32 replies to this topic

[chrishirst]

Any chance of actually posting a link to it?

Plus, as I've not read the article yet, could you sum up why SEO in the right places no longer works? I mean what is the point of doing onsite SEO if it's no longer relevant?

http://www.highrankings.com/seo-in-all-the-right-places-316

"Formula SEO" aka "SEO by numbers" never really did work that well, in some market places and some URLs it would have some success, but SEO is NOT and has never been a "one size fits all" scenario.

I mean what is the point of doing onsite SEO if it's no longer relevant?

It works if it is done PROPERLY but it is not a case of do A,B,C, and X,Y,Z will happen.

[Jill]

If you read the article you'll understand better. SEO is alone, as in putting keywords on your page, is probably not going to be very helpful these days, at least not in any moderately competitive market.

[Bootfit]

It works if it is done PROPERLY but it is not a case of do A,B,C, and X,Y,Z will happen.

I'm really not trying to be a dick or cause argument, but for years we've been told how to do it properly (title tags, h tags etc etc...) and we've preached to all that are willing to listen how to do it properly (if only for the sake of accessibility and to help make web pages better wherever possible) only to now be told, if we do it properly, we've done it too much and there is another proper way to do it that outstrips the other proper way.

And the god's honest truth is, no one can quantify what this new proper way is.

The old proper way: Title tags, Meta Tags, H tags alt attributes, title attributes, quality relevant content etc...

The new proper way: Some of the above, but not all and we're not sure exactly which at that. Bit vague actually. Oh and you'll need some good social links too.

The thing is, Title tags, Meta Tags, H tags, alt attributes, title attributes etc are all there to be filled in. There's no denying that, and an empty <title> tag is empty and therefor an incomplete page, same goes for other tags and attributes. Now when you fill these in you have to fill them in with relevant data - and now this is considered improper SEO - because we've done too much?

Some of us aren't trying to scam Google, we're just trying to do our job to the best of our ability - we take pride in a well-structured user-focused page (and this means correct use of the above tags etc) and to be penalised for this is ridiculous. Keyword stuffing is one thing, correct use of page elements should be promoted not penalised.

[chrishirst]

I'm really not trying to be a dick or cause argument, but for years we've been told how to do it properly (title tags, h tags etc etc...) and we've preached to all that are willing to listen how to do it properly (if only for the sake of accessibility and to help make web pages better wherever possible) only to now be told, if we do it properly, we've done it too much and there is another proper way to do it that outstrips the other proper way.

Yes and??
The PROBLEM is the fact that you do all this for the search ENGINES NOT for the USERS of search engines, and with the idea that if using one heading element on a document is good, then using TEN must be $%~*ing fantastic.

Oooh ooh ooh and even better we can put every "keyword" in, bold and lets add alt "tags" to every image. and well put exactly seven words in the title or not go over 70 character, Oh and well work to an exact keyword "density" oh and we'll make the title, and a H1 heading AND the URL exactly the same.

And just like a bunch of lemmings you all rush off leaving a "SEOed footprint" as big as the iceberg that hit the Titanic. Then of course when the "experts" spout out their latest and greatest "rankings trick" everybody scrabble about to change all their documents to suit. Hello! Real world over this way!!

Does it never strike any of you that the spokes men | women | person may just be dropping some of the "expert" a bit of duff info just to see who falls for it???
Then they have a damned good guffaw when the brown stuff hits the air recirculating device and a bunch of URLs and the Lemmings fell off the cliff because the one in front had said trust me guys I know where we are going.



The "proper way" is EXACTLY the same as it has been since 1995.and it is not to employ the latest and "kewlest" trick because [insert suspect] had "tested" it and it definitely "works". However they forget to add "Well it does until a thousand or so idiots do this on a hundred thousand plus URLs and SE engineers think "Right they've" fallen for it, we'll shut it off now".
It is to create documents for REAL PEOPLE, search engine optimisation and marketing is NOT optimising and marketing for search engines. it is marketing USING search engines and optimising for the USERS

[Bootfit]

Ok, well i asked a genuine question and said I wasn't trying to be a dick but you seemed to have gone out of your way to be one and thrown in a huge bucketful of self-righteousness too.

So I'll give up on you and your forum and bid you all the best.

[piskie]

So I'll give up on you and your forum and bid you all the best

Whoops there goes another one !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jill]

@Boofit, you said:

The old proper way: Title tags, Meta Tags, H tags alt attributes, title attributes, quality relevant content etc...

The new proper way: Some of the above, but not all and we're not sure exactly which at that. Bit vague actually. Oh and you'll need some good social links too.

It's really not new. See my article from 2007 on the topic of The Art of SEO. And 2007 was a revision from a much earlier time. I believe 2004. It may have in fact first been written even earlier than that.

SEO done properly has always had an element or art to it. If you simply fill in the blanks with keywords everywhere you can, your SEO sticks out like a sore thumb. Google wants to think they can figure out the best pages on their own without any help from SEO. While in 2007 they were far from being there, they could still easily see any obvious signs. (They didn't always do anything about it, unfortunately.

Fast forward to 2012 and as my SEO in all the right places article discusses, Google now does in fact put their money where there mouth is. I don't know why it took them this long to actually go directly after SEO'd sites, but they have, and that's why so many people are scrambling to know what to do.

So while SEO is still important, it has to be done subtly. More subtlety then ever. It has to be done enough so that Google has some way to know what words are relevant to a site, but not so much that it looks like the site was "SEO'd."

Make sense?

[torka]

Some of us aren't trying to scam Google, we're just trying to do our job to the best of our ability - we take pride in a well-structured user-focused page (and this means correct use of the above tags etc) and to be penalised for this is ridiculous. Keyword stuffing is one thing, correct use of page elements should be promoted not penalised.

