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Boogaloodude
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« on: December 10, 2009, 11:28:42 AM » |
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My view on SEO has recently been described as 'inane waffle verging on nonsense' which I have to say surprised me quite a lot since I've come to my view over a few years of analysing SEO and what it actually is and think I have a good insight into it. So, I thought I'd start a proper thread on it and see what comes out of it.
Trying to keep it as short as possible, here's my view of SEO as a bullet points in what I think is a logical progression:
1. You rank well on Google when you meet the right criteria
2. Google set those criteria
3. Google set the criteria based on what they want to give to their users
4. What google want to give to their users is Relevant & Useful search results (i.e. good quality websites and to help us produce those they give us a bunch of free tools because they can't direclty influence the content of the sites in their index so they do it indirectly)
5. The search/ranking algo judges your pages based on Relevance and Usefulness (read 'Authority')
6. If you know what Google looks for to judge Relevance and Usefulness then you can give it to them
7. Google want all this to occur naturally, i.e. if it genuinely deserves to rank, it will.
8. It's possible to contrive to give Google genuinely useful pages
9. This approach is robust and resilient to algo changes because rather than spoofing the algo by exploiting a few of the ranking signals in ways that will probably get nerfed in the future, I'm actually giving Google what they really want.
So, you could argue that what I do isn't SEO, it's just building good quality well constructed websites that rank well because they geniunely deserve to. Well, to me that's real SEO. I'm not looking at Google as a system and exploiting weaknesses in it, I'm looking at their business philosophy and trying to fit it into what I do, I understand what they want, I give it to them. It's not maths, or PR calculations, or clever link hub building or siloing or any of that stuff, it's just simple.
Maybe that's not different to what you all do, hopefully I'll soon find out.
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www.ImgWebDesign.co.uk - Web site design, Buxton Derbyshire "Scientists have proof but no certainty, religions have certainty but no proof"
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Seo'ers - UK SEO, Internet Marketing and Webmaster Forums
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« on: December 10, 2009, 11:28:42 AM » |
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Boogaloodude
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« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2009, 11:46:17 AM » |
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54 'reads' and not a single reply, no idea what that signifies. No one has an opinion on this?
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www.ImgWebDesign.co.uk - Web site design, Buxton Derbyshire "Scientists have proof but no certainty, religions have certainty but no proof"
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hawkwind dave
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« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2009, 12:14:16 PM » |
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Seeing as I opened this particular can of worms, I'd better reply....
for any given keyword or keyphrase, Google will find numerous pages it considers 'relevant and useful'. This could be 5 pages, 50 pages or 5,000,000 pages.
where google delivers 5,000,000 'relevant or useful' pages, what steps do you take to ensure your pages are in the top 5 or 10 results of those 5,000,000?
I don't disagree with your model at all, it's pretty much the same as any self respecting SEOer.
However, if one of your pages ranks at the bottom of page 5 for 'green widgets', would you say to yourself "Well, google obviously thinks the 49 pages ahead of mine are more useful and relevant than my page, so google is delivering it's take on what is most relevant.", or would you think, "Right, what have those 49 pages got that mine haven't?" And take steps to increase the position of your low ranking page?
Any SEOer would opt for the 2nd choice, and those steps, whether white hat, black hat or no hat are for all intents and purposes, aimed at increasing your position in google.
You call it 'creating rankings', I call it 'manipulating rankings', others may call it 'encouraging rankings' ... at the end of the day it's all SEO, hence me describing your explanation of the difference between 'manipulating' and 'creating' as 'inane waffle'.
My intent was not to belittle you or your take on SEO, although I'm aware that's how it came across, and for that I apologise.
And for the record, all of your points detailed above are good sound advice, and I would argue that what you do is definately SEO.
All the best.
Dave
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Boogaloodude
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« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2009, 03:48:56 PM » |
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You call it 'creating rankings', I call it 'manipulating rankings', others may call it 'encouraging rankings' ... at the end of the day it's all SEO, hence me describing your explanation of the difference between 'manipulating' and 'creating' as 'inane waffle'.
