Utterly Disillusioned With Seo, Is the Internet becoming over-optimised? Options

[BungleBob]

Do you remember those early, halcyon days of search engine optimisation? The promise of a constant flow of new customers from across the world, all for just a few hours research and a tweak to your meta tags. Oh those wonderful summers in cyberspace...

Having been in web marketing for some years now, I’m finding it harder and harder to give any kind of confident answer when someone asks how to get to Number 1 in Google (followed by owning their dream villa on the Riviera). I gave up SEO’ing for third parties some time ago and now work solely on our own sites – one of which is a specialist web directory.

To some extent, this has highlighted how different the search world can look from the other side of the table. Now we get to “review� a large number of sites in a market we know a lot about. Depression sets in when you see great products, and good sites, that your SEO-eye says have no chance of winning search traffic. Conversely there’s a huge number of terrible sites that do well. Something’s gone wrong in the world of search…

A quick search in Google or any other major engine for a competitive travel phrase will leave you deluged with results - some good, some bad but all apparently relevant. To the “expert�, many of the results have absolutely no right to be there – the only thing they have in common is the hard work of an SEO consultant. Terrible designs, poor accessibility, slow loads, pop-ups or scant information count for nothing. If you’ve understood the difference between PR and public relations, arrived armed with a WordTracker account and have a ripping inbound link campaign, you’ve probably hit the top. Well done!

Happy searchers? Maybe not…

In the early days of the web, Open Directory (DMOZ) came along with the promise of sifting the web and giving us the good stuff. The current number of frustrated posts from webmasters trying to get listed shows how times have changed. Visit a DMOZ category you know something about and there may be a few of your favourites listed… most likely surrounded by out-of-date, inaccessible, poor quality garbage. In all likelihood your favourite site is still pending review in some overworked editor’s in tray.

An old client made contact the other day, asking about a search campaign. As a site in a niche market, the SEO work didn’t stack up and it turned out cheaper to run a PPC campaign. The client was happier because PPC is advertising he understands. It produces a quantifiable return and, in their niche, doesn’t cost a whole lot. The reason for this decision? His market is over-SEO’d – maybe this was Google and Yahoo’s masterplan all along.

Where DMOZ failed, enter the new-age web directory – pay for inclusion (PFI) and fast approvals – although still very little quality control. JoeAnt and Abrexa have made moves in the right direction with an element of quality review included in the submission process. Unless the engines really do have a “let SEO kill the market� plan, perhaps the answer will be a search world centred around hubs of “quality� such as these.

For our own directory, we’ll do everything we can to acknowledge sites which raise standards. We’ll be adding a sooper-dooper gold star scheme (that’s a working name!) for sites that do a great job at selling their product – regardless of how well they’ve researched their keywords or tweaked their meta tags.

Maybe we’ll also give them extra inbound links to help their rankings. You gotta play the SEO game, right?

[Removed active links per Forum Guidelines.]

This post has been edited by Randy: Aug 24 2004, 11:29 AM

[Randy]

I feel your pain Richard.

That said, I expect things to get much better in the near future. The search industry is very young, in its infancy really. Part of the problem was that Google was so dominant for the last few years. Competition is something of a reality already. It'll become much more of a reality soon when MS throws their hat into the fray.

Competition is good. It keeps one from getting lazy, which is pretty much what has happened in Search over the last few years. The profitablilty of a quality search engine has been proven. Even if Google, Yahoo and MSN don't manage to pull it off, there will be others with better technology on the horizon. Given Google's financial success, it will be much easier for startups with a good idea to raise the funds necessary to pull it off.

[BungleBob]

Good to have an ally!

But is technology alone enough to solve the problem? Isn't some degree of human moderation essential to keep the results clean?

[amabaie]

Hi Richard. Your comments about the state of SEO are well-taken. So well taken in fact, that you could replace the word SEO with product placement, advertising, Yellow Pages listings, "shelf space" in Wal-Mart, or even gossip at the water cooler.

