Against Search Engine Optimisers...
In the middle of the comments for a fairly interesting article about the Googledance that never ends there's a post from a professional search engine optimiser. He says:
My consulting business website ranks highly in google for a number of search terms that are pertinent to my business. I didn't get that way using a search engine optimization service. It didn't cost anything but my time and the sweat of my brow. And it's really very simple how it works. I tell all my methods in How to Promote Your Business on the Internet.
In summary:That's the method I used to make a Google search for software consultant turn up my resume as the #4 search result.
- Put content on your site that visitors will want to read - and return to. Not just material aimed at potential customers, but stuff anyone will want to read.
- Post new content regularly
- Ask for links, and offer reciprocal links
I want to make something clear. This is probably one of the best statements about search engine optimisation I've ever read, and it's still horse-shit. The thing that it says that's actually useful is that you should have a good site. First and foremost - put content on your site that people want to read and update it regularly. That's a really really good point and something that people should remember. But it's not something that a search engine optimiser can help you with, so that leaves you with link-exchange. Which is horse-shit. I'm going to say that again because I enjoyed it so much. It's horse-shit.
Ladies and Gentlemen, listen very carefully when I say this: There is absolutely positively never any reason whatsoever to go to a search engine optimiser and they may damage your business as much as they help it. The reason they may damage your business is because - for the most part - they are designed to hack the system - to find short-cuts and tricks that fool a search engine into believing your site is something it isn't. And search engines change their indexing methods all the time to compensate for these tricks. All the time. Google do it monthly! And if they find someone using them - often they'll penalise the sites concerned.
Here - then - is the big secret of search optimisation. Search optimisation isn't really about optimising for a search engine at all. It's about making good quality, cleanly designed, semantically-constructed sites that people want to read, that people can link to and which people can get the gist of in a few seconds. If you make a website well for human beings, then as a side effect - more often than not - search engines will spider it well and rank it highly. And they'll do this because it's the best site, not because you're trying to fool them.
For the most part this is all you need to know:
- Highly complex and flashy animation does not help you, it hinders you - your site needs to be easily spiderable and that means that tricky navigational elements probably won't help. If you have to use them (like I do for my archives above), present alternative simple ways to get around your site as well that use basic boring run-of-the-mill links. This is not a search optimisation tip - this is good navigation design.
- Meta-tagging is not that useful any more. But if you're going to use it, do it properly. Specifically, if you're going to put in description and keyword metatags - keep them short (twenty words most), accurate (actually reflecting the content in the body of your page), and don't put the same metatags on every single damn page of your site! That's not going to help at all! None of this will affect Google, who don't pay any attention to meta tags and make up 50% of the searches performed on the web at the moment.
- Make it easy to link to things! This means, don't use frames! This means, try and put discreet chunks of content on clear separate pages. This again is not optimising for a search engine at all - it's how to build an information-delivery site properly.
- Use <title> tags properly! They sit at the top of every one of your pages and they're designed to make it easy to spot things when you bookmark them. So tell people the title of the page you're on - and do it honestly! Keep them short and clear, don't use marketing speech at all, don't try really really hard to find the right keywords, just use the title that explains what's on the page best. To help people who bookmark you then you should probably put the name of your site at the beginning or end of the title, and if you've got a shallow site hierarchy, you can even put the path to the current page in the title as well. These things are helpful to people! Unsurprisingly, search engines try to use the same criteria as actual people do.
- Use semantic content whenever possible. This means when something is the title of a page or a section, stick it in a <h1> tag and use CSS to style it appropriately (and before you say anything, I'm aware that I don't do that - but there's a really good reason for that). Also when you're linking to things don't use terrible words inside the links like "click here" but actually use read words. This is good for people and helpful for search engines. Don't lie! People would find it more useful if you linked to a page about sportscar GT with a link that said "We have a comprehensive section about sportscar GT". Search engines - weirdly - do too!
- Bugger link-exchange! Google specifically penalises people for using known link-exchange programmes because they've been designed specifically to circumvent Google's attempt to find quality sites that are well-respected and rated. Don't try and fool the search engines unless you're prepared to pay for search engine optimisers to come in and fix your site every two weeks.
God there's loads more stuff I could say, but the rule of thumb is the same for all of them. Build sites that are easy for people to use, try not to let the technology get in the way of delivering the information and aspire to making things that work the way the web works, and you'll never have any trouble with search engines.
Addendum: There's an interesting article on Google over at Salon today in which - yet again - some of the people who try to mischaracterise the usefulness of their own sites by gaming search engine algorithms claim that not being allowed to lie about their site's relevancy is terribly terribly bad. I have absolutely no respect for these people at all...
