6 ms·

A super quick rundown on SEO

45 points by entreprenerd 6y ago

dumbfoundded 6y ago
SEO is anything but passive. It's an ongoing, active effort with a lot of frustration. Most of the frustration is that you're optimizing for a blackbox. Google's algorithm can change rapidly, without warning in unexpected ways. A large site can move in and take over with little warning. SEO is a constant battle and long term effort.
- nwsm 6y ago
  It would be really interesting to see a "post mortem" of sorts for a site that suddenly dropped off the first page of search engines. It would describe: What were we doing before? What happened? (if we know) What did we do to fix it?
  - ademarre 6y ago
    There are many of these out there. Search for "SEO recovery case study".
    - entreprenerd 6y ago
      Ooooh - this would be great to add - thanks!!
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  Totally fair!! I think my experience is with much more niche keywords, so competition is less of a worry for me, but you're not wrong. Just like any other form of marketing, a competitor can come in and sweep you!
benrbray 6y ago
If this is naive, then please change my view, since I know nothing about web marketing! My opinion: > The best SEO is to do honest work for a fair price, so that others talk about you and link to your stuff.
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  SEO is just another sales/marketing channel. Engineers (of which I considered myself) generally dislike the idea of having to sell/market something, hoping it will just come if they do a good job. In my experience, it's both. You have to do a great job and also do a great job of telling others about your great work.
  - entreprenerd 6y ago
    Agree completely. :)
- nwsm 6y ago
  Doing honest work and optimizing your website for search engines are not mutually exclusive.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  I always say it like this: SEO is partly creating content so good that search engine mathematicians will change their algorithms to reward content like yours. The other part is making it easy for search engines to find and parse your content.
  - entreprenerd 6y ago
    I really like that :)
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  SEO is slightly different, but when you're starting out, referrals are always going to be your best bet - they'll be way way better than SEO. :) So you're still right! The best way to find clients is to do great work!
- CM30 6y ago
  Yes and no. Yes, if you do good work/make a good product/run a good service and its fairly priced, it's more likely to do well than if your work is terrible. It'll usually be a million times harder to promote a terrible business than a good one, for obvious reasons. But also no, because 'build it and they'll come' hasn't worked as a marketing strategy for... maybe thousands of years. If people don't know you exist, they won't become customers, and since most customers won't promote even a good business or service to other people, relying on word of mouth is unreliable at best, suicidal at worst.
mmckelvy 6y ago
What's the latest on SEO and single page apps (SPAs)? I've heard conflicting things on this front. Do we still need to be creating static content or can we just serve a skeleton HTML page and let client side JS do the rest?
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  So for things like Carrd.co and other single page apps I've used, the SEO is dodgy at best. I think since standard content is hard to do on those types of sites, your best bet is going to be a lot of backlinks, but even then, it's hard to rank for keywords if your website is structured like a landing page, not a blog. That's just what I would assume though!! Good question!!!
- lpellis 6y ago
  If you host your SPA on Netlify for example you can enable prerendering with just a checkbox, that way they will automatically serve the static content to Google. (as rendered in a browser)
leet_thow 6y ago
Is SEO even worth it in 2020 considering how saturated markets are and the number of ads displayed? I remember going after long tail searches in the early 2010s with some success. Not sure if cost-benefit still adds up.
- solumos 6y ago
  Depends on the cost, and depends on the benefit. What I find interesting is that many SERPs on Google don't even lead to another page anymore[0]. Still, there are plenty of niche areas where the cost/benefit still definitely makes sense - some areas of law, local service businesses, etc. [0] https://searchengineland.com/now-more-50-of-google-searches-end-without-a-click-to-other-content-study-finds-320574 https://searchengineland.com/now-more-50-of-google-searches-...
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  You've got a point, but consumers are consistently more and more tired of ads. I've clicked on one out of the hundreds of thousands I've been shown. Whereas if I look up a question on google, I'm clicking. And I probably do that twice a day at least. Overall, I think it's definitely worth it. Yes it takes time, but it's not that hard, and it's evergreen if you target the right long tail keywords!! :)
- XCSme 6y ago
  As a solo developer, I think doing SEO and content marketing might still be worth, but I prefer to spend my time on improving the product. My goal is to make a product and user experience so good that the word-of-mouth marketing would be the main SEO driver. So, in some way, by working on improving the product I also work on SEO.
  - entreprenerd 6y ago
    I respect it! But SEO is related to how google finds you, not other people. Word of mouth marketing is going to be effective for finding your first users though. :)
    - 6y ago
dylan604 6y ago
It's funny how the blog talks about the importance of backlinks while being full of links to other sites itself. It's almost like he needed an excuse to exchange links with other sites and did it in one blog post. I'm not judging, but I don't have my rose colored glasses any more.
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  Hahahah - no I don't actually think my linking to other external sites helps my SEO, sadly. I was just trying to link to other sites for ease of access if you want to check out the tool I mention. Sorry about that, I didn't mean for it to come across that way!

