News Source: http://www.seo-scoop.com
Published: Feb 10, 2009 - 06:42 pm
Story Found By: DazzlinDonna 1560 Days ago
Category: SEO
23 Comments
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News Source: http://www.seo-scoop.com
Published: Feb 10, 2009 - 06:42 pm
Story Found By: DazzlinDonna 1560 Days ago
Category: SEO
23 Comments
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Comments
A client sent me the PCMag article this morning...always nice to have a mainstream publication calling us names.
Whoever told him those URL structures would help him out was foolish - especially when the structures added a whole lot of nothing information, and then just the post title. Also have to wonder what he did to transition the site from one URL structure to another. The firstpost uses %20s in the URL, no wonder he’s having problemsI’m not even 100% sure what he’s talking about with the tags, it’s like he’s confusing post tags and meta keywords. Guy needs to get a clue.
This isn’t his first SEO bashing article.. And won’t be his last.. Nothing to see here - move along.. :)
What’s everyone so up in arms over? Other than the attention grabbing headline about snake oil, the rest of what he wrote is true.Of course, why he listened to one dumb SEO and thought that it would make a difference, that’s another story.Unfortunately, there are tons of SEOs out there making those same kinds of dumb recommendations that don’t help anything. We get calls from these companies all the time after having been burned before. It’s extremely common that some SEOs think SEO is about all the SEO myths that are out there, and that’s what they do for their clients, ultimately wasting their money and seeing no results.
I believe he was most likely told to use "long" URL’s because explaining "keywords in the URL" would have opened up a whole other ball of wax that this guy CLEARLY would not have been able to use properly. If Im playing Devils Advocate that is...
@Jill - the problem with Dvorak’s article is not that he’s bashing SEO’s and bad suggestions. He’s bashing SEO as a principal, and that is where I feel this is an article that promotes ignorance. You would think a man who works for a tech magazine, and owns a website, would know how research basic seo methods. If this article would have taken the position that he got bad seo advice from bad seo’s, then I would completely agree with you. However, it does not. It bashes seo as a principal, and that is just completely misinforming his readership and the readership of PCMag, and that is wrong. He is blaming SEO’s for his own misguided problems. He is a site owner, and he is not doing his due-diligence. It’s like owning a car. We have two people that own cars. One does not put oil in his, and the other does. As a car owner, it’s up to both to maintain their cars, and know that you should put oil in it. Now the guy not putting oil in his car is pissed because his car doen’t work, so to hell with all cars. That, in essence is his argument.
@robertgarcia yes, very good point, which I agree.
I took on Dvorak’s asinine attack on SEO, too. His ignorance certainly seems to have ruffled a great number of our feathers, but let’s not forget one important fact: that is EXACTLY what it was intended to do. :)He’s using our outrage to drive traffic and call attention the article. I couldn’t help but fire off a rant in response - http://www.seoaly.com/real-trouble-with-search-engine-optimization/ - and thanks to the reminder from SEOFactor, I linked to his article with the anchor text "ignorance". Suck it, John...I bet you didn’t count on the links back to your article using that as the anchor text, eh?
@Donna whatever happened to your "tool" or "tard" of the week? This guy would fit perfectly for this. I agree with Jill. I used to bitch about these morons on my blog everytime one of them posted. All I did was give them more attention. Ranking in the top ten for their name was fun though.
How about every SEO that works with fortune 500 companies ask a company rep to make a statement about how SEO beefed up their bottom line? Or maybe Matt Cutts likes the SEO industry enough to publish a post about why Dvorak’s traffic really took a dive.Other than that, SEO defending SEO is like republicans defending Bush or Wall Street fat cats defending big bonuses. Zero credibility due to obvious bias. Outcries against Shoemoney saying "SEO has no future" or Calcanis saying "SEO is bullshit" or Dvorak saying "SEO = SOS" is a road to nowhere. People who voted this up must really love Dvorak to give him publicity he doesn’t deserve.
This smells like linkbait to me, but I fear that the trappings of it being a Serious Article in a Serious Publication will lead some to believe the spin. When you table your instinct to cry foul, this article winds up having all of the hallmarks of a troll a message board. <i>Sensationalism + Scandal = Profit?</i> How’s about <b>no</b>. Don’t vote this up and don’t bookmark the article if you think he is full of beans, to put it mildly.
It probably is linkbait. But, the general public and the majority of people reading his publication literally have NO CLUE about SEO and will take his wording as the gospel and shy away from SEO as a result. It’s kinda sad that the real snake oil salesmen who spread such lame SEO myths paint such a bad picture of our industry. What’s even worse is when people like Dvorak paint that same picture in a national publication like that. I too wrote a post disputing his claims and also used the anchor text "ignorant article" to link back to that article. Take THAT Dvorak! http://www.prolificseo.com/?p=27
Anyone familiar with dvorak knows that he bashes, whines, and nags at pretty much everything. this is the man that said that the mouse would not take off in 1984, and that Apple could never be a serious contender to Nokia or Motorola and the iPhone would fail. Dvorak is nothing but a cranky old man, and even his buddies on TWiT refer to him as such.
*Natasha wonders how borsodas comment got 1336 votes* hmmm...
Another case of Bad SEO...1. He obviously lost traffic after he rewrote the URL’s to long URL’s, all his previous backlinks got lost!!!2. Tagging is dangerous when theres more tags than content, duplicate content issues!Mr.Dvorak needs to learn more about SEO, just because he can’t do it right doesn’t mean "proper" SEO’s don’t know what they’re doing!This is the typical case of a client learning some bits of SEO and thinkings its easy and doing it himself and ruining results and then saying that SEO doesn’t work!
Of course you can’t comment of Dvorak’s post but, at the suggestion of my SEO son, I changed the link structure on a blog of mine and saw a steady rise in traffic. Of course I did 301 all of the old posts to the old URLs to the new link structure. Visits went from about 50/day to 200/day. Of course there were some other (SEO recommended) changes as well so I don’t credit it all to the links. 200 visits a day isn’t a lot but it’s a move in the right direction.
Lets get some more articles like that. I love them. The more people that believe SEO is not worth the time the easier it will be for the rest of that knows different to rank well :)I don’t really get upset by sad old men that don’t understand the world around them.
So the guy poorly impliments one SEO suggestion and loses inlinks and traffic because he’s a dumbass and didn’t 301. Is there more to this story?
borsodas don’t be a jerk (that sentence is missing a word - lol)
Darlings, does anyone else think it’s funny that "Natasha" and "bors" odas are fighting? :)
@debra - LOL! and i’m not fighting w/anyone.... was just making an observation... which I guess a spammer did not like
What if the SEO gave him a TON of details on how to do this correctly and he still got it wrong? What if he only "heard" and implemented a portion of the idea from the conversation? The problem is that he is viewed as an _expert_ in the field of computing and SEO/SEM is obliquely in the same field. This is actually an awesome post from him. Not because he is putting our field down, but because you can point other novices at his post and explain that this is why it is sometimes better to hire a pro rather than doing it yourself. Dvorak doing SEO is like Tim the "tool man" Taylor trying to "fix" something. He partially heard and partially understood something, he is probably capble of actually fixing something but, he goes off half cocked and messes up and doesn’t really know/understand why....
@debram - That’s totally funny.