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
I'm bound to have left something else pertinent out. But really - this stuff is a no-brainer... Don't waste your money with search engine optimisers.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 26, 2003 12:02 PM
I think that some of it boils down to a number of things that are desired from a search (by the user as opposed to in theory). The first thing that a user wants is obviously relevance - algorithms are great at doing this. The second thing that users want is to be able to trust the resource (i.e. judge its reputation).
While some might say that it is down to the user to make this value judgement, and, that one man's meat is another man's poison, I always feel that Google's link algorithm makes a reputation judgement that is slightly faulty - i.e. that the best search result is the most popular item (with links) that returns relevant results.
Links can be seen as very commodity-based (they can be traded and can return benefits in leading to better search rankings), but reputation is rarely just about popularity - it's about context, real-world standing, quality of material and so on and so forth. I've absolutely no idea how search engines could deal with this, but reputation-relevance would probably deal with "spamming" optimisation techniques. Just a thought...
→ Posted by: Mark Thristan at June 26, 2003 12:57 PM
It's like an executive summary of Dive into Accessibility :) I suppose it's all about making your site easy to read for everyone from screen readers to spiders.
→ Posted by: Jo at June 26, 2003 1:38 PM
Doh! I know how to link, honest!
→ Posted by: Jo at June 26, 2003 1:41 PM
Why advertise at all, print media (newspaper, catalogs, etc.) are expense, tv and radio same thing... in all cases more expensive than any optimizer for the market reach and penetration.
This is however what Tom does not understand.... "spiderable, tricky navigational elements, Meta-tagging, description and keyword metatags, frames, , shallow site hierarchy, semantic tag, CSS"... Tom assumes every person reading this understand web page code, knows how to read it, change it, and make it better. That's horse shit - "try not to let the technology get in the way"... you just did Tom!
→ Posted by: Rod Brown at June 26, 2003 1:43 PM
"Tom assumes every person reading this understand web page code, knows how to read it, change it, and make it better."
I think Tom assumes any business that has a website has or has hired a webdeveloper who can be instructed to look after "spiderable, tricky navigational elements, Meta-tagging, description and keyword metatags, frames, , shallow site hierarchy, semantic tag, CSS"
→ Posted by: Caroline at June 26, 2003 1:59 PM
But Rod, if you're prepared to invest in hiring people to build & maintain your website, then make sure you hire well.
Find the right people to run your website and you'll not need search engine snake oilers *and* you get a better website hence happier punters.
→ Posted by: tomski at June 26, 2003 1:59 PM
Link exchanging is different thing to building link popularity. The web is built on links from one site to another, without any of these links you are left high and dry and wont get any visitors from search engines. You may get the odd type in but for that you will need nice slick domain name.
I have seen sites that are user friendly but are absolutely cack when it comes to search engines. That is where SEO comes in, or at least a decent one. Trying to find a decent one or work out if the one you are bout to employ is not shady then read this page:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/1238.htm
I too love to say horse shit, it is great phrase but I don’t thing it can be applied to a lot of the SEO that goes on.
→ Posted by: Richard Young at June 26, 2003 2:22 PM
Getting links is not horseshit. A tree falling in the woods and making no sound is horseshit. You want as many people to see whatever you have built for these people to see. So get links, lots of them.
If its hard to get links, do what that other person did above, shove a link on any page at any opportunity to boost your crap rank.
→ Posted by: George Dubya at June 26, 2003 2:30 PM
I think the point remains true even if you don't understand the technology - rather than paying someone to come in and optimise your search results, why not pay the same amount of money to get someone to come in and make your site accessible, clearly laid-out and fundamentally honest. There are loads of accesibility experts, information architects, usability people etc. etc in the world and you'll get much better results with them than with search engine shark oil salesmen who have only the one criteria to judge success by (don't forget, if a search engine placement person uses anything other than good honest, tried and true 'make the damn site work' stuff then eventually the search engines will wise up to the tricks involved and you'll be in exactly the same position as you were beforehand).
As regards links - I can give you substantial evidence that links alone do not give you traffic, particularly irrelevant ones. And there's much more value in a couple of appropriate and realistic links than in dozens or hundreds of bits of spam in link exchange programs and the like. You'd be much better served by trying to find people with very specific needs online and mentioning your service to them directly by e-mail. It's slower but you'll get a better end result. Or send a press release to a newspaper or an internet magazine. Or find groups of people who are discussing the same kind of site as you're making. If you must do this stuff, put the effort in and do it properly and respectfully.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 26, 2003 3:15 PM
I want my site to rank highly on MSN UK.
How does your methodology work here?
