131 replies to this topic

[projectphp]

In fact, they can and do prevent the search engines customers' buying sponsored listings. In this respect, SEOs are a commercial risk for a search engine.

I feel that assumption is misplaced because it doesn't make good business sense as far as the SEs are concerned. Why give free drinks at the door when you make your money over the bar?

Peter, with all due respect, that is incorrect. Look, I think your analogy to a bar is wrong. A better anaology for a Search Engine, although quite still poor, is a TV station.

Television stations sell Advertising. However, the product they offer is television shows. Has any television station ever said "We need to get rid of shows. They just get in the way of the ads"?

No, because without viewers, the ads are worth didly squat. And Google is living proof of the power of a model that promotes giving away free drinks, in your analogy, or programmes in mine. If dropping free resukts is a good business model, then why does Overture.com get so few visitors directly? The simple fact is that the Search Engine's business model is based upon visits. More visits == more revenue. Google, who by all accounts is the most successful SE, has decide that maximising visitors is far more important that maximising revenue per visitor. And their growth has, and will, continue to grow at a rate above general growth of the internet as a whole.

So, assumming an SE has to give away some clicks for free, and that this is the best Strategy to increase market share, the question then becomes: do SEOs add value to Google, and other SE, or not? Only they can decide that, and Google in particular has been hostile in the past. Doesn't mean Google believes that SEO is 100% bad for their index or any of the other stretches that often get bandied about.

IMO Making your site accessible to spiders is not SEO. Usability is not SEO. Marketing is not SEO. Even clean code is not SEO.

I love debates about definitions and if this is yours lotso, then I have to agree 100% with you. Unfortunately, however, your definition isn't what the majority of people take SEO to mean. by trying to argue your own definition of a word, you are arguing a self fulfilling prophesy. "I define the word to mean what best fits my argument, therefore I am right".

[peter_d]

Searchrank says:

Search engine marketing

Look, I agree. I'm one myself. But I'm under no illusions about what I'm doing when I undertake the seo aspect.

I am not doing it to make the site spider friendly and then have it sit at number #46. It is top ten, or it is nothing. I don't lose any sleep over it, nor do I pretend otherwise. The search engines don't define what I do. I'm surprised everybody is so keen to let them.

Why is everyone avoiding my question? Hmmmm?

[Scottie]

SEO can sometimes damage the visitor experience.

I agree with that. Its all in how you go about it. It doesn't have to damage the user experience and most often, it improves it.

But I have been aggravated to no end on sites that have been "SEO'd to death" to where every navigation link is a sentence long and the copy is gibberish. That is still SEO, but crappy SEO in my book. :learn:

[peter_d]

php:

Television stations sell Advertising. However, the product they offer is television shows. Has any television station ever said "We need to get rid of shows. They just get in the way of the ads"?

Yah. Agree. But the product (web site) is there anyway, wether seo's toy with it or not.

Edited by peter_d, 25 September 2003 - 08:53 PM.

[Scottie]

How many of you request links as part of your seo strategy? Why is that part of a search engine *optimization* strategy and not simply a traffic building strategy?

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, Peter. Are you saying linking campaigns are not SEO or are SEO?

I think traffic building campaign is a better terminology. There are different ways to go about it- some people get relevant links that will actually drive traffic while others just get wholesale links... therefore some people do look at it from a traffic standpoint while others simply go for link popularity.

[peter_d]

but crappy SEO in my book.

Certainly is. I tend to prefer sites that have had a good usability consultant tweak them, actually.

[peter_d]

I think traffic building campaign is a better terminology.

It's a sneaky little gloss over, isn't it. "You need links because links are great traffic builders". That is true, but is not 100% truthful about describing the real reason it is being done by seos.

[Scottie]

It's a sneaky little gloss over, isn't it. "You need links because links are great traffic builders". That is true, but is not 100% truthful about describing the real reason it is being done by seos.

Hey- it's your term! I just liked it.

[projectphp]

Yah. Agree. But the product is there anyway, wether seo's toy with them or not.

Ah, but do SEOs make results better or worse? Case in point: a site has no titles at all. Would an SEO adding titles make the SERPs better or worse? What about adding text to an all image site? I am sure there are plenty of other instances.

This all boils down to whether full indexability of the web important. For many Search Engines, I think they taken the attitude that, no, it isn't a particularly good idea. But to be the best, surely the answer is, and has to be, yes. If an SEO can help that happen, surely that is a good thing?

In the old days, the portals sites said "we don't care about search. As long as we are 80% as good as our competitiors, we are happy". Then Google came along and shook that all up. Now, relevevance is the number one USP.