Wait a minute -- how did we jump from "formulaic, SEO-by-the-numbers not being as effective these days" over to sites being penalized for using correct markeup? I don't think anybody is claiming you shouldn't use correct markup, or that there's some kind danger in having a title element and header that clearly reflect the content of the page, or anything like that.

Has anyone claimed that and I just missed it? (Because if they did, they're wrong.)

See, "being less effective" is not the same as "being penalized." And just because something isn't as effective as it used to be for accomplishing one task, that doesn't mean it should be abandoned. Especially if it is still valuable for other reasons.

There are many compelling reasons to use page elements as they were designed to be used, and to include relevant keywords in appropriate places. I don't think anybody is suggesting we should stop doing that.

But using markup correctly is something that's easily attainable by almost everyone. Simply using correct markup is not -- should not be -- sufficient to get a page ranked #1. Top rankings are supposed to go to extraordinary pages, those that go above and beyond to offer amazing content, exemplary ease of use, outstanding accessibility and the like. Pages that are owned by people who understand marketing and have learned how to get their work noticed by others.

Formulaic SEO is as likely to produce pages that over time will hold the top spot in the rankings as a paint-by-numbers kit is to produce museum-quality art. You wouldn't demand a set of rules to follow to create a great sculpture or to write The Great American Novel. We all sort of know instinctively, while there may be general guidelines that might be helpful, in art there are no rules that you must invariably follow and none that you can never, ever break.

--Torka

Edited by torka, 07 August 2012 - 11:16 AM.

[chrishirst]

Ok, well i asked a genuine question and said I wasn't trying to be a dick but you seemed to have gone out of your way to be one and thrown in a huge bucketful of self-righteousness too.

So I'll give up on you and your forum and bid you all the best.

Nothing to do with "self righteousness"

The "you" doesn't apply to YOU personally, It applies to THOUSANDS of people who may read this thread now, tommorrow, next week, next month, in TEN YEARS time.

If people cannot understand the disconnection between a public forum where anyone may read it, and something that is SPECIFICALLY aimed at them, they have a lot more problems than "SEO" could ever solve.

[1dmf]

If brand name searching increases 'reputation', how come we have lost so much traffic since the algo updates, yet still our top 6 searches for last year bringing in 65% of all seach traffic is our company name / web address in various permitations?

 

The analystic doesn't seem to back this up?

 

Edit: Thought I would add, that 72.9% of all trafic last year was Direct and only 25% was search and of that search 65% was brand name.

 

So 65% of searches is for brand name and @ 73% of visits was direct 'because they know our brand name', why the sudden drop in visits / ranking, it cannot be brand awareness / reputation!

Edited by 1dmf, 11 January 2013 - 06:49 AM.

[Jill]

There are many other factors involved than brand. 

[1dmf]

The problem is it now seems those with a high reputation / brand name that happen to have just mentioned a keyphrase now out rank those who speicilaise in the field and target that keyphrase.

 

A prime example is a money saving expert thread that is closed from 2008 that out ranks us for one of our particular keyphrases, just because the thread title mentions the keyphrase being searched.

 

The MSE page is 5 years out of date and recommends using certain companies that went bust years ago!

 

How on earth is that providing relevant, usefull results to the searcher.

 

Did you know we won best provider in our field in 2012 at the industry awards, and these awards also include votes from not only the industry itself, but industry providers such as lenders and insurers as well as our members (the brokers).

 

So we are one of only a handfull of legally authorised providers of a regulated services who has won an award for being the best in our business in the entire country as voted for by the industry and those who use our sevices.

 

Yet Google thinks differently and that an out of date, incorrect, uselss thread from a company that doesn't even offer our services is more relevant to its searchers?

 

I don't think so!

[qwerty]

Let's assume for the sake of argument that what you're saying could be considered objectively true -- that your article really does provide more useful information than that old, out of date article does. You're pointing out a limitation on the ability of Google's algorithm to figure out some things. Google isn't capable of looking at a document and concluding that the information it contains may have been accurate once, but isn't anymore.

 

It can only look at whether it has the right words on it, and whether the right number of the right resources have indicated in a way that the algo understands (links and citations) that the information is valuable.

 

I wrote an article just about ten years ago (April of 2003) in an effort to clarify the difference between the terms SEO and SEM. It's hardly groundbreaking information -- it wasn't groundbreaking then and it certainly isn't now -- but over the years, it's gotten a healthy trickle of links from a wide variety of sites, some by other SEOs and others by people outside the field, using a variety of relevant anchor text.

 

I wouldn't say the information on the page is out of date, but it's certainly not the finest, most informative article out there on the subject. And for ten years, it's ranked well and sent me plenty of traffic. Over the course of 2012, it served as my site's entry page from organic searches some 30 times as often than my home page.

Edited by qwerty, 11 January 2013 - 11:02 AM.

[SelfMade]

Does it never strike any of you that the spokes men | women | person may just be dropping some of the "expert" a bit of duff info just to see who falls for it???
Then they have a damned good guffaw when the brown stuff hits the air recirculating device and a bunch of URLs and the Lemmings fell off the cliff because the one in front had said trust me guys I know where we are going.

 

 

So..chrishirst, whilst your giving this guy a right royal basting, I said this in another thread here and you appear to say the opposite:

 

http://www.highranki...e-2#entry326604

[chrishirst]

Actually, I'm saying the same thing, which boils down to:

 

 

"Don't believe, or accept blindly everything you read or hear on the Internet"

 

Though I think we are ALL inclined to accept that being told about the negative effects is FAR more likely to be accurate than anyone giving the secret to instant success.