OK Dave, thanks for taking the time and for the apology, next time you decide to rip through my tissue paper thin skin of self esteem with harsh opinion, take a moment... nah, just kidding  Lucky for all of us I hadn't just been posting on Youtube when I read what you put or that thread might have run a little different.. Ok, to make my point I'm going to have to resort to an anaolgy.. I know, I know, sorry but it's necessary. I'm like the dog owner who wins Crufts because I know what the judges are looking for in a dog and give it to them i.e. I feed and exercise my dog well so that it has good muscle tone and lovely fur etc etc, whereas my competitor who also knows some of the things the judges are looking for uses steroids, injections and hairspray and other chemicals to achieve the same effect. Because I get that the judges wouldn't approve of the second way, I don't do it, I just give them really want and I do it 'naturally'. Both methods have a short term chance of succeeding, mine has the best chance of long term success because it's what the judges really want, not a cheap imitation of it Obviously Google want real quality so I try to give them that instead of flimsy shallow algo spoofing. For example, I don't farm link building out to Indian companies who will do it through sheer numbers, I would rather build a few good quality links by putting something useful on the site. That's because I know Google doesn't like the former. I wouldn't artificially create a link hub to rank, I'd rather contrive to become part of a real one by being genuinely useful. See what I mean? The end result may be the same but the methodology and thinking is quite different, I'm doing what Google want instead of manipulating their system's flaws. Since they don't like people trying to manipulate their system I wouldn''t call what I do SEO if I had a choice. The difference between me and the laymen is that they probably don't understand how important links are for example whereas I will ensure that we have a way to attract good ones. My good ranks aren't by chance but neither am I manipulating Google to get them, just giving them what I know will be rewarded. where google delivers 5,000,000 'relevant or useful' pages, what steps do you take to ensure your pages are in the top 5 or 10 results of those 5,000,000?
That's where the Competitive Keyword analysis comes in, I wouldn't be trying to rank for a keyword phrase in the first place unless I've identified it as relatively easy to rank for. And that's just market research, Google have no problem with that. |
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« Last Edit: December 15, 2009, 03:57:54 PM by Boogaloodude »
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www.ImgWebDesign.co.uk - Web site design, Buxton Derbyshire "Scientists have proof but no certainty, religions have certainty but no proof"
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Nobby
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« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2009, 04:20:51 PM » |
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That's where the Competitive Keyword analysis comes in, I wouldn't be trying to rank for a keyword phrase in the first place unless I've identified it as relatively easy to rank for. And that's just market research, Google have no problem with that.
Don't take this as harsh, but your comment leads to a question. As a professional SEO, do you turn clients down if you feel their keywords are competative and would therefore require "un-natural" link building? The reason i initially viewed this thread and didnt comment, wasnt cause i didnt have an opinion, it was because i couldn't at that time add anything. |
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Boogaloodude
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« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2009, 07:21:03 PM » |
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As a professional SEO, do you turn clients down if you feel their keywords are competative and would therefore require "un-natural" link building?
No, because given enough time and effort there isn't a keyword on the planet this technique wouldn't work for. Luckily that's an extreme that never crops up in reality cos I select the keywords.... The worst case scenario for me is a context for which I simply can't come up with anything even remotely interesting or useful to use to gain rankings. For those ones I recommend PPC  |
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www.ImgWebDesign.co.uk - Web site design, Buxton Derbyshire "Scientists have proof but no certainty, religions have certainty but no proof"
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hawkwind dave
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« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2009, 07:56:50 PM » |
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...I'm going to have to resort to an analogy.. I know, I know, sorry but it's necessary.
I'm like the dog owner who wins Crufts because I know what the judges are looking for in a dog and give it to them i.e. I feed and exercise my dog well so that it has good muscle tone and lovely fur etc etc, whereas my competitor who also knows some of the things the judges are looking for uses steroids, injections and hairspray and other chemicals to achieve the same effect...