Welcome to the frailty of humanity.

[Randy]

Very good point David ! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

Richard, my hope is that technology will basically cause real people to re-think what they've been doing.

Remember, for the last few years there has been only a single avenue anybody had to worry about. Google. Up until Feb of this year, if you ranked well on Google you had 80% market coverage. Since Google put so much weight on links and linking text, that's what all of those who didn't have a clue used to claw their way to the top.

Automated solutions are aplenty and will usually let you do fairly well in Google with no real effort.

That's all changing. Not only is Yahoo! back on the scene providing their own data now, MSN is on the way shortly. Plus there's the whole idea of Personalization which is likely going to throw everyone for a bit of a loop when it gets rolled out.

Those who only knew how to use programs in a brute force attack to get to the top won't have a clue. They have no foundation or background in creating a real web site. Heck, it hasn't even registed with them yet that Google's influence has dropped by a good 50% since earlier this year.

[dmart]

I feel your pain Richard.

That said, I expect things to get much better in the near future. The search industry is very young, in its infancy really. Part of the problem was that Google was so dominant for the last few years. Competition is something of a reality already. It'll become much more of a reality soon when MS throws their hat into the fray.

Competition is good. It keeps one from getting lazy, which is pretty much what has happened in Search over the last few years. The profitablilty of a quality search engine has been proven. Even if Google, Yahoo and MSN don't manage to pull it off, there will be others with better technology on the horizon. Given Google's financial success, it will be much easier for startups with a good idea to raise the funds necessary to pull it off.

I agree with Randy's assessment. The search engine world right now is in a state of turmoil. Google has been so dominant that they got away with a lot for quite awhile. Results are not as relevant as they once were. There is an opportunity for competition to come in and provide more relevant results and do to google what they did to all the other search engines.

Similarly, because DMOZ has been slow to fix their problems, many competitors are cropping up to solve their problems and take away their customers.

Competition is our friend. It forces better products and services at better prices.

ps - search doesnt have to be rocket science. That is one vendors approach to it and their marketing strategy is to claim that it is required.

[webanimal]

I get really excited when I think about the future of seach, seo, and the web in general. The thought of exploring the whole world from my own home computer after supper just really gets my heart pumping. This thang is a monster! Maybe some of you have lost that lovin feelin, but I'm still dreamin some really big dreams.

Everyone has something to share in this world, and they are sharing it more and more on the world wide web. As we all know, the nature of the Web is such that nothing is private anymore. This is the great information highway.

I have always believed that many things concerning computers, the internet, the web, search engines, and seo are far more complicated than they need to be. And because of this, information is still hard to git your hands on. Just sit and listen to your computer chatter sometime. It's thinking way too hard.

But I'm confident that things are gonna git better - alot better. I have been hearing from some reliable sources that improved data transfer is already transforming things. Gates and his mob are still working in the lab, and it looks like they are about to take over search; perhaps redefine search. (Gates is my hero)

I don't know about you, but I can't take a technology for granted that allows me to find answers to virtually anything. Everywhere I go, people are on the web, searching for information.

I know people who have web pages and blogs that look like (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif) . It looks like they just pasted a gob of stuff on a web page, that they want to share with others. And, then they get a top listing in the search engines. The search engine bot doesn't know their page is ugly. It just found some fresh new content. Contrary to what I have read in seo articles, it seems like the more they pile on the page, the more they are listed. Maybe in the future search engines bots will be able to see how a web page is displayed. But, of course, this would just be a subjective opinion.

I really don't see relevance in the first few search engine results pages (serps), unless you look at it from a commercial perspective. Relevance is relative. The person who optimizes to offer a service or product uses the heading tags (ex. <h1>Title</h1>) because he or she knows the search engines give credibility to these tags in a web page. Honestly, for what other reason would a commercial website use those plain-looking heading tags? The person who optimizes for free information uses the heading tag because this is the plain text format that is used in many of the information web pages that are listed at the top of the serps.