So, coming back to it, do SEOs make SERPs better or worse? Do outside television producers make TV better? With any product that costs nothing to use (ala TV and SE), the ONLY selling point is how good it is. Not just relative to its competitiors, but how good it is fullstop. If SE don't provide the best results, people wont only try another SE, many will simply go back to the yellow pages.

That is why TV stations don't produce all their own shows, and why SEOs / SEMs can add value to a SE index. That is essentially the theory behind Inktomi's Trusted Feed. From my understanding, many SEMs abused their position (as people are want to do), and now there are only 5 left, The five that could be most trusted.

[peter_d]

Would an SEO adding titles make the SERPs better or worse?

Depends on what the visitor was trying to find.

If they were after the product manufacturer site for Toyota, and the top ten was full of heavily optimised, low-fi Toyota boy-racer owners-club sites, then the value of the serps to the viewer may have been degraded by the optimisation undertaken by the boy racer sites.

Extreme example, however my point is that it isn't for the optimiser to decide what is relevant and what isn't. Any attempt to make your site appear more relevant than it would otherwise be had the optimisation not taken place is a problem. Make the site spider friendly, by all means, but don't even think about "adjusting" for #9 if your rightful position is #299.

Search engines have never has a problem with making the site more accessible to the spider. But that isn't what we are discussing.

How many of you are happy with position #43 if that is what your site truly deserves as determined by the algo?

I know I'm not. And I take means to correct it.

[lots0]



Unfortunately, however, your definition isn't what the majority of people take SEO to mean.

Have to disagree with you. When I tell someone I optimize web sites for the search engines, the first thing they ask me is how can they get a top SE ranking, I have never been asked (at least at first) how can I make their site better for users or how can I make their site more spider friendly.

Example - Take a site that targets a highly competitive market, where most of the top 1000 sites are basically the same and all highly optimized for the same keywords. Say your clients site is currently sitting at #102 and the client wants to rank in the top five... What are you going to do? Make the site more user/spider friendly... Or are you going to manipulate the SERP... Or are you going to tell the client you won’t or can’t take them as a client?

In my book, the only option is to manipulate the SERP. If you make the site more user/spider friendly it will lose ground to the sites that stress ranking and it will end up at a lower ranking than it started at (clients don’t like that). If you turn the client down, well then your not a real SEO, your just a wannabe, IMO.

Edited by lots0, 25 September 2003 - 09:36 PM.

[Jill]

Once again, as with previous discussions on the same subject, we're all pretty much on the same page.

All any of you are disagreeing about is the definition of SEO. Been there, done that.

To some of us, SEO isn't your daddy's SEO any more. Yes, it used to be all about high rankings and that was it. To some people, that's what it's still about. (Believe me, I'd love to go back to those days!)

But those people won't be able to remain in the game long, as more and more sites are optimized for high rankings and you have to be able to provide the edge in other ways, unless they provide the other services such as usability, sales copywriting, conversions, etc..

IMO Making your site accessible to spiders is not SEO. Usability is not SEO. Marketing is not SEO. Even clean code is not SEO.

Yeah, maybe that's not what SEO stands for, but that's where SEOs who don't want to be left in the dust are moving towards. Smart SEOs are aligning themselves with the right people who know that other stuff, or they are learning it for themselves.

Jill

[lots0]

Yeah, maybe that's not what SEO stands for, but that's where SEOs who don't want to be left in the dust are moving towards. Smart SEOs are aligning themselves with the right people who know that other stuff, or they are learning it for themselves.

I think it depends Jill, as long as I can get top spots for highly competitive keywords, I don’t think I am not going to be lacking for work anytime soon, even if I did not know a single thing about design, marketing, usability or conversions.

And for the record, I do know a little about those things too...

[peter_d]

that's where SEOs who don't want to be left in the dust are moving towards

I think some are missing the fact they exist in the marketing world. Those who can't produce visible bottom line returns will be left in the dust. As will web designers who over-design. As will usability consultants who can't prove how usability provides increased ROI.

BTW: For the record, I didn't entitle this thread "All SEO is spam", I presume Jill did. To quote Brett Tabke: "there is no such thing as SE spam, only poor algos".

If you look at the way the search engine science is developing, it is all about minimising the effect any one person can have on the results. The SEs energies are focused on analysing relationships and interconnectivity, which is a great analogue of how differentiation and relevance occurs in the real world.

The successful SEO of the future will understand this. And bring it on, I say. It will raise the bar and flush out the hacks who just finished reading their first e-book.

PS: The SEs still won't like it

[lots0]

Those who can't produce visible bottom line returns will be left in the dust.

As it is and will always be.