And if your dog constantly comes 50th and the 49 in front of you also feed and exercise their dogs so that they have good muscle tone and lovely fur etc and aren't going down the hypothetical steroids route....  More SEO? PPC? A different dog or a different dog show? actually, don't reply, that's the problem with analogy... we'll start going in a tangent we'll never return from  What I want to say to web owners who ring up saying "I've just developed my 'baby gifts' website and really need SEO!" is, "Go away and come back with a more original idea! If you saw four off licences in close proximity on the high street, would you open a 5th?" I agree that every business has it niche somewhere, but there's many a niche with no traffic, regardless of what google's tools tell us.  |
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HHI Golf Guy
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« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2009, 09:49:57 PM » |
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I agree with Dave that when you start targeting competitive KW's you need to apply SEO specific techniques if you want to get to the top. If you don't then you'll have to wait a lot of years to build up links to get your site competitive in the SERP's.
Remember that "competitive" does not mean that there are tens of millions of pages competing for the term. We have many destination vacation and real estate markets that we target that return only a few million results, but there can be 20+ sites with active SEO campaigns competing for the primary KW's.
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Boogaloodude
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« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2009, 10:34:15 AM » |
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I agree with Dave that when you start targeting competitive KW's you need to apply SEO specific techniques if you want to get to the top. If you don't then you'll have to wait a lot of years to build up links to get your site competitive in the SERP's.
My techniques ARE SEO specific, I wouldn't be doing it for these people if search engines didn't exist but they do and I know what they're looking for. I'd try to build links by getting my client to come up with some kind of useful resource then promote it, i.e. good link bait. In other words I'd replicate what I'd do if there were no search engines and was just trying to be useful to my users, but I'd do it on purpose. I wouldn't farm it out to an Indian link building company, join a link exchange program, build my own link hub, hope a zillion crappy directory entries will help, spam forums and blogs... or any of that vunerable stuff. How would you build good quality, algo change proof links?
is, "Go away and come back with a more original idea! If you saw four off licences in close proximity on the high street, would you open a 5th?"
Dogs aren't the best analogy, granted, because they have a physical limit on how good they can actually be whereas a website doesn't. It's not quite as simple as above, don't forget that in the keyword analysis I've hopefully identified keywords that shouldn't be that hard to rank for so the competition isn't that stiff and won't require that many links. I'm not looking to go head to head with long established sites, that could take years. Google isn't perfect, given the volume of info they deal with it's not surprising but their goal is clear and all I'm trying to do is go with that flow rather than work against it. Creating a rank that isn't genuinely deserved is just asking to get nerfed at some point in the future. |
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www.ImgWebDesign.co.uk - Web site design, Buxton Derbyshire "Scientists have proof but no certainty, religions have certainty but no proof"
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Seo'ers - UK SEO, Internet Marketing and Webmaster Forums
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« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2009, 10:34:15 AM » |
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Nobby
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« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2009, 01:39:27 PM » |
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No, because given enough time and effort there isn't a keyword on the planet this technique wouldn't work for.
Really? So if your client wanted to rank for a highly competative keyword you would build the site, perform the onsite SEO write lots of great unique content and then wait for natural linking to take its course? Thats gonna be some wait if your competition also have a well built content rich site, plus have a team of link builders isn't it? Perhaps i am missing your point? |
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HHI Golf Guy
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« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2009, 01:52:41 PM » |
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How would you build good quality, algo change proof links?
There is no 100% guarantee that any link will always be a good link. But when I start building links for a new site the first thing I think about is Trust Rank, and build the first links from sites and pages that I feel have a decent level of "trust". Link building is boring and time consuming. My philosophy has always been to go for what I consider to be quality links rather than build thousands and thousands and thousands of links from directories and what I consider to be weak web sites or pages. I *do* use the Google toolbar and SEOmoz tools to help determine sites high in trust (other than the high trust sites that I have at my disposal). However, when it comes to additional links and what I consider to be quality links I do not us the toolbar. I have my own set of criteria that I go by instead. It is my experience that if you build links "willy nilly" you can almost guarantee your site will be impacted when their is an algorithm change. If you spend your time building only quality links your sites should hold up under any algorithm change. The key, of course, is having the correct definition of a quality link. |
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HHI Golf Guy
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« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2009, 01:58:48 PM » |
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No, because given enough time and effort there isn't a keyword on the planet this technique wouldn't work for.