I believe that in the future there will be a way for information to travel the information highway without all the clutter of commercialism. At the same time I believe people will continue to git fat off the big fat web, and free enterprise will flourish, opportunities will abound to all people, all over the world, even to a poor man like me.

This post has been edited by webanimal: Aug 24 2004, 10:12 PM

[BungleBob]

Competition is our friend. It forces better products and services at better prices.

True - but my main contention right now is that having an optimised site has no correlation to a quality product or service.

Let's face it, SEO is pseudo-science - i.e. no science at all. It's just a guessing game we all play with the engines - mostly Google until recently! The difficulty and total lack of guarantees in obtaining a high "organic" ranking are increasingly the key to pay-per-click's success.

As a client, do I spend thousands on a technique which "might" produce results or one that guarantees results - it ain't a tough call!

I'm sure Google and Yahoo love these SEO forums and get a great kick out of everybody's pain - safe in the knowledge they don't officially approve of an SEM industry which floods their results and does a marvellous job at pushing huge numbers of clients and massive amounts of revenue to their paid advertising products.

I'm increasingly convinced that SEO is becoming a dead industry. Would you back a company (SEO's) whose entire existence is based on the policies of other companies (the engines) over whom they have no control? It's not exactly a safe business proposition in the real world.

This doesn't exist in any other form of marketing - hopefully as the engines evolve, solid marketing strategies and quality websites will replace the need to understand PageRank, meta tags and all the other techno-gabble we're so fond of.

[qwerty]

Would you back a company (SEO's) whose entire existence is based on the policies of other companies (the engines) over whom they have no control? It's not exactly a safe business proposition in the real world.

This doesn't exist in any other form of marketing - hopefully as the engines evolve, solid marketing strategies and quality websites will replace the need to understand PageRank, meta tags and all the other techno-gabble we're so fond of.

I'm coming into this thread late, and admittedly I've only read the first and last posts, but I don't think the above is true. If my job were buying television ad time, wouldn't I be dependent on what the networks are programming, what the ratings watchers are reporting, etc?

[BungleBob]

Ahhh - but look at the difference: placing ads on TV is about "marketing" - you don't need to understood the difference between a gaffer and a boom operator to buy air time.

This leads back to the "black hat vs. white hat" SEO debate. "White hat" SEO is based on solid marketing techniques - we should rename this "web marketing". It's about plugging a product online - a legitimate and common business activity.

Conversely, getting paid to achieve high search rankings simply by manipulating known vulnerabilities and search engine limitations can't possibly be viewed as a valid business activity. What happens when those variables change? (which they do, constantly)

It's noticeable that people like Jill Whalen expound core techniques that have more in common with basic marketing than search engine optimisation. They're to be applauded.

Conversely, I wouldn't give the time of day to people whose only vocabulary is meta tags, keyword density, inbound links, blah, blah. I'd like to think that their days are numbered.

[amabaie]

"White hat" SEO is based on solid marketing techniques - we should rename this "web marketing". It's about plugging a product online - a legitimate and common business activity.

Not to be the devil's advocate or anything, but isn't all marketing inherantly evil. The goal ins to convince the people who have too much stuff to get even more of it? We tell our kids to share, but we show them how to be gluttons.

Not to be the devil's advocate or anything... (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/naughty.gif)

[bwelford]

This is a fascinating discussion. Of course it tends to be like a discussion about 'how long is a piece of string' but nevertheless fascinating.

I believe SEO is only part of the equation. SEO also splits into two main chapters, content and back-links. The first, content, is important to search engine traffic and the second, back-links, is important to both search engine traffic and to other visitor traffic.

The other important dimensions for Internet Marketing I believe are Saleability (the inherent ability of a website to convert a visitor into a purchaser), Usability (the ease with which a visitor can find what they want in a website) and Credibility (the extent to which a website confirms the credibility of a company).

