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"You seem to have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff." Which is sad. SEO is a cancer and, like cancer, there is no good SEO. Google and their broken

by rsync 13y ago

"You seem to have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff." Which is sad. SEO is a cancer and, like cancer, there is no good SEO. Google and their broken search ecosystem have spawned a vast, useless, derivative "industry" that needs to die. I say "broken ecosystem" because SEO should have a value that is inverse to how well google indexes. That SEO exists at all shows the extent to which it is broken. Website death penalties (or whatever we call this) don't solve the problem.

mspeuleski 13y ago
Google practices the exact same dirty tactics it punishes smaller websites for. Note how they have a lot of ads all over their pages? If small websites do that, they get punished. Also, note how Google steals content from wikipedia and posts it next to search results? If small sites do that they get punished. Lastly, google is the world's largest reseller of links, except their links are "ok", for some obscure reason....you can pay google a large sum of money and see your link on billions of pages worldwide via link ads. If you're not scared of google's double talk, blatant spying, abuse of monopolistic powers, then you either work for them or you are completely alienated.
vidyesh 13y ago
You are somewhat right and somewhat wrong. SEO indeed is like what you described, but there is a fine line to start doing blackhat or stay whitehat. Now the problem is, the line is so thin you end up crossing it at times. And everybody does. The way Google works you need to do both somewhat in a way to get the balance and stay top. For example, link-building its one of the worst areas where defining white-hat and black-hat is really difficult. One way is doing guest post is allowed and great but paid posts aren't. There is no guarantee a guest post is not a paid post. There are 'digital marketing agencies' which at times are so ridiculous that the backlink included in the guest post doesn't have any value in to the post as such but anchor text magic does all the work. SEO isn't broken as such but there are too many backdoors to doing the white-hat SEO methods in the concealed black-hat way that it isn't realistic to blame he search ecosystem. I agree, website penalties is not a good solution to the problem.
blauwbilgorgel 13y ago
There certainly is good SEO. Good SEO is often indistinguishable from good accessibility, good marketing, good design, good conversion optimization, good information theory, good metrics. You use sites because they used good SEO. You can find StackOverflow posts ranking at one, because they used the good SEO that the good content deserved. Anyone with an internet business taking your comment at face value will find herself ranking not in the top 20, no matter how good their content. Good SEO has worth, has value. Even Matt Cutts promotes good SEO and sees the worth. Without SEO analytics you are sailing blind. Without knowledge of how to interpret them. Without knowledge of the guidelines you get gaffs like these. There is good SEO and there is vandalization. Rap Genius vandalized their rankings. No industry needs to die. If it needs to, explain why. Optimize your site for all users, not just search engines. If you stay in this naive view of SEO you will never have a successful internet business in many niches. What is sad is that some developers and designers can not deliver a website that is SEO optimized, so a business owner has to pay double to get an SEO to fix all on-page accessibility issues. This penalty is entirely the result of that blogpost and the PR it generated. I am willing to bet that Google already discovered many of these links, through spam reports, through manual spam fighters and through algorithmic detection. This PR, and the open letter, forced Google's hand. Of course they have to visibly act on it. Of course they are well aware that that niche has some scummy shady practices, and Rap Genius is not the only one. Of course they have a better internal tool than OSE and can check link profiles and detect networks in a manner of minutes. Besides, you can be a great SEO and never do a single link-building campaign. There is tremendous value in simply finding new content and articles to rank for and drive traffic. I loath black hat SEO, not for the unfair temporary advantage it gives, but because it creates posts like yours. Because it burns companies that are now much more careful to hire good SEO's. Because I know that good SEO helps people access relevant content. Like e-mail spam, search engine spam will die. SEO's will be retrained to create websites that are accessible, user friendly, give content that is relevant to the search query. Just read: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... And try to find a single practice in there that is either manipulative, entirely done to service search engines alone, or hampers accessibility and user friendliness. Good SEO builds authority. Creates quality mark-up. Makes descriptive website titles. Implements breadcrumbs and a sane website hierarchy. Rids the index of duplicates. Drives more users to your sites. Makes sure that blind people can access your content, like images or video. Makes sites load faster. Makes content more trustworthy etc. Good SEO needs no manipulation. There is a lot to gain by simply aligning yourself with Google's vision. Please reconsider your tone, or realize you do not add anything of value to the debate, or to the many online business owners on HN. Can you imagine raising funds for an online startup and then have your post be the slide for "online marketing"?

