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"you could have the best content in the world, but without SEO, how are people going to find your content and link to it?" By following common sense, good desi

"you could have the best content in the world, but without SEO, how are people going to find your content and link to it?" By following common sense, good design, and doing some research and reading about Google's suggestions to web developers. You shouldn't have to hire someone to tell you what you can find out for free. Also, you registered just to make this post?

gloob 17y ago
Also, you registered just to make this post? I would suspect that a fair number of users have registered to make a post, so I'm not entirely certain what you're getting at. (Unless it's just curiosity, in which case I'll allow YorkSEO to speak for themselves).
YorkSEO 17y ago
Ok, what about new companies entering a competitive niche? You can have a perfectly optimised website but still not get any traction in the search engines. These days a good cms will do your on page optimisation for you, but links are what you need to make your site visible. Yes you could build links yourself, but it probably isn't the most efficient use of your time as your success rate will usually be lower than that of an experienced seo. And yes I'm a long time lurker who registered just to post this
- brown9-2 17y ago
  Maybe I've misunderstood something about "SEO" as a position (thinking it was all about page optimization/design), but are you saying that its about building incoming links to a site as well? Do companies hire you just to help build the number of links to their sites from other sites? How do you do this? Isn't that just plain old "marketing" at that point?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Either that or plain old linkspamming.
  - YorkSEO 17y ago
    Yes plenty of companies request linkbuilding only, I'm not going to go into all the details of how we do it, but often its a case of contacting webmasters and asking them to link. Although there are certain techniques we use to increase our success rate which is where marketing aspects come in. In fact most good seo companies are really just online marketers, with seo being an umbrella term for a wide variety of techniques
    - brown9-2 17y ago
      Then in this case I think the discussion has become one where we use the same term to refer to different things: I've always thought of SEO as "use meta tags, use headlines, use short URLs, etc" - pure optimization of existing contact to help engines better parse your contact. I'd label what you are referring to as more of online marketing to build a site/brand's presence and reputation, which is something that then influences a search engine ranking.
sanswork 17y ago
I could find out for free how to do a lot of things. Make my own whisky, fix my car. However I'm not a distiller or a mechanic so I leave those tasks to people who know what to do without having to read a manual every time. Someone who also knows what not to waste time on(meta tags for example which for some reason still seem to feature high in all entry level seo step lists).
- brown9-2 17y ago
  Doesn't your last point about meta tags prove that SEO shouldn't be placed in the same category of "experts" as mechanics and distillers?
  - sanswork 17y ago
    I don't see how. My last point was that a lot of the information on this stuff is not helpful. Just like a expert mechanic can listen to an engine and hear problems without having to check every part an expert at SEO can decide which changes are most important without having to go through every checklist and step out there.
- tumult 17y ago
  No, it's Google's job to help people find things. That's what it does. SEO exists to game Google into placing your site higher in results. I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google within hours if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO.
  - sanswork 17y ago
    And it is SEOs job to help Google find things. I'm not going to deny blackhat SEO exists like I wouldn't deny blackhat developers exist but you can't tarnish the whole profession because of your ignorance of the actual role of a whitehat SEO professional. It shows up in hours on github because github has a lot of authority. It shows up high on google because I'm guessing you're searching for pretty long keyword strings. So if your ok with people finding your code when they search for "ruby gem for mysql connections" thats cool you don't need to hire an SEO professional. Hell you never need to hire an SEO professional. But if you want someone who knows more about it to help you with making sure Google and yahoo and bing can find your information then you can. I really don't get the hatred on this site for SEO in general. I'm not an SEO professional myself but I know quite a few and now a days most people in the profession that are active and well known are all above board. They help you structure your information to make it easier to find and help you build relationships with other sources of traffic. Hardly evil stuff.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
By following common sense, good design, and doing some research and reading about Google's suggestions to web developers. Put down the coolaid. Seriously -- Google is a business. They make money by selling the results of an algorithm. There's nothing magic or sacred about Google's algorithm. It makes mistakes. They blackball people. Even more critical, links are not a necessary and sufficient reason for an article to be the best thing I want to see. It's just a guessing game that works most of the time for most people. If I had a cure for cancer that worked, and I put it on a website with a new domain tomorrow, and never SEO'd it, who do you think would come by? Bupkis. Zero. Zilch. Nobody. Good SEO is marketing. Marketing is a good thing. We need people to do things to bring to our attention stuff we might like. Google is not about to take the place of all marketing -- maybe that was a dream years ago but it's turned out to just be a fantasy on Google's part.
- sharpn 17y ago
  If you found a cure for cancer and only put it on a website, maybe noone would find it. But if you also mentioned it to a few people (especially a doctor or cancer victim) then it would be featured in news articles, broadcast, tweeted etc. because it's a big deal. Soon your website would appear first in any relevant search.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    It might and it might not. That's the thing -- sure, perhaps all good ideas get great publicity and links simply because they're good ideas. And perhaps all good business ideas make their owners lots of money simply because they're good ideas. And perhaps all articles get referenced and linked based on their degree of usefulness to the world. But in the real world, somebody has to go out and peddle ideas. That's marketing, sales, networking -- whatever you want to call it. Nowadays google is forcing us to go comment on other people's blogs, link-trade, and lord knows what else. Good ideas simply don't always become popular simply because they're good and you tell a few people. It takes a lot more work than that.
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    Unless the doctor copied it to their website and told the media about that website instead ... simple isn't it.

gloob 17y ago

Also, you registered just to make this post? I would suspect that a fair number of users have registered to make a post, so I'm not entirely certain what you're getting at. (Unless it's just curiosity, in which case I'll allow YorkSEO to speak for themselves).