→ Posted by: James at June 26, 2003 3:39 PM
Same way it works on anything - by building your site so that it actually presents itself fairly and cleanly and honestly it'll never be subject to the whims of the search engines' attempts to penalise people who game the system, and gradually will be picked up and ranked fairly by all the sites concerned.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 26, 2003 3:42 PM
Wrong answer.
MSN UK uses initially Looksmart listings, which are not ranked on link popularity.
→ Posted by: James at June 26, 2003 4:07 PM
James, my point was that link exchanges don't work for Google (and as you point out don't work for MSN) and that search optimisation to try and game these things doesn't work and is eventually pointless - so when I say the same way I mean exactly what I write above in the body of my post - the best way to get search engines to spider you properly and place you highly is to format your page properly, write good stuff and don't try and game the search engines. Spend your money on usability, information architecture and decent content instead. That's the most cost effective and practical way of getting yourself listed properly, way more cost effective than fiddling to try and find a balance between being seem to spam one search engine and not registering in another through flighty tricks and basic pointlessness...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 26, 2003 4:13 PM
BTW - you won't get any argument from me that knowing how to write listings for directory-based sites is a skill or that it could be worth paying someone to help you do. But even that's not really that much of an epic enterprise and can easily be figured out - and it's increasingly unimportant as the timeliness of search is beginning to heavily outweigh the personal quality-checking of directory based sites.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 26, 2003 4:16 PM
Was it not the search engine sharks (SES) that started all this crosslinking to get to the top of google. I think it was called googlebombing.
Dave
→ Posted by: Dave Nski at June 26, 2003 5:01 PM
Good points Tom! There are many more as well I'd wager, locked up in that noggin of yours.
I'll offer a slightly different take on things. I recently hired such a SEO. It is part of a bigger package. I am not particularly happy about it either. But I have no complaints.
I have a site which just made huge and complicated migration to a completely new technology underpinning. The underpinning in question was essentially hoisted on me and so its weaknesses aren't negotiable. The site relies upon dynamic and terribly unfriendly urls which do not work and play well with search engines. My previous site was essentially hand rolled and had several of my own design elements to treat search engines to what you describe. But when we made this transition our footing in the search engines was damaged by the process. SEO comes as a value added to the package, for more $$, which produces static pages as funnels for the search engines. We have seen several improvements in various listings which produce our income as a result and have not been nearly as hurt by the migration as we would have been had we not employed the SEO.
My next step will be to introduce clean urls to the mix and cut both the ASP and the SEO out of their revenue stream.
None of this is to refute your very valid points but rather to show circumstances in which SEO firms perform a valid function. It should be noted that the ASP should as a matter of a proper working relationship with its clients design with clean urls out of the box but the additional cut of revenue from the SEO is probably a bigger factor in that decision than simply being up front about a weakness in their technology and finding a soultion to better their product.
Hope this helps.
→ Posted by: filchyboy at June 27, 2003 3:01 AM
To Tom Coates - I apologize for my earlier comments. I do not take my job lightly and I am one of those horseshit search engine optimizer that you proclaim are worthless to you and everyone else.
The problem - competency. The web has provided vast quantities of information - and if a person can read they can acquire a certain level of knowledge and skill - this however, does not make them an SEO. I am a eMarketing Strategist - SEO is only one small part of the totally process. Therefore, I offer but a few comments to include for the do-it-yourselfers in your audience. Disclaimer: If you do not have a basic appreciation of the html coding and the elements find someone who does.
Your own domain is better than free (or cheap) someone else’s domain
Host your site on a reliable server – down time during search engine indexing time means lost ranks all the time.
Have a robots.txt in your root on your server to tell bots and crawlers what to do
Get rid of the JavaScript in the code and put it in an external file
Use CSS instead of color, size and font tags and also have this as an external file (note: CSS should be listed in header before any JavaScript referrals.
Use less link (images) buttons or JavaScript links and more text links and no more 100 links per page, 25 - 50 is better (more than 100 you will not be credited for them)
Make sure to have a site map page and link to from all pages
Make sure the first link on every single page is to your main page (this is one link that in best to use an image (HOME on image) link title attribute and image alt attribute indicating your primary topic.
At the bottom of each page use menus as text links
Make sure your page code is no bigger than 100K. Highly recommend 32K or less
Submit your site to ODP and Yahoo Directory, make sure to select the right cat. All directory links - the more the merrier
Pay special attention to your content - first visible text (words) on the page is a title using H tags and define in CSS.
