6 ms·

Many SEO techniques are in line with the user's best interest. Sitemaps, Keywords, accessibility (clean source code) etc. help Google to understand the content

by netrus 14y ago

Many SEO techniques are in line with the user's best interest. Sitemaps, Keywords, accessibility (clean source code) etc. help Google to understand the content of your page better. That's the reason why people like Matt Cutts exist. Of course, much of SEO IS dirty, and I am not sure if there is serious movement of "ethical SEO".

Nursie 14y ago
That's great, but isn't what I think of when I think SEO. It sounds a lot like getting good search results by making a good site, which I'm all for!
- James_Duval 14y ago
  This is what a lot of modern SEO is, actually. I think we'll see increasing amounts of information made available by private companies over this next year in an effort to rank higher for their key phrases. Also genuinely useful tools/web apps/calculators. The rest is site structure. I know people can and do still game the system, but that's not a good long-term plan and it's a flat return. Creating a good site with good information and a good product will keep giving you links and shares for a fair few years. EDIT: In other words, I predict that the people who are practising bad SEO (and they do exist) will fall away like rotted wood over the next year, and the people who are genuinely trying to make interesting things which people like will come out on top.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    It sounds like a strange motivator to make good content for the wrong reasons...
    - James_Duval 14y ago
      Yes, I agree, it's a strange industry, and many of the people involved in creating good content for it end up deeply conflicted.
    - pseut 14y ago
      At a more abstract level, the reason is "money," which is also the reason for a lot of other good content.
  - bones6 14y ago
    Why do you say over the next year? You can see all the changes Google has made over the last ~8 years and say the same thing each time an update came out. Black hatters seem to find the constant adapting part of thrill of the chase. The chase of money from Google rankings really. If they can make money, why would they stop? I see Cutt's job as making it just difficult enough to catch the black hatters, but easy enough to celebrate and promote the best knowledge and content. It's an ever changing game.
    - James_Duval 14y ago
      It is ever-changing, but until recently Google has been cutting out the really obvious, flagrant abuses of the system. Last year, Google annihilated directories, blog comments and article directories, as well as punishing unnatural-looking link profiles (lots of links from low PR sites, for instance). They're continuing to refine and expand on this, including certain forms of blog posts in their devaluation net, but more importantly the industry is still catching up. There are still people out there writing and selling long-form articles, there are still people charging companies to place their links on directories. There is a lag as companies and "SEOs" who are out of the loop fail to realise that their activities are no longer resulting in increased traffic - and then after that lag the SEO's business will collapse. Many voices in the SEO community are looking at a new paradigm - "no hat" and "true black hat" for want of a better term. The "no hat" spirit is, crudely and generally, "If this wouldn't be useful if SEO wasn't a thing, I shouldn't do it." In other words, good SEO comes as a side effect of good implementation, site design, CRO, social media, content, etc. The "true black hat" meanwhile engages in criminal activities, fraud, hijacks websites and generally takes things on that are inCREDibly risky in an effort to turn a quick buck and disappear. The old grey and black hats, and to an extent even the white hats, aren't squeaky clean enough for Google any more. At the same time, the loopholes they're trying to exploit are already known and closed (or closing rapidly). So this year, I think this type of SEO will fade away, possibly completely. I believe that it's possible I'm completely wrong, of course.
hipsters_unite 14y ago
'SEO' as it is sold to clients by SEO companies is packaged as another form of advertising, nothing more. It's an industry that thrives on subverting the discourse on search keywords to sell stuff.
davidw 14y ago
If there is some group of N companies competing for some keyword, starting from the same 'lower quality' web sites, and they all do the same 'good' SEO stuff, then they'll all be right where they started again in terms of rankings, very likely. It's an arms race. Competing for a ranking is pretty much a zero-sum game because no matter how much money you sink into it, only one can come out on top. Compare and contrast with actually building stuff that makes people's lives better: there's still some competition, and winners and losers, but it's usually not a zero-sum game at all.
- bones6 14y ago
  Unless no one ever hears about your life changing stuff. Telling Google what you think your service or product is about via SEO ultimately tells the users who find the search result. THEN you win the game.
  - davidw 14y ago
    But if everyone else tells Google the same information equally well, then you're all back where you started. Except you spent a lot of money on some consultant who cannot realistically make any guarantees about what they deliver.
kragen 14y ago
It's still a problem that those help. If there's a text file or a Flash movie or a badly-encoded PDF file on an unmaintained FTP server somewhere that answers my question correctly, and a sitemapped keyworded HTML5 app on a site with high PageRank that doesn't have the answer (or has a wrong answer), I want the unmaintained FTP server to be the #1 hit for my search, not the white-hat-SEOed page. Of course, making those problems go away is an AI-complete problem.

by netrus 14y ago

Nursie 14y ago

That's great, but isn't what I think of when I think SEO. It sounds a lot like getting good search results by making a good site, which I'm all for!

