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I second this. All of their work, besides technical SEO, can be useless and even actively damage your rankings after a minor Google update on a rainy Thursday

I second this. All of their work, besides technical SEO, can be useless and even actively damage your rankings after a minor Google update on a rainy Thursday afternoon. There's no hard proof any of the stuff they sell you really works, because _nobody_, contrary to what SEO consultants might tell you, knows how those rankings really work. It's just a guessing game. Do good technical SEO (including performance + accessibility) and don't do what SEO agencies tell you. That should get you decent rankings over time.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> actively damage your rankings after a minor Google update on a rainy Thursday afternoon If I were Google, I'd be making these changes all the time specifically to trash the profitability of SEO which damages the usefulness of results. By randomising out the effectiveness of any SEO method, the central limit would just be the actual content. Assuming they are actually aiming for useful results, and not, say, profitable results (like, say, blogspam and mirror websites that have more ads than the originals).
- xwdv 4y ago
  They are aiming for profitable results.
azinman2 4y ago
So if no one knows what really works, how can one do “good technical SEO” outside of performance and access ability?
- xwdv 4y ago
  You can’t. It’s snake oil.
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> _nobody_, contrary to what SEO consultants might tell you, knows how those rankings really work This reminds me very much of "Conjoiner drives" in Alastair Reynold's books. Designed by a very advanced post-human hive-mind (the Conjoiners), they are sold to normal humans to power starships. No non-Conjoiner understands how they work, and any attempt to find out is prohibited and can result in massive reprisals by the Conjoiners. The engines have a few (6) dials to set parameters, and a few readouts from green to red. What the dials actually do and what the displays represent are not known, but the ability to run faster is critical to a starship. Drivemasters keep complex logs of the effects of changing the dials slightly on their ship, and swap their guesswork about the effects with other ships. But! Mess with the dials too much, drive into the red, and the drives detonate in an enormous explosion. Try to open a drive, or separate one of a pair from another, and they detonate.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

> actively damage your rankings after a minor Google update on a rainy Thursday afternoon If I were Google, I'd be making these changes all the time specifically to trash the profitability of SEO which damages the usefulness of results. By randomising out the effectiveness of any SEO method, the central limit would just be the actual content. Assuming they are actually aiming for useful results, and not, say, profitable results (like, say, blogspam and mirror websites that have more ads than the originals).

xwdv 4y ago
They are aiming for profitable results.

azinman2 4y ago

So if no one knows what really works, how can one do “good technical SEO” outside of performance and access ability?

xwdv 4y ago
You can’t. It’s snake oil.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

> _nobody_, contrary to what SEO consultants might tell you, knows how those rankings really work This reminds me very much of "Conjoiner drives" in Alastair Reynold's books. Designed by a very advanced post-human hive-mind (the Conjoiners), they are sold to normal humans to power starships. No non-Conjoiner understands how they work, and any attempt to find out is prohibited and can result in massive reprisals by the Conjoiners. The engines have a few (6) dials to set parameters, and a few readouts from green to red. What the dials actually do and what the displays represent are not known, but the ability to run faster is critical to a starship. Drivemasters keep complex logs of the effects of changing the dials slightly on their ship, and swap their guesswork about the effects with other ships. But! Mess with the dials too much, drive into the red, and the drives detonate in an enormous explosion. Try to open a drive, or separate one of a pair from another, and they detonate.