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I think Stack Exchange and Wikipedia are examples of SEO'd sites too. For example: Stack Exchange had problems with indexing before they added a sitemap [1]. Wi
by blauwbilgorgel 13y ago
I think Stack Exchange and Wikipedia are examples of SEO'd sites too. For example: Stack Exchange had problems with indexing before they added a sitemap [1]. Wikipedia takes a lot of care to create machine-indexable pages with quality content, that link back to their sources [2] and are linked to internally. Both follow SEO best practices as described in the Google Quality Guidelines [3]
Or your definition of "SEO'd" is leaning more to manipulative/sleazy.
In your example about the spectacle cases, would the other site being an affiliate make a (huge) difference? If Google punishes companies that have more than one website, people would shift to affiliates or try to hide they own the websites in other ways. In a way I feel multiple McDonalds in one city is perfectly possible. However, there needs to be a balance between the "best" websites (be they from the same owner or not) and diversity of the results (a query deserves diversity).
[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-importance-of-sitemaps.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-importance-of-s... "We knew from the outset that Google would be a big part of our traffic, and I wanted us to rank highly in Google"
[2] http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
"In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites."
[3] http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
- DanBC 13y agoYes, you're right. I tend to use "SEOd" as being a bit sleazy, rather than just following best current practice.
- wmeredith 13y agoThe term "SEO" is a bit like "Hacker" in that to most people it carries a negative connotation.
- meej 13y agoI've noticed some people will use the terms "black hat SEO" and "white hat SEO" to distinguish between sleazy and not-sleazy SEO practices.
- marssaxman 13y agoSEO = gaming search engines = negative behavior.
- obstacle1 13y agoWhite hat SEO = following a search engine's rules = positive behavior. Disparage not that which you do not understand.
- marssaxman 13y agoIf the goal of SEO is to manipulate a site's position in search engine rankings, I don't care what color the hat is. I don't want the site's owner to be able to do that. I want the results of my searches to be based on their relevance to my query, and not on the degree to which the people who stand to profit from my attention to their sites have manipulated the system. The ultimate search engine would be ungameable, and SEO would be a waste of time because it would accomplish nothing. To the degree that SEO works at all, it is a bad thing.
- obstacle1 13y agoGoogle itself explicitly encourages people to SEO their sites. So much so that they publish a SEO starter guide for webmasters and SEO professionals [1]. SEO isn't what you think it is, yet you continue to paint all of SEO with your broad brush. Stop. [1] (pdf) - https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrus...
- marssaxman 13y agoAre you claiming that "SEO" no longer stands for "search engine optimization", or are you claiming that "search engine optimization" is no longer about "optimizing" a site for "search engine" result placement?
- 13y ago