Try to get as much as relevant links you can and in (or out) of your site if you have software call it software (not products). Relevant anchors in and to your makes the different between ranked #30 and ranked #1
Read each search engines guide lines and follow them strictly
Don't spam
Don't use doorway pages
Don't cloak
Breadcrumbs work wonders too!
Meta Title - Never start a word pass 58 characters
Pet Peeve ... do not put your domain name in the Meta Title > if anything your registered BUSINESS NAME should be here and the last few words of the 60 character title... once.
Additional ones... use title attributes particularly in links and the title precisely as the anchor > if image alt="" and title="" the same.
Note which page of your site has the most internal links to it > if this is not the homepage > then the page that has the most links will likely have greater success on your most competitive phrase.
Match Meta Title with Page Title - SEO's keyword the Meta all the time > however this is the intro to your site as well as a ranking thing > if it doesn't look good written on the page it not that efficient in bringing visitors into your site (even if your #1).
Page Title match to Meta Title > now match all internal anchors to that page theme. A text anchor call HOME, which goes to the HOMEPAGE, does not help - get innovative - if your site is about CARS then: example: CARS should be the anchor to index.html. NOTE: this is one place where the use of an image is GOOD... the title attribute and alt both indicate CARS and the image read HOME... also
The link HOME is also good in your copyright statement... e.g. -
Motortown.com has cars for all people.
Copyright © 2003 Motor Town. All rights reserved.
Short one-word anchors are better than longer ones. CARS is relevant to blue cars, black cars, old cars, antique cars, used cars, new cars... but none of these are "highly" relevant to each other or just "cars". If you're highly relevant on one-word "cars”, the "on-page" optimized stuff is all that is needed to make you more relevant to the second word (what ever that may be) and not just one phrase.
Non-relevant - or less adequate topical pages (contact us, support, trouble-shooting, policies, shipping instructions can help make the difference between a page ranked #11 and one that's higher. Use these to PUSH relevancy and PageRank to only those pages that need it. If many links out to a link structure -- JavaScript the links to pages that already are highly ranked > and use that "saved" PageRank to push to ones that are not (on their specific topic).
Contact US page irrelevant – all methods of contacting you should be on every page (add with copyright statement)
Links page – irrelevant – put outgoing links on the single most relevant page to the linked sites topic (you will be rewarded dearly for it)
Put a face to your site > get your staff professionally on your site > people prefer to buy from people. Particularly if the person is real (employee/owner) and noted by NAME and POSITION in the company.
The old story... "On the web... no one knows your a dog" holds true today... a name, a face adds trust. There are many scams out there and just because you know that your not one of them... doesn't mean the visitor knows this.
The best advice (put your competitors on your site) and compare your positive points to their negative points (be truthful though).
Anyone that believes web purchasers are not comparative shoppers for price, quality, service, shipping, guarantees, warranties, returns, support and another 100 variables is really only fooling themselves... particularly if the visitor came via a search engine > back on out and see what else is available.
Additionally, rarely will a new potential customer buy on the first visit.
SEO isn't just about getting to #1... It’s also about selling "more" once you're there!
Site size is always an issue e.g. the more unique content / pages a website has the more diversity they have. In generally however, I personal don't "check" anything on initial "optimization" but add cookie based tracking code (e.g. hitslinks, indextools, or extreme-dm.com/tracking/ to name a few), and use the referrals from here to define what pages I target for what terms. (e.g. someone doing a deep search and finding you is more productive than you searching/checking all pages yourself).
In addition, I have found that even in small sites (6 - 25 pages) you can quickly add highly relevant and very effective "ranking" content early to a sites development without even knowing anything about the sites real topics, markets or industry.
A glossary of terms are highly effective and the online resources (many non-copyrighted and royalty free) is a copy and paste process with only time to add links back and forth between the original site content and the 27 pages of terms (glossary index, and A - Z).
Also if you have PDF design capability that same glossary can be quickly converted to a PDF version and open for download. With your embedded absolute URLs in each glossary terms you receive 100's of new backlinks, PageRank and relevancy for every single site that add this to their site (an added value resource).
Have one site that jump from a mere 50 backlinks to 10,000 in 4 months.
Definitely worth the effort eh!
Just a fraction of the qualified advice you may get from a well informed SEO. But admittedly only scratching the surface.
By informing all that all professionals in a specific industry segment are and talk "horseshit"... means that you must be extremely knowledgeable about that industry segment and all in it and a gifted professional of that segment - otherwise you are merely spouting an opinion and opinions rarely accept accountability.