by rsync 13y ago

mspeuleski 13y ago

Google practices the exact same dirty tactics it punishes smaller websites for. Note how they have a lot of ads all over their pages? If small websites do that, they get punished. Also, note how Google steals content from wikipedia and posts it next to search results? If small sites do that they get punished. Lastly, google is the world's largest reseller of links, except their links are "ok", for some obscure reason....you can pay google a large sum of money and see your link on billions of pages worldwide via link ads. If you're not scared of google's double talk, blatant spying, abuse of monopolistic powers, then you either work for them or you are completely alienated.

vidyesh 13y ago

You are somewhat right and somewhat wrong. SEO indeed is like what you described, but there is a fine line to start doing blackhat or stay whitehat. Now the problem is, the line is so thin you end up crossing it at times. And everybody does. The way Google works you need to do both somewhat in a way to get the balance and stay top. For example, link-building its one of the worst areas where defining white-hat and black-hat is really difficult. One way is doing guest post is allowed and great but paid posts aren't. There is no guarantee a guest post is not a paid post. There are 'digital marketing agencies' which at times are so ridiculous that the backlink included in the guest post doesn't have any value in to the post as such but anchor text magic does all the work. SEO isn't broken as such but there are too many backdoors to doing the white-hat SEO methods in the concealed black-hat way that it isn't realistic to blame he search ecosystem. I agree, website penalties is not a good solution to the problem.

blauwbilgorgel 13y ago

There certainly is good SEO. Good SEO is often indistinguishable from good accessibility, good marketing, good design, good conversion optimization, good information theory, good metrics. You use sites because they used good SEO. You can find StackOverflow posts ranking at one, because they used the good SEO that the good content deserved. Anyone with an internet business taking your comment at face value will find herself ranking not in the top 20, no matter how good their content. Good SEO has worth, has value. Even Matt Cutts promotes good SEO and sees the worth. Without SEO analytics you are sailing blind. Without knowledge of how to interpret them. Without knowledge of the guidelines you get gaffs like these. There is good SEO and there is vandalization. Rap Genius vandalized their rankings. No industry needs to die. If it needs to, explain why. Optimize your site for all users, not just search engines. If you stay in this naive view of SEO you will never have a successful internet business in many niches. What is sad is that some developers and designers can not deliver a website that is SEO optimized, so a business owner has to pay double to get an SEO to fix all on-page accessibility issues. This penalty is entirely the result of that blogpost and the PR it generated. I am willing to bet that Google already discovered many of these links, through spam reports, through manual spam fighters and through algorithmic detection. This PR, and the open letter, forced Google's hand. Of course they have to visibly act on it. Of course they are well aware that that niche has some scummy shady practices, and Rap Genius is not the only one. Of course they have a better internal tool than OSE and can check link profiles and detect networks in a manner of minutes. Besides, you can be a great SEO and never do a single link-building campaign. There is tremendous value in simply finding new content and articles to rank for and drive traffic. I loath black hat SEO, not for the unfair temporary advantage it gives, but because it creates posts like yours. Because it burns companies that are now much more careful to hire good SEO's. Because I know that good SEO helps people access relevant content. Like e-mail spam, search engine spam will die. SEO's will be retrained to create websites that are accessible, user friendly, give content that is relevant to the search query. Just read: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... And try to find a single practice in there that is either manipulative, entirely done to service search engines alone, or hampers accessibility and user friendliness. Good SEO builds authority. Creates quality mark-up. Makes descriptive website titles. Implements breadcrumbs and a sane website hierarchy. Rids the index of duplicates. Drives more users to your sites. Makes sure that blind people can access your content, like images or video. Makes sites load faster. Makes content more trustworthy etc. Good SEO needs no manipulation. There is a lot to gain by simply aligning yourself with Google's vision. Please reconsider your tone, or realize you do not add anything of value to the debate, or to the many online business owners on HN. Can you imagine raising funds for an online startup and then have your post be the slide for "online marketing"?