One of SEOmoz’s former regular blog contributors, Michael Martinez, posted his "Thoughtful SEO’s Manifesto" this week. After reading it, Rand Fishkin thought it would be fun to highlight some of the differences in how Michael and he think about, write about, and perform SEO for their clients.
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Rand and Micheal are on very different sides of SEO I am glad to see one openly critiquing the other.
"I’d think about this very differently, actually, and say, instead, build a website that your target market will want to read and use. If it’s not useful to them, it’s not worth creating."That’s the Britney Spears and Ice Ice Baby school of thought, otherwise known as "selling-out" or wimpification... Sure, you want people to love your website. But that is never the goal of creating it. If your main goal of writing a blog post is to please your readers, get Dugg, hit Sphinn’s front page, or make $100 off PPP -- step away from the keyboard. Write from your gut - hopefully people will appreciate, but if not, tough.
I think you’re misunderstanding where Rand is coming from, HalfDeck.I’m pretty sure that he "comes from the gut" with his own content, but the other side of the coin is that if you’re a commercial venture (which many sites with SEO considerations are) then you must create content that resonates with the audience in your verticle.Ironically enough, writing from the gut and resonating with your readers are often the same thing.