→ Posted by: Rod Brown at June 27, 2003 10:37 AM
Thanks Rod - first off, I want to apologise to you directly and to the people with your level of expertise and responsible attitude to their work. I've read through that advice and the vast majority of it is of the highest quality. Having said that, you say yourself that a large proportion of your advice isn't actually all about search engine placement (putting faces on your site and the like) and that your particular expertise strays very heavily into areas like information architecture, effective website design, online marketing and the like. This is not in any way to lessen your skills - which I know to be accurate having written several large treatises on search engine placement, usability and good navigational structures in previous jobs - but just to say that the experience of most people who hire people who claim to be able to improve their search engine placements is of hucksters who can do as much damage as good... For most people, making their site clean, well-structured and well-written from the get-go will do them much more good and at a much lower price...
→ Posted by: Tom Coate at June 27, 2003 12:17 PM
>> For most people, making their site clean, well-structured and well-written from the get-go will do them much more good and at a much lower price...
Yup, and if "most people" had the sense God promised an earthworm, they wouldn't attempt to "design" their website themselves. They might also take the time and trouble to discover that there is actually a series of STANDARDS in web technology, that it would benefit EVERYONE if they were adhered to.
But lets deal with the real world here. 99% (or thereabouts) of all websites are a total waste of time, energy, hard drive space and bandwidth, because they are frankly utter rubbish. Since the web is seen as the "last frontier", people have the misguided perception that they can do it as well as anyone, that they should step up to the plate, and give that 6 year old copy of FrontPage a bloody good workout. Horse shit.
Hmmm, I like saying it too. If it was a print brochure, you wouldn't get a knocked off copy of Quark and design the damn thing yourself, would you now? Of course not that would be lunacy! You'd go to a professional, and pay professional rates, and be pleased with the results. But because its the web, the "peoples media" they think that there amateurish, ridden, infested, overrun, FP abortions are as "valid" as anyone elses. Horse shit, and that goes for BOTH connotations of "valid". For f*cks sake, http://validator.w3.org/, its free, F*CKING USE IT! Theres even one for CSS somewhere
>> people who claim to be able to improve their search engine placements is of hucksters
Damn straight. Most webmasters don't know how a search engine works. A friend of mine recently did a freebie design job, and the subject of traffic came up, thusly :-
they : "Well, web sites are just ranked alaphabetically, aren't they? We just need to add some words beginning with "A" to our keyowrds tag"
he : "No its a bit more complex than that" (repeat for about 30 minutes. Then he got a brain hemorrhage, and gave up)
I've had conversations with webmasters of really quite large sites, fronting multi-million pound companies, who were under the impression that when you submit a query to, ohhh, say Google, it went and real-time searched the whoooole web for you (hmmm, say 0.1 second per document to retrieve and categorise, roughly 3 billion docs, thats around a SIX-MONTH RESPONE TIME YOU IDIOT! BY SIMPLE INSPECTION OF THE IDEA YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO TELL ITS COMPLETE HORSE SHIT!)
In such a target rich environment, why the hell should anyone learn how to actually do the job? Signing up with Overture and running a telesales operation out of some North of England fleapit should be quite sufficient, shouldn't it?
OK, I feel a lot better now, thank you all
In summary, the point I was trying (badly) to make, is that SEO is a VERY valuable skillset; however, there many people out there portray themselves as SEOs when they demostrably aren't; and that if potential clients can't do a bit of background research to arm themselves with sufficient knowledge to be able to tell the goats from the sheep, then my sympathy is limited. Caveat emptor...
→ Posted by: Angry Man at June 27, 2003 4:54 PM
Thanks for the mention.
As an aside, I emailed the Salon writer and pointed him to my story on K5 re: Google coming up with the naming convention. Haven't heard back from him yet, though. ;)
thx again,
kpaul
→ Posted by: kpaul at June 27, 2003 5:40 PM
Its a good article and you make a excellent point, but I get the feeling you massively misunderstand SEM. Real search engine marketers will DO aim to create the best site/resource for the keyword they target. The only optimisation is ensuring the page/site is structured to inform the engines what the content is about.
There are however a number of techie cowboys with no understanding of the importance of actually trying to satisfy the searcher, they just focus on tricking the search engine itself. But you can not assume all search engine marketers have no grasp or understanding of marketing. That would be like me assuming you’re technically inept because you are a marketer.
In the future I’d try steer clear from writing about a subject you clearly don’t understand, but that’s for making me laugh anyway.
→ Posted by: Gavin Merriman at July 1, 2003 4:54 PM
I cna ytpe 500 wrods pre mniuet!