YorkSEO 17y ago

Ok, what about new companies entering a competitive niche? You can have a perfectly optimised website but still not get any traction in the search engines. These days a good cms will do your on page optimisation for you, but links are what you need to make your site visible. Yes you could build links yourself, but it probably isn't the most efficient use of your time as your success rate will usually be lower than that of an experienced seo. And yes I'm a long time lurker who registered just to post this

brown9-2 17y ago
Maybe I've misunderstood something about "SEO" as a position (thinking it was all about page optimization/design), but are you saying that its about building incoming links to a site as well? Do companies hire you just to help build the number of links to their sites from other sites? How do you do this? Isn't that just plain old "marketing" at that point?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Either that or plain old linkspamming.
- YorkSEO 17y ago
  Yes plenty of companies request linkbuilding only, I'm not going to go into all the details of how we do it, but often its a case of contacting webmasters and asking them to link. Although there are certain techniques we use to increase our success rate which is where marketing aspects come in. In fact most good seo companies are really just online marketers, with seo being an umbrella term for a wide variety of techniques
  - brown9-2 17y ago
    Then in this case I think the discussion has become one where we use the same term to refer to different things: I've always thought of SEO as "use meta tags, use headlines, use short URLs, etc" - pure optimization of existing contact to help engines better parse your contact. I'd label what you are referring to as more of online marketing to build a site/brand's presence and reputation, which is something that then influences a search engine ranking.

sanswork 17y ago

I could find out for free how to do a lot of things. Make my own whisky, fix my car. However I'm not a distiller or a mechanic so I leave those tasks to people who know what to do without having to read a manual every time. Someone who also knows what not to waste time on(meta tags for example which for some reason still seem to feature high in all entry level seo step lists).

brown9-2 17y ago
Doesn't your last point about meta tags prove that SEO shouldn't be placed in the same category of "experts" as mechanics and distillers?
- sanswork 17y ago
  I don't see how. My last point was that a lot of the information on this stuff is not helpful. Just like a expert mechanic can listen to an engine and hear problems without having to check every part an expert at SEO can decide which changes are most important without having to go through every checklist and step out there.
tumult 17y ago
No, it's Google's job to help people find things. That's what it does. SEO exists to game Google into placing your site higher in results. I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google within hours if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO.
- sanswork 17y ago
  And it is SEOs job to help Google find things. I'm not going to deny blackhat SEO exists like I wouldn't deny blackhat developers exist but you can't tarnish the whole profession because of your ignorance of the actual role of a whitehat SEO professional. It shows up in hours on github because github has a lot of authority. It shows up high on google because I'm guessing you're searching for pretty long keyword strings. So if your ok with people finding your code when they search for "ruby gem for mysql connections" thats cool you don't need to hire an SEO professional. Hell you never need to hire an SEO professional. But if you want someone who knows more about it to help you with making sure Google and yahoo and bing can find your information then you can. I really don't get the hatred on this site for SEO in general. I'm not an SEO professional myself but I know quite a few and now a days most people in the profession that are active and well known are all above board. They help you structure your information to make it easier to find and help you build relationships with other sources of traffic. Hardly evil stuff.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

By following common sense, good design, and doing some research and reading about Google's suggestions to web developers. Put down the coolaid. Seriously -- Google is a business. They make money by selling the results of an algorithm. There's nothing magic or sacred about Google's algorithm. It makes mistakes. They blackball people. Even more critical, links are not a necessary and sufficient reason for an article to be the best thing I want to see. It's just a guessing game that works most of the time for most people. If I had a cure for cancer that worked, and I put it on a website with a new domain tomorrow, and never SEO'd it, who do you think would come by? Bupkis. Zero. Zilch. Nobody. Good SEO is marketing. Marketing is a good thing. We need people to do things to bring to our attention stuff we might like. Google is not about to take the place of all marketing -- maybe that was a dream years ago but it's turned out to just be a fantasy on Google's part.

sharpn 17y ago
If you found a cure for cancer and only put it on a website, maybe noone would find it. But if you also mentioned it to a few people (especially a doctor or cancer victim) then it would be featured in news articles, broadcast, tweeted etc. because it's a big deal. Soon your website would appear first in any relevant search.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  It might and it might not. That's the thing -- sure, perhaps all good ideas get great publicity and links simply because they're good ideas. And perhaps all good business ideas make their owners lots of money simply because they're good ideas. And perhaps all articles get referenced and linked based on their degree of usefulness to the world. But in the real world, somebody has to go out and peddle ideas. That's marketing, sales, networking -- whatever you want to call it. Nowadays google is forcing us to go comment on other people's blogs, link-trade, and lord knows what else. Good ideas simply don't always become popular simply because they're good and you tell a few people. It takes a lot more work than that.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  Unless the doctor copied it to their website and told the media about that website instead ... simple isn't it.