45 points by entreprenerd 6y ago

SEO is anything but passive. It's an ongoing, active effort with a lot of frustration. Most of the frustration is that you're optimizing for a blackbox. Google's algorithm can change rapidly, without warning in unexpected ways. A large site can move in and take over with little warning. SEO is a constant battle and long term effort.

nwsm 6y ago
It would be really interesting to see a "post mortem" of sorts for a site that suddenly dropped off the first page of search engines. It would describe: What were we doing before? What happened? (if we know) What did we do to fix it?
- ademarre 6y ago
  There are many of these out there. Search for "SEO recovery case study".
  - entreprenerd 6y ago
    Ooooh - this would be great to add - thanks!!
entreprenerd 6y ago
Totally fair!! I think my experience is with much more niche keywords, so competition is less of a worry for me, but you're not wrong. Just like any other form of marketing, a competitor can come in and sweep you!

benrbray 6y ago

If this is naive, then please change my view, since I know nothing about web marketing! My opinion: > The best SEO is to do honest work for a fair price, so that others talk about you and link to your stuff.

dumbfoundded 6y ago
SEO is just another sales/marketing channel. Engineers (of which I considered myself) generally dislike the idea of having to sell/market something, hoping it will just come if they do a good job. In my experience, it's both. You have to do a great job and also do a great job of telling others about your great work.
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  Agree completely. :)
nwsm 6y ago
Doing honest work and optimizing your website for search engines are not mutually exclusive.
spiderfarmer 6y ago
I always say it like this: SEO is partly creating content so good that search engine mathematicians will change their algorithms to reward content like yours. The other part is making it easy for search engines to find and parse your content.
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  I really like that :)
entreprenerd 6y ago
SEO is slightly different, but when you're starting out, referrals are always going to be your best bet - they'll be way way better than SEO. :) So you're still right! The best way to find clients is to do great work!
CM30 6y ago
Yes and no. Yes, if you do good work/make a good product/run a good service and its fairly priced, it's more likely to do well than if your work is terrible. It'll usually be a million times harder to promote a terrible business than a good one, for obvious reasons. But also no, because 'build it and they'll come' hasn't worked as a marketing strategy for... maybe thousands of years. If people don't know you exist, they won't become customers, and since most customers won't promote even a good business or service to other people, relying on word of mouth is unreliable at best, suicidal at worst.

mmckelvy 6y ago

What's the latest on SEO and single page apps (SPAs)? I've heard conflicting things on this front. Do we still need to be creating static content or can we just serve a skeleton HTML page and let client side JS do the rest?

entreprenerd 6y ago
So for things like Carrd.co and other single page apps I've used, the SEO is dodgy at best. I think since standard content is hard to do on those types of sites, your best bet is going to be a lot of backlinks, but even then, it's hard to rank for keywords if your website is structured like a landing page, not a blog. That's just what I would assume though!! Good question!!!
lpellis 6y ago
If you host your SPA on Netlify for example you can enable prerendering with just a checkbox, that way they will automatically serve the static content to Google. (as rendered in a browser)

leet_thow 6y ago

Is SEO even worth it in 2020 considering how saturated markets are and the number of ads displayed? I remember going after long tail searches in the early 2010s with some success. Not sure if cost-benefit still adds up.

solumos 6y ago
Depends on the cost, and depends on the benefit. What I find interesting is that many SERPs on Google don't even lead to another page anymore[0]. Still, there are plenty of niche areas where the cost/benefit still definitely makes sense - some areas of law, local service businesses, etc. [0] https://searchengineland.com/now-more-50-of-google-searches-end-without-a-click-to-other-content-study-finds-320574 https://searchengineland.com/now-more-50-of-google-searches-...
entreprenerd 6y ago
You've got a point, but consumers are consistently more and more tired of ads. I've clicked on one out of the hundreds of thousands I've been shown. Whereas if I look up a question on google, I'm clicking. And I probably do that twice a day at least. Overall, I think it's definitely worth it. Yes it takes time, but it's not that hard, and it's evergreen if you target the right long tail keywords!! :)
XCSme 6y ago
As a solo developer, I think doing SEO and content marketing might still be worth, but I prefer to spend my time on improving the product. My goal is to make a product and user experience so good that the word-of-mouth marketing would be the main SEO driver. So, in some way, by working on improving the product I also work on SEO.
- entreprenerd 6y ago
  I respect it! But SEO is related to how google finds you, not other people. Word of mouth marketing is going to be effective for finding your first users though. :)
  - 6y ago

dylan604 6y ago

It's funny how the blog talks about the importance of backlinks while being full of links to other sites itself. It's almost like he needed an excuse to exchange links with other sites and did it in one blog post. I'm not judging, but I don't have my rose colored glasses any more.

entreprenerd 6y ago
Hahahah - no I don't actually think my linking to other external sites helps my SEO, sadly. I was just trying to link to other sites for ease of access if you want to check out the tool I mention. Sorry about that, I didn't mean for it to come across that way!