→ Posted by: Monkey Boy at July 1, 2003 4:59 PM
I've only skim-read most of these epic comments (don't you guys say things succinctly?) and so this has probably already been pointed out:
I share a building here with a Digital marketing company who, in the old days, might have referred to themselves as SEOs. These guys know the well-established rules of accessibility, semantic structure and so on, and spend half their lives in the Google fora at Webmasterworld learning from others. They are not about link exchanges, because they have known what makes a site score highly on different engines for some time. Thy are very successful because (big) clients of theirs (international banks etc.) don't want to have to keep these skills in house.
They are also very skilled at getting sites listed in those back-room databases which many non-google search engines use as their core data (Zeal etc.) and this helps their clients positioning heaps.
They would describe much of their work as "popularity consultancy" I suppose; they do what Tom says site owners should do, but they do it for other people.
They're not all sharks - some of them, surprisingly know at least as much about these things as we do.
→ Posted by: Nico Morgan at July 3, 2003 12:39 PM
http://scribbling.net/entry/394/
I didn't read this before I wrote that (really, I didn't!) but we're saying basically the same thing.
Except I never say "horseshit."
:)
→ Posted by: Gina at July 5, 2003 3:50 AM
You've got it in a nut-shell.
→ Posted by: Kevin Heath at October 9, 2003 12:00 PM
Your main points about how to get found in search engines (e.g. regular content etc.) are good ones, though not comprehensive.
But SEOs are not all about "hacking the system".
There are many Search Engine Optimisers -- and I am one of them -- who provide a *consulting* service for site owners who want to know how to get their sites found in Google and other search engines.
To you Tom, the information required for this is a "no-brainer", but you're not representative of the average interent user. You're way more advanced than most; the average Joe Soap who has a website wants help and advice on getting it found.
For example, I recently did some SEO work for a client called Kevin Kelly, a personal development coach.
Kevin had hired various different website designers over the past few years, but each incarnation of his site performed poorly. He never got any email enquiries through his site. When I first started working on his "internet identity", he was listed 179th in Google for a search on "Kevin Kelly".
I created a new site for him, making sure that its design was both usable and optimised for Google. I created a weblog for him too, and got him to commit to updating it, so that he would have fresh content regularly.
Already he is in the top 10 for a search on "Kevin Kelly", and he has had more traffic in the last two months than he had in the previous three years combined.
Maybe the methods I used were "no-brainer" ones to you, but they weren't to Kevin...
For people like Kevin -- the majority of people who have forked out on websites as a way to market their business -- Search Engine Optimisation is an extremely valuable service. Why pay money, after all, to have a website designed and launched, if your customers won't be able to find it?
I admit that there are many charlatans out there who are giving SEO a bad name. But that doesn't change the fact that sites must be findable, as well as usable, if they are to work as marketing tools. And neither the people own websites -- or even the people who design websites -- have the knowlege required to make get them found.
→ Posted by: Michael Heraghty -- Search Engine Optimisation Consultant at October 12, 2003 3:44 PM
I don't doubt that many people could learn the basics of SEO with perhaps only a few months of intensive study, but that's still just surface stuff. The thing that really separates SEO practitioners is their ability to understand and adapt to changes which others might have no clue about. In other words, knowledge of historical algorithm changes, patents, and plenty of other stuff is important too.
Take for instance Google's PageRank, LocalRank and NewRank algorithms. Or Hilltop for example. What about their acquisition of Applied Semantics late last year? Did this impact on the way sites were ranked? You bet it did. Those who were quick to notice massively capitalised on the changes. Only a fool would suggest things like this are common sense.
I've been involved with SEO since about 1997 in some capacity, and whilst I am considered an authority these days ;) , I still find that the more I learn the more there is to learn. It's hard to find a decent SEO pro though, since most of the good ones are making loads of cash from their own sites!
→ Posted by: James Dale at June 9, 2004 2:38 PM
I think you're missing the point. If people are encouraged to build their sites properly according to accepted standards of the internet and good practice then they may not get to #1 in Google, but they will get a good high position and they won't be subject to the vagaries of search engines occasional algorithm changes.
The very practice of trying to game the system to get to the top of a search engine is unethical and the reason the less salubrious SEO people have to keep working and keep on top of things is because the search engines are continually trying to undo the work they've done, and restore their search engines to valuable resources that direct people to the most useful (not the best marketed) content.
I don't want to teach people how to game Google - I want to teach them how to build sites properly in ways that Google understands BECAUSE THEY ARE THE RIGHT WAYS TO BUILD.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 9, 2004 3:31 PM
I agree with what you are saying in that it is far easier to create ideas worth spreading vice trying to spread bad ideas.
Structuring a page properly and registering a site at directories can help you immensely in promoting your site. Many people do not know how to do that though.
There are many subtle tricks which can give you a longterm boost that are not bad. It is just smart marketing to benefit from some of the flaws of the system.