If you're talking about BtoB websites for manufacturers and business service providers, I would give the following judgement estimates (guesses (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ) about the degree of importance of each of these dimensions to ultimate success in creating or supporting sales.

Saleability - 25%
SEO - Content - 10%
SEO - back-links - 15%
Usability - 25%
Credibility - 25%

As I said, it's a 'how long is a piece of string' discussion, but I hope these numbers convey how I feel the effort needs to be applied to get results.

How would others rate this?

[webanimal]

I agree with you Bob on the current climate, and I have posted similar things before. I have been extremely concerned that Google has actually defined what is ethical for people in search engine marketing. If you even suggest that Google might be wrong in their assessment of what is ethical or relevant seo, people start thinking your immoral or something. It's as though Google is the search engine god and googleguy is it's prophet.

I remember when you could structure a page like an information document, maybe like an essay, and Google would list you with a high ranking. Those days are gone. Linking is more important than content. It's who you are, not what you have to offer. I admittedly bow down to Google on my commercial sites, but not on my personal sites.

But, I think the future is bright. Yahoo is back with a vengence, and we all know what will happen when ms/msn enters the arena. As someone has posted already, the competition will bring about a sort of check-and-balance system.

It's still fun - Exploring new worlds in the search engines.

[K.S. Katz]

bwelford,

I agree completely with your assessment. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbup1.gif)

Saleability - 25%
SEO - Content - 10%
SEO - back-links - 15%
Usability - 25%
Credibility - 25%

What's the point of getting traffic to your site if nobody wants to stay once you get there? IMHO, none.

[Venture]

Hi Bunglebob!

Just reading through this lot ... as a 'greanie' who has started on this new venture called SEO by joining this Forum with a first post about Multiple Domains etc.,etc.
what you are stating - I agree 100%

Search should not be a major science - just the 'Truth'.... absolute relevance....whatever your products, services etc,...defined down to your local Country,Town Area etc.

With all this 'SE technology and 'algorythms' whatever, I still see 2 things coming up in searches:

1) Usually the same Company with cleverly 'disguised' sites or pages which means you sort of go round in circles most the time.... unless you are 'patient' and carry on clicking through past the first 2 pages or so.

2) Illogical, Non-relevant sites in-between. Totally non-relevant! Not even close! So why are they there!

That is why.... as a good strong base/ foundation.... I am going to stick to my 'guns' by keeping my portfolio of generic Keyword Domains. At least from a 'client-perspective'.... I can say something like:

" Look ...with us ...certainly we can try and optimize our site (which-you-are-advertising-on) further, and try and get higher up on the Google Serps, as you would like to see, but....unfortunately its 'pot-luck'... the algorythms, combined with the ever-fluctuating mood of the Spiders, ... change constantly, so ...good results is never something that we can guarantee - BUT.....

Dont despair!! At least with our site we have a huge network of generic domains, generic names describing our business which is your business...and Yes! if anyone types in these generic phrases direct into their URL address bar.....they will come to our site - where your ads are! You will have huge exposure! You will be found!

i.e. It is a dead-cert is that we dominate in "Type-In-Traffic". Not because of 'trickery'...not because of anything else apart from registering names that people did not want in the first instance. Good honest marketing.

Logical "Type-in-Traffic" ....is a dead cert! after all ...why do you think certain Domains sell for thousands... sometimes millions?

Simple - because of their 'highly generic nature' you dont have to market them.
You dont have to spend ongoing 'adspend' money promoting your site. Why... because people will go the "Type-In-Traffic-Route".

Granted.... not all the time, but at least 40 % do!,.... they also do so out of curiosity...and... also because SE's are starting to make them angry with "irrelevant sites in-between the relevant sites."

So..... I will try and do both.
I want to have the best of both marketing sectors... that is my goal.
Jean / Venture