5 replies to this topic

[Jill]

There's a lot of talk lately of Google having finally killed SEO through their Panda and Penguin algorithms, which continue to ensnare more and more websites with every new update. So is SEO really (finally) dead?

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[torka]

Excellent article! I'm circulating it around to some of the others at my company.
--Torka

[Jill]

Thanks! It's getting a lot of good mentions in the social media sphere and has provided lots of new newsletter subscribers as well.

A great example of how good, useful, helpful content can provide you with an increase in conversions (in this case newsletter sign ups)!

[bobmeetin]

I read and reread the article. It leaves me with some questions and such that I could either post individually or talk about here. There are 2 items in particular that draw my attention:

1. Duplicate Content
2. Keyword Stuffing
4. Footer

Duplicate Content - As we know, good web design involves implementing a structure, navigation, framework that makes it easy for the viewer to move through the site without pain. This includes header, navigation, footer, commonly one or two side columns, perhaps some spotlight boxes above the footer. Based upon need you enable/disable some of these bits, but they are pretty much the same (at least if done through a CMS). Along comes individual page content. That distinct page content could be fairly minimal (a short article or FAQ) or significant.

I'm not advocating that you use one of these duplicate content checking systems, but just to see I took one site I knew and piped a few pages through, several short content pages. It spits back that they are 90% similar, then I compare one of these pages to a more developed page, the result being now 60% or so similar, meaning that all this core framework is accounting for the vast majority of the duplicate content. Yes I understand that search engines are no dummies and you would want to believe that they take this into consideration.

The question, where do you/they draw the line?

Are we likely to get Panda-ed in the case of them finding/indexing the particularly short pages which compute to 90% similar. Or are these short pages now falling under "low quality pages" wrath?

Blog extensions and other similar FAQ extensions are contributors here as they commonly give you the option to display a blog roll or list of recent posts with intro text as well as the same intro text on the individual blog page.

Keyword Stuffing - I looked at some articles including Matt Cutt's video that mentioned tag clouds. I get the point to not go over zealous. Tag clouds commonly include links but say you create one that is no more than a services or support region (city) list, just more aesthetic (in the eyes of the beholder) than a simple list format. Is it considered spammy?

Footer links - I am curious. Can you or someone provide a link/links or describe what the bad behavior is? In the footer which is core to every page I commonly, include copyright, link to sitemap if a large site, contact, maybe designed by.

[apeiron]

Just yesterday Matt Cutts answered a very interesting question on GoogleWebmasterHelp: "Should SEO get a different name?" - Among many interesting ideas, Matt expressed his believe that SEO, no matter what you call it, is still a viable online promotion technique. Just because all the spammers can't do their dirty work anymore, doesn't necessarily mean SEO is dead.

Search engine optimization has become less accessible. It no longer relies on stuffing lots of keywords in your <title> tag, submitting your site to a few directories and buying a cheap link on some peculiar website with fake pagerank. Starting with 2012 SEO is going to be the battlefield of the giants: of the big corporations, who can afford really expensive campaigns.

[chrishirst]

I think he has been reading some of my posts

I have always been of the belief that SEO was a misnomer.