I am not saying people should push rubish, but that all things fair if others are going to take advantages of the weaknesses of search engines you either need to have a way better idea or exploit the weaknesses yourself too.
Not everybody is capable of coming up with good ideas...
→ Posted by: aaron wall at June 10, 2004 1:35 AM
You're quite right that many people don't know how to do that kind of thing, and actually what they need is for someone to put up a simple resource online, or to go to respectable web-designers who will build their sites according to the right fundamental principles. I can completely see the point in there being people who specialise in helping people rework their sites so they are more semantically useful and clear, in order that they should appear in better positions in Google (and in the process, just have better sites), but I couldn't disagree with you more about the 'subtle tricks helping people to benefit from the flaws in the system'. Basically if you try and game things and exploit 'subtle flaws', then they'll change the algorithms and you'll need to do it all over again. And the subtle flaws in one search engine won't be the same as the subtle flaws in others. So you're just shooting yourself in the foot anyway, because you'll have to continually pay SEO experts to push you up a couple of places each time the search engines figure out what they've done.
The sites that the search engines WANT TO GET PEOPLE TO are the ones that have good quality content on them that are formatted properly and which real people are linking to. They're the only sites that won't be affected by algorithm changes, except (on the whole) positively. Building other kinds of sites just doesn't make any sense.
And that line of yours at the end 'not everyone is capable of coming up with good ideas' is my point in a nutshell. If they can't come up with good ideas, if their sites aren't any good then THEY SHOULDN'T BE AT THE TOP OF GOOGLE ANYWAY. By pushing them up their through gaming the system you make the web a less useful resource and damage people who are providing a better service. As far as I'm concerned that's just unethical behaviour. The sites concerned would be better served by people telling them how to make their sites less useless.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 10, 2004 8:30 AM
You say: "If people are encouraged to build their sites properly according to accepted standards of the internet then they may not get to #1 in Google, but they will get a good high position"
How does that follow? If we're being honest, aren't they far more likely to get a rubbish low position, particularly in a massively competitive field?
Whilst everyone will agree that building a site according to "accepted standards of the internet" is bound to be a good idea, it certainly doesn't begin to cover the larger and more complex area of ranking at the top of your niche. There is far more to ranking high than simply designing your site to the highest standards of usability, etc. Unless we really are just talking about search terms with sub 10,000 competing results.
There are ways to "game" any system, but most of the top SEO companies don't do business this way. Actually, any such "gaming" is pointless since it is less likely to have long term benefits. So, I agree with you there!
Very rarely these days will you find any reputable SEO company using invisible links, cloaking, or stealth delivery of any kind. Everything these days is so much more open, which is why Google freely admits they are all for SEO now.
Many companies with a huge amount of internal expertise still choose to pay SEO consultants for their time. The reason for this is that these companies don't have the rankings they want - despite great attention to usability, site design, code validation, and so on.
Remember, with or without SEO, your ranking will still be affected by algorithmic changes, as with the Florida and DomEsme updates last year. Having someone to hand who understands what Google is doing and can make the necessary alterations can only be of obvious benefit.
→ Posted by: James Dale at June 10, 2004 7:14 PM
No. Absolutely not. The point I've made above is absolute. Google and the various other search engine people change their algorithms to compensate for strategies like the ones you're advocating. If you work like this you'll forever be in an arms race with the search engines and the only people who benefit from this are the arms manufacturers - the Search Engine Optimisers.
Working in this way means that you're forever tweaking and changing the way your site works to try and score a few extra points with one or other search engine. There's a cost there. And the various search engines don't use the same algorithms, so it's never going to be obvious whether or not an improvement in one place is causing damage elsewhere.
And in the background the various search engine companies are interested in only one thing - how to determine which sites are the best match for their user's requests. They're always looking for the same thing - good human-readable, clearly designed, information-rich sites. If you build those things and you do it properly, and you communicate to other organisations respectfully etc. then you may not be at the top of the search engines, but you'll be high in them and your position will be relatively stable and inexpensive to maintain.
So my point remains - don't get a search engine optimiser on your site - employ people who build good sites from the start, with clear and addressable pages, clean code, good copy, decent UI and navigation etc. Then you can't go wrong.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at January 11, 2005 11:42 AM
Thanks for your article.
You've taken a huge weight from my shoulder.
Enough of mutating content, and peppering keywords all over.
I will try keep to:
And if Google ranks us or not, penalizes or not ... Bah! Enough of building websites to virtual life-forms spiders and other creepy web crawlies:
I will be strong .. and I feel like some song coming up ♪♫ Thanks again!