Really? So if your client wanted to rank for a highly competative keyword you would build the site, perform the onsite SEO write lots of great unique content and then wait for natural linking to take its course? Thats gonna be some wait if your competition also have a well built content rich site, plus have a team of link builders isn't it? I was thinking the same thing. |
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Boogaloodude
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« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2009, 06:17:32 PM » |
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No, because given enough time and effort there isn't a keyword on the planet this technique wouldn't work for.
Really? So if your client wanted to rank for a highly competative keyword you would build the site, perform the onsite SEO write lots of great unique content and then wait for natural linking to take its course? Thats gonna be some wait if your competition also have a well built content rich site, plus have a team of link builders isn't it? Perhaps i am missing your point? No, I'd get the client to provide the content.... Then I'd bump start it with directory links and some blog an forum posting, that's ok, Google expects any business to promote itself but all I'm trying to do is get the content in front of enough people that the 'natural' link acquisition begins, I'm not relying on all that stuff for the ranking, just a shove in the right direction. No it won't be a wait, because as I've said a few times, the Comeptitive keyword analysis identifies keyword that shouldn't be that hard to rank for. It's not even a clever SEO theory or anything, it's just understanding what Google want and how they view/sort the content of their index and how they want to present it to their users. |
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www.ImgWebDesign.co.uk - Web site design, Buxton Derbyshire "Scientists have proof but no certainty, religions have certainty but no proof"
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Matt Inertia
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« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2009, 06:56:08 PM » |
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Rankings, rankings, rankings... This thread's title should be changed to "Differing Perspectives on achieving Rankings". Firstly, rankings are just one part of SEO and the variation in search results and search methods that we have nowadays make standard rankings less and less important. There are other aspects to search traffic acquisition which we need to know about, namely image/video/local search, universal search, social search and snippet optimisation (microformats appearing in SERPs is a great example of an area where SEOs are the numero uno people to help). We are here to help sites of all sizes with all of these areas (as well as advising on branding (an SEO should know about branding as it improves clickthru), site performance, bounce rates, scalabilty etc...). So I guess I agree with this statement: So, you could argue that what I do isn't SEO, it's just building good quality well constructed websites Boogaloo... Youre approach to SEO is tried and tested and will work for many situations. But in reality it cant (or shouldnt need to) be applied to every website and every situation. It depends on the level of competition the website is facing and it's purpose. A local company website doesnt need to provide "great content" to do what it's supposed to do. All it needs to do is provide an attractive shop front, with some credentials, a call to action and contact/location details. A user who wants their car valeted (for example) is not interested in reading about the history of the shammy leather. For these sort of sites links arent even that important. Local directories and links from relevant parallel industries will do the job easily, and these are all links you can get yourself within the same time it takes to "create some great, link worthy content". As far as relevance and usefulness, ill use your dog analogy. If you have a cockerspaniel, it doesnt matter whether its an ugly mutt with no fur, no teeth and hygiene problems, its still relevant to the cockerspaniel section of the dog show. This is how i see page relevance, more of a relevant or irrelevant state. It is either relevant or it isnt and the thing that gets that page higher in the rankings is not that it is more relevant, it is that it appears to be better quality (rather than more "useful"). The way you make a page appear to be better quality is by targeting known factors (primarily links and site stuff like fresh/unique/keyword rich content). I think i explained that correctly. What I want to say to web owners who ring up saying "I've just developed my 'baby gifts' website and really need SEO!" Why? Thats the beauty of the internet, the playing field is massive and if you do the SEO and web design/development correctly then you can find an area where that site can operate. That is what we do and that is what we get paid for. Obviously there is some understanding needed from the client but i dont see any website as a write off due to competition. We can do good things for any business! Sorry if any of this is garbled. Ive got sun stroke and im sat in the hostel with a head that looks like a tomatoe. |
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« Last Edit: December 16, 2009, 07:01:13 PM by Matt Inertia »
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Matt Inertia
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« Reply #14 on: December 16, 2009, 06:59:11 PM » |
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No it won't be a wait, because as I've said a few times, the Comeptitive keyword analysis identifies keyword that shouldn't be that hard to rank for. I structure my target keywords in a way where the competitive keywords are always present which pick up the rankings. This way you can tier your keywords, achieve quick (but probably low yielding) rankings while the short tail becomes the long term goal, so i never abandon a keyword because it is too competitive. |
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