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You build a site with unique content, decent layout, design. Email other website owners "Hi, I think this would be would be a decent resource for your 'other re

You build a site with unique content, decent layout, design. Email other website owners "Hi, I think this would be would be a decent resource for your 'other resources' page / your visitors might like this". (as opposed to ... what other means do you discover new content?) Only, no one does link pages anymore, because they're fearful of platform algos deciding that their inbound/outbound link profile is toxic. What I'm after is a more decentralised Internet, less black box algo, where people link to whatever they want without cutting off their oxygen, or having to pay for exposure. Might be idealistic, but FB/Google have certainly been diagnosed as part of the problem. In my case, getting a good link from harvard.edu really helped wrt search. And obviously a great link from Harvard drived traffic by itself. Just a hint for the downvoters, that's how it was done 20 years ago. Nowadays due to systemic link building spam, perhaps not. I'm addressing the above reply is all.

waheoo 6y ago
Linking liberally to a wide range of domains is seen as a net positive in SEO. SEO isn't as complicated as anyone makes it out to be. It's really simple.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  Not sure where you're coming from wrt SEO. Get 100 SEOs in a room together and you get 100 different opinions. But when it comes to linking, people generally link out less. I can't source anything right now, but the information is available, perhaps through Majestic that shows that over time, people are more shy about linking out to the wider web, anecdotally, from fear of being penalised for doing so. The threat of having a bad outlink meaning your inbound organic search traffic disappears means people err on the side of caution.
  - waheoo 6y ago
    I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying they're wrong to do so. [1] The amount of links you can shove into a page before it makes any negative impact is very high. 1. https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-outgoing-link-experiment/ https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-outgoing-link-ex...
wpietri 6y ago
I think this has stopped working not because of platform fear, but because it no longer solves a problem. Back in the day, good content was scarce and discovery was hard. These days neither is true. If my to-read list weren't already overflowing, 30 minutes poking around on Twitter would fill it right up.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  +1. Twitter's timeline """solved""" [0] the content recommendation and scalability problems in forums and mailing lists. The large newsgroups in the late 90s Usenet were already unreadable (unless you have an elaborate filter), but all Twitter needs is to ask their users to follow people relevant to their interests. [0] Of course only partially "solved" with many limitations. Just like how Twitter's predecessors Reddit and Hacker News "solved" the same problem by voting with their respective limitations.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  Think there's a bit chicken and egg with that one. Back in the day Google relied on DMOZ (and perhaps relies on Wiki a little nowadays, WRT knowledge entities). Search (and social) rely on signals to indicate that something is of relevance... you're sort of implying that the monopolies and their single perspectives on how information should be ordered is satisfactory for us right now. Sometimes there's 10's, 100's or 1000's of pages/sites that are relevant to what we are searching for. All I'd say is that if we diversified the way in which we search/discover new information a little bit more, there's less reliance on a platform or a single algorithm- to me that sounds healthier. It is totally worth remembering that as much as the likes of Google and FB control a huge share of browsing time and clicks, their algos don't make them the arbiters of truth and information discovery. Sounds quite daft to say it but that is pretty much what the reality is of the modern web- if the portals don't want to rank you, you aren't seen.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    I am definitely not implying that. Twitter lets anybody publish small things. And it lets anybody select a set of accounts and get a time-ordered list of what they've published. That's how I use it. I follow a couple thousand interesting people, ones who tend to point to other interesting people and articles. If at any point I'm bored, I can drink from a firehose of good content. I also maintain a feed reader, which is how I follow people who have their own sites. But I don't need to use those sites for discovery, the pattern you describe in the old days. Discovery just isn't a problem I have much. These days, my problem is filtering down to what I actually have time to read.
tshaddox 6y ago
I think what you're missing here is simply how much larger the Internet is now than it was in the romanticized past. If there was ever a time where you could reliably establish a meaningful distribution platform by personally emailing individual webmasters, surely it was a time where there was an extremely small number of regular web visitors. In fact, I would be willing to bet that, right now, the world of independent webmasters using traditional hyperlinks and eschewing the current megaplatforms is vastly larger than it was in the time you're recalling. Which is to say, you can probably reach a larger audience today using those distribution techniques than you could in the time you're recalling. You just will obviously have a much much smaller portion of today's web visitors.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  I'm not buying either of the points, about romanticising or the portion. What means to do we have of discovering new content, right now. All the eyeball time on social media, all the searches done for the most part on Google. You've basically two methods of discovering new things when considering the sum time of everyone who might recommend something they've seen. That's not romantic at all to me! FWIW I don't think the link hunting of 20 years ago was systematically better, but it was definitely more individually minded, problem is it's been systematically spammed/undermined as well as the SEO issues I've mentioned so people are generally going to ignore 'link suggestions' My main point is, diversify away from one or two central platforms. The issue is their consensus of what should and shouldn't be seen and the size of the market behind this.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    What are the two methods? I have received quite a few visitors from a Reddit post on the right subreddit. Hackernews posts generate a lot of traffic. You can also advertise on a number of platforms.
    - ricardo81 6y ago
      The two methods are the social and search portals that command the majority of time that Western world people spend their time on. I'm not saying that reddit or HN aren't dead ends but we're talking about the main arteries of information discovery. I'm sure we can agree the general populous don't have the nous to regularly visit HN or subscribe to relevant subreddits, the question is how do they find their information and conclusions.