→ Posted by: Green Tea Lover at July 3, 2005 1:04 PM
Hi,
I'm the "professional search engine optimizer" that you refer to in your piece above. It's funny that I stumbled across your page here while looking for tips on search engine optimization for an article I'm working on. I'm looking for such tips because I don't actually know that much about it.
The fact is that I'm not a professional search engine optimizer, and never have been. Until recently, I was a software consultant. I wrote code for hire - some GUI stuff, some embedded stuff. Now I earn my money from my website, because of the articles that were originally written to attract clients to my consulting business.
The keywords important to my business that I rank highly for are, for example, software consultant for which my resume and homepage are presently google's two top hits.
I never get that way by hacking a search engine's algorithms. I meant what I said in How to Promote Your Business on the Internet: post useful and interesting content on your website, and ask for links. That's it.
The result of this is that now that I'm working on an article on SEO, within three weeks of publishing its first draft, it ranks ahead of many SEO firms for some keywords like ethical seo. You see, they don't have much in the way of valuable content on their own websites that might make visitors willing to link them.
But you see, the whole point of White Hat Search Engine Optimization is that the web is for humans, not for spiders: the best way to do well in the search engines is to make websites that are genuinely useful and interesting to humans.
The fact is, I'm only just barely beginning to scratch the surface of understanding the game of SEO. But I already know that it's not nearly as effective, long-lasting nor robust as honest, hard work spent building a quality website.
I couldn't say what the nature of my business was in my original post at webmasterworld, because its terms of service forbid promotion of any sort. I can see how you might reasonably have come to think I was an SEO.
But every trick a black hat SEO uses is a simulation of some genuinely helpful or useful thing a legitimate web publisher does. What I have always advocated, and have always practiced, and am now discussing in more detail in my upcoming article on SEO, is that that's the best strategy for anyone to have.
→ Posted by: Michael D. Crawford at August 24, 2005 12:45 AM
hi, i have read some of the copmments above. Although i work at a Home Security Company, i know a lot about search engine optimization. The most important thing to consider is to focus on your title tag. Make sure it short and has the most important keywords. Second, Make sure to have a UNIQUE content that no other websites has. I have seen some websites that have the same content as other websites and that could affect your search engine ranking.
thanks
→ Posted by: Youss (Home Security) at December 15, 2005 6:59 AM
i think your above post that any optimisation is manipulation has some validity but the problem with your alternative is ranking order as a whole.
If everyone just builds as close to the TOS as possible in every field, we will all wake up the next day and out of curiosity take a look at how we fared on the G and Y (MSN if we are bored too). Now when we see we are not near the top we will be forced to think, hey how come that guy is on top, and whatever factors we determain to be the cause of his advantage over us we will need to duplicate to duplicate his success. Now that last sentence just described 'manipulation', but there is nothing underhanded by it.
The fact that there is an ordering process and it ties so closely to success or failure forces a person to try to duplicate or one-up the success of the apparent "lucky guy" who is on top.
What would happen to McDonalds if they removed the 'M' from every location and put up a plain black and white sign that says mcdonalds old fashion hamburgers on a non-descript building? they would lose there "white hat" marketing advantage. Now this is branding not seo, but it is also the "strategy they use to be seen in a crowded plaza". Its not sneaky, its the result of hard work and what needs to be done to sell burgers.
All in all, I dont think webmasters designed this game, but if you put exposure in a "list style" order there is nothing unnatural or deceptive about needing to swim to stay up.
→ Posted by: Charlotte at April 4, 2006 6:22 PM
Yes. You're absolutely right. "Whatever factors we determine to be the cause of his advantage over us we will need to duplicate to duplicate his success" is absolutely correct. If you all just built according to the Terms of Service and recommendations then the difference between you would be that the product or site was better and that would be the thing that you needed to work on. Let me be clear - trying to sort out your site so that you're ready to be indexed is a good thing, trying to fake the criteria by which those lists are ranked is not.
Let me remind you - search engine optimisation beyond making your site good to index does not meet the needs of search engine users. That means that Search Engine companies are continually looking at how they can compensate for it. Which means that unless you happen to have hit on the perfect approach that works brilliantly and no one else has thought about, then Google and Yahoo will eventually rework their lists and they will compensate and penalise your site accordingly.
If you pursue that course of action you'll always be blowing money on trying to keep up. You're getting into an arms race that in the end you cannot hope to win - without a continual outlay that is. That money is better spent on the product or site. It's better spent exploring other ways of promoting it as well - making the content weblog friendly, easy to link to, full of useful information. You could even spend the money better on actually advertising on the search engines. I can't see how that's not obviously the better option
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at April 4, 2006 9:53 PM