81 replies to this topic

[OldWelshGuy]

I think the latest buzzword is now Block link analysis or some such, apparently it is all new hat and hot off the press. (if you recall we all discussed it here about 6 months back )

OK I just got a copy of ISEDB weekly, where some SEO had renamed it 'vision based analytics' or some such even more geeky name that means even less to the average man on the street. I mean at least with block link analysis you have half a chance of explaining pages being split into blocks and different weight being given to links from each area or block.

[qwerty]

vision based analytics

That's no good. I still remember Visual Basic for Applications. There can't be another VBA. I'll get confused.

[peter_d]

I do believe that the best SEOs (not for pills, porn casino, but "real" sites) are those who are somewhat technical, but not so geeky as to do things by the numbers.

You know, I went to a conference consisting mainly of erm....the dark side of the force, and not once did I hear any talk about seo. It was all about business, marketing, relationships and strategy The whole industry is maturing.

I agree that SEO is dead dull. Hats-off to you guys - I don't know how you manage to answer the same questions over again and stay sane. The interesting stuff, for me anyway, has always been in the marketing strategy. Find the gaps. Build solutions. Make it work. SEO is a tool. It helps us with lead generation. SEO, outside a marketing strategy, is a shot in the dark.

I love it when you see this little light go on when newer people first realise: "Hey, it's not a coding thing! It's a marketing thing!".

Edited by peter_d, 08 February 2005 - 10:52 PM.

[projectphp]

http://www.highranki...indpost&p=83571 is some of Peter's finest work

In fact, just bookmarked it

Think strategy.

That is what is fun: strategy. There is more to Marketing and strategy than number one search engines rankings on 10 or even 10,000 phrases. Strategy is about getting from here to there, and how you do it.

Strategy is why great sporting teams (like the Wallabies and NE Patriots) can beat a team full of great players (like the All Blacks ).

The former have stuck by long serving players, and shuffled the fringe players, whereas the latter has chopped and changed so many times it isn't funny.

Strategy is also about having goals. "A number one ranking on Google for widget" isn't a tangible goal. "Increase sales by 30%" is. The two are not the same, and neither do they neccesarily correlate.

I prefer dealing with the latter myself.

[BobetteKyle]

Strategy is why great sporting teams (like the Wallabies and NE Patriots) can beat a team full of great players.

Yes! and it's about working together to implement. Sometime during the pregame afternoon Sunday, the announcers commented that an underlying theme when they interviewed players was "to challenge one of us is to challenge us all." (paraphrased) That directly ties into getting "3-10 people with different roles pulling in the right direction to make the site a success." (quote=projectphp)

[Hyperformance]

Hear, hear!

...to the last 3 posts!

[Big Bill]

I am amazed at the number of people I have talked to in the last 6 months or so who have said they are losing interest in SEO.  Why is that?

Are we just a bunch of challenge seekers and the game isn't fun anymore?  Has the SEO landscape changed so much that we aren't as fascinated by it as we once were?  Has it become too hard/too easy?

Any thoughts?

I'd say it's because unless you're one of the handful of people who're associated with already successful folk in the industry, you can't make any money at it. Business folk who need it don't want to know because they've already blown their budget on a web site that's usually a complete joke, and web designers who need educating in it don't want to know because it highlights the inescapable fact that their expensive services are not, in fact, doing their clients any good. Hard to be popular under those circumstances. SEO is something that the web industry would really rather see swept under the carpet. I'm not bored with it, I really enjoy the challenge, but I'm hugely frustrated at having a headful of specialist and very useful information that people don't want to know about.

BB

[qwerty]

Welcome, Big Bill

Strategy is why great sporting teams (like the Wallabies and NE Patriots) can beat a team full of great players

Yes, strategy. And sport metaphors
I know it's off topic, but this reminds me of something Kevin McHale of the Boston Celtics once said before a big game. A reporter asked him what the C's would have to do to beat their rivals, and he looked into the camera with that Herman Munster face of his and said, completely deadpan (I'm paraphrasing)

If we want to beat these guys, we're going to have to use a two-fold strategy: First, we need to stop them from scoring whenever possible. Secondly, we need to score more than they do.

Now that's strategy.

[Denyse]

I always tell my customers that their web site is just one of the tools in their marketing strategy, and SEO is one of the tools in their web marketing strategy, along with the concept, the content, the promotion of the site (on and off line) and quantifying the response to it (basically like you would do for any advertising or promotion project off-line).

I still believe that SEO is an important tool, because its about making your site the best it can be, for the visitor and by extension the SE. But once you have done that you don't just sit on your laurels, you have to work hard at marketing that site. And that's what keeps it fresh for me.

[Big Bill]

Google got so good at it, that they are the standard and it seems that the other engines simply try to modify the standard set by Google.  I'd love to see a challenger (are you listening Teoma?) that uses different critera and delivers great results.  Teoma's link analysis (communities of links) would seem to be a great differentiator, but it never seems to pick up any favor with the searching public.

I had high hopes for Vivisimo but it doesn't seem to be too good at actually spidering a site.

BB

[bwelford]

AFAIK Vivisimo is a meta-crawler. So it just checks other search engines and combines the results. So it doesn't need spiders.

[Big Bill]

AFAIK Vivisimo is a meta-crawler.  So it just checks other search engines and combines the results.  So it doesn't need spiders.

You could be right. I was disappointed that it seemed to have no large index to call on. Not even one large index, let alone several. I gave up on it.

BB

[rankforsales]

I've been practicing SEO as a professional since 1997 and, I must admit, it does get boring at times.

However, in true honesty, I must also say that it's still a challenge to rank a client better than where he/she was before we optimized their site. Search engines keep changing and tweaking their algorithms all the time, so we don't have any other choice than to stay closely in touch with the latest technology and the latest SEO / SEM techniques.

There's no question that our profession does have its ups and downs, but in the end, serving and providing the business community with a useful service that will yield them more traffic and better conversion rates does have its share of satisfaction and enjoyment.

[anthonyparsons.com]

The challenge is no longer a challenge IMO. I like SEO, no longer love it. It has all been said here and summed up beautifully. IMO, there are much easier, less time consuming ways to make money online .... he he .... and SEO is not it. I do the occasional site that takes my interest nowadays and pass the rest to some associates....

I think the industry is getting so over-inflated with shamsters and simply do it yourselfers.... (if there is such a word?)

[Netbird]

When I accidentally became a web designer 4 years ago I had no idea about search engines or optimisation. I didn't know how to get found, let alone ranked - I don't know how I thought people would find the site

A few months after the site first went up, my boss came through and told me that he'd found our company when doing a web search for whatever phrase (in the top 10) but that we didn't come up for this other related phrase and could I make that happen. That started me on some major learning. much of it from Jill, and in time we had 21 out of 25 of our targetted phrases in the top 10 on Google. It was very exciting at the time and I'd look up my phrases every month to make sure they wre still there!

About a year ago they started to drop, and I didn't have time to re-optimise so I stopped looking the phrases up as it wasn't fun any more and I'd just started a total re-vamp of the site, making it more usable and easier.

I'm doing no better in the search engines now for those target phrases, but I'm getting bigger enquiries from bigger companies and from all over the world than we ever used to get. We do no advertising or marketing whatever apart from natural search results. We're well aware that this may have to change at any time, but for now my website keeps 19 people fully employed with enquiries and orders.

Rankings are fine, but if people don't like or can't use the site they arrive it it's a waste of everyone's time.