waheoo 6y ago

Linking liberally to a wide range of domains is seen as a net positive in SEO. SEO isn't as complicated as anyone makes it out to be. It's really simple.

ricardo81 6y ago
Not sure where you're coming from wrt SEO. Get 100 SEOs in a room together and you get 100 different opinions. But when it comes to linking, people generally link out less. I can't source anything right now, but the information is available, perhaps through Majestic that shows that over time, people are more shy about linking out to the wider web, anecdotally, from fear of being penalised for doing so. The threat of having a bad outlink meaning your inbound organic search traffic disappears means people err on the side of caution.
- waheoo 6y ago
  I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying they're wrong to do so. [1] The amount of links you can shove into a page before it makes any negative impact is very high. 1. https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-outgoing-link-experiment/ https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-outgoing-link-ex...

wpietri 6y ago

I think this has stopped working not because of platform fear, but because it no longer solves a problem. Back in the day, good content was scarce and discovery was hard. These days neither is true. If my to-read list weren't already overflowing, 30 minutes poking around on Twitter would fill it right up.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
+1. Twitter's timeline """solved""" [0] the content recommendation and scalability problems in forums and mailing lists. The large newsgroups in the late 90s Usenet were already unreadable (unless you have an elaborate filter), but all Twitter needs is to ask their users to follow people relevant to their interests. [0] Of course only partially "solved" with many limitations. Just like how Twitter's predecessors Reddit and Hacker News "solved" the same problem by voting with their respective limitations.
ricardo81 6y ago
Think there's a bit chicken and egg with that one. Back in the day Google relied on DMOZ (and perhaps relies on Wiki a little nowadays, WRT knowledge entities). Search (and social) rely on signals to indicate that something is of relevance... you're sort of implying that the monopolies and their single perspectives on how information should be ordered is satisfactory for us right now. Sometimes there's 10's, 100's or 1000's of pages/sites that are relevant to what we are searching for. All I'd say is that if we diversified the way in which we search/discover new information a little bit more, there's less reliance on a platform or a single algorithm- to me that sounds healthier. It is totally worth remembering that as much as the likes of Google and FB control a huge share of browsing time and clicks, their algos don't make them the arbiters of truth and information discovery. Sounds quite daft to say it but that is pretty much what the reality is of the modern web- if the portals don't want to rank you, you aren't seen.
- wpietri 6y ago
  I am definitely not implying that. Twitter lets anybody publish small things. And it lets anybody select a set of accounts and get a time-ordered list of what they've published. That's how I use it. I follow a couple thousand interesting people, ones who tend to point to other interesting people and articles. If at any point I'm bored, I can drink from a firehose of good content. I also maintain a feed reader, which is how I follow people who have their own sites. But I don't need to use those sites for discovery, the pattern you describe in the old days. Discovery just isn't a problem I have much. These days, my problem is filtering down to what I actually have time to read.

tshaddox 6y ago

I think what you're missing here is simply how much larger the Internet is now than it was in the romanticized past. If there was ever a time where you could reliably establish a meaningful distribution platform by personally emailing individual webmasters, surely it was a time where there was an extremely small number of regular web visitors. In fact, I would be willing to bet that, right now, the world of independent webmasters using traditional hyperlinks and eschewing the current megaplatforms is vastly larger than it was in the time you're recalling. Which is to say, you can probably reach a larger audience today using those distribution techniques than you could in the time you're recalling. You just will obviously have a much much smaller portion of today's web visitors.

ricardo81 6y ago
I'm not buying either of the points, about romanticising or the portion. What means to do we have of discovering new content, right now. All the eyeball time on social media, all the searches done for the most part on Google. You've basically two methods of discovering new things when considering the sum time of everyone who might recommend something they've seen. That's not romantic at all to me! FWIW I don't think the link hunting of 20 years ago was systematically better, but it was definitely more individually minded, problem is it's been systematically spammed/undermined as well as the SEO issues I've mentioned so people are generally going to ignore 'link suggestions' My main point is, diversify away from one or two central platforms. The issue is their consensus of what should and shouldn't be seen and the size of the market behind this.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  What are the two methods? I have received quite a few visitors from a Reddit post on the right subreddit. Hackernews posts generate a lot of traffic. You can also advertise on a number of platforms.
  - ricardo81 6y ago
    The two methods are the social and search portals that command the majority of time that Western world people spend their time on. I'm not saying that reddit or HN aren't dead ends but we're talking about the main arteries of information discovery. I'm sure we can agree the general populous don't have the nous to regularly visit HN or subscribe to relevant subreddits, the question is how do they find their information and conclusions.