James_Duval 14y ago
This is what a lot of modern SEO is, actually. I think we'll see increasing amounts of information made available by private companies over this next year in an effort to rank higher for their key phrases. Also genuinely useful tools/web apps/calculators. The rest is site structure. I know people can and do still game the system, but that's not a good long-term plan and it's a flat return. Creating a good site with good information and a good product will keep giving you links and shares for a fair few years. EDIT: In other words, I predict that the people who are practising bad SEO (and they do exist) will fall away like rotted wood over the next year, and the people who are genuinely trying to make interesting things which people like will come out on top.
- Nursie 14y ago
  It sounds like a strange motivator to make good content for the wrong reasons...
  - James_Duval 14y ago
    Yes, I agree, it's a strange industry, and many of the people involved in creating good content for it end up deeply conflicted.
  - pseut 14y ago
    At a more abstract level, the reason is "money," which is also the reason for a lot of other good content.
- bones6 14y ago
  Why do you say over the next year? You can see all the changes Google has made over the last ~8 years and say the same thing each time an update came out. Black hatters seem to find the constant adapting part of thrill of the chase. The chase of money from Google rankings really. If they can make money, why would they stop? I see Cutt's job as making it just difficult enough to catch the black hatters, but easy enough to celebrate and promote the best knowledge and content. It's an ever changing game.
  - James_Duval 14y ago
    It is ever-changing, but until recently Google has been cutting out the really obvious, flagrant abuses of the system. Last year, Google annihilated directories, blog comments and article directories, as well as punishing unnatural-looking link profiles (lots of links from low PR sites, for instance). They're continuing to refine and expand on this, including certain forms of blog posts in their devaluation net, but more importantly the industry is still catching up. There are still people out there writing and selling long-form articles, there are still people charging companies to place their links on directories. There is a lag as companies and "SEOs" who are out of the loop fail to realise that their activities are no longer resulting in increased traffic - and then after that lag the SEO's business will collapse. Many voices in the SEO community are looking at a new paradigm - "no hat" and "true black hat" for want of a better term. The "no hat" spirit is, crudely and generally, "If this wouldn't be useful if SEO wasn't a thing, I shouldn't do it." In other words, good SEO comes as a side effect of good implementation, site design, CRO, social media, content, etc. The "true black hat" meanwhile engages in criminal activities, fraud, hijacks websites and generally takes things on that are inCREDibly risky in an effort to turn a quick buck and disappear. The old grey and black hats, and to an extent even the white hats, aren't squeaky clean enough for Google any more. At the same time, the loopholes they're trying to exploit are already known and closed (or closing rapidly). So this year, I think this type of SEO will fade away, possibly completely. I believe that it's possible I'm completely wrong, of course.

hipsters_unite 14y ago

'SEO' as it is sold to clients by SEO companies is packaged as another form of advertising, nothing more. It's an industry that thrives on subverting the discourse on search keywords to sell stuff.

davidw 14y ago

If there is some group of N companies competing for some keyword, starting from the same 'lower quality' web sites, and they all do the same 'good' SEO stuff, then they'll all be right where they started again in terms of rankings, very likely. It's an arms race. Competing for a ranking is pretty much a zero-sum game because no matter how much money you sink into it, only one can come out on top. Compare and contrast with actually building stuff that makes people's lives better: there's still some competition, and winners and losers, but it's usually not a zero-sum game at all.

bones6 14y ago
Unless no one ever hears about your life changing stuff. Telling Google what you think your service or product is about via SEO ultimately tells the users who find the search result. THEN you win the game.
- davidw 14y ago
  But if everyone else tells Google the same information equally well, then you're all back where you started. Except you spent a lot of money on some consultant who cannot realistically make any guarantees about what they deliver.

kragen 14y ago

It's still a problem that those help. If there's a text file or a Flash movie or a badly-encoded PDF file on an unmaintained FTP server somewhere that answers my question correctly, and a sitemapped keyworded HTML5 app on a site with high PageRank that doesn't have the answer (or has a wrong answer), I want the unmaintained FTP server to be the #1 hit for my search, not the white-hat-SEOed page. Of course, making those problems go away is an AI-complete problem.