank if you don't have content.
- actsof 7y ago
  I'd argue most of those are necessary for good content (if we don't view content separately from presentation) > Putting important text inside of images I'm sure the reason for this is that it's hard to parse text from images, and while Google could use their AI to figure it out, they don't bother. But it also prevents blind people from being able to read the text, so it does worsen the experience. > Duplicate content This makes the site harder to navigate for users as well. > Page performace issues Quite obviously makes the experience worse. > Broken mobile support. -..-
- mikemotherwell 7y ago
  SEO should be a bridge between technical and non-technical people that build out sites. No site's output is 100% because of the tech team - content writers can put in weird code, marketers can add all sorts of stuff to say Tag manager, the robots.txt is likely from 2008. And a site built with code as the primary goal is likely lacking in some marketing oomph somewhere. Someone who's job it is to find the right balance, and aim to maximise the returns from the single largest source of traffic, is pretty valuable.

rafaelm 7y ago

You need to find better SEO people then :) But I understand, there's a lot of snake-oil and "one weird trick to rank first" that brings a bad name to the SEO world. I've seen people go on Fiverr and expect to find top-notch SEOs there. There's more to SEO than just writing good content. There's a lot of technical stuff that can bite you and your awesome content will never rank. Stuff like improving site structure, canonicals, learning to deal with multi-language versions of your content, implementing proper redirects, etc,etc is something that a good SEO should be able to fix and improve.