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- Sphinn It!
Went Hot: May 19, 2008 - 6:55 am
Posted By: DanThies 53 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seofaststart.com)
Category: SEO
Sorry if you were expecting something radically different, but the point of the "fast start" system is that it doesn't have to change all the time. I can't reinvent SEO again, unless something big happens.
As I told someone the other day, the only thing that seems to never change in SEO is the persistent myth that the search engines "change the rules" all the time.
23 Comments
Comments
Thanks for the update Dan - will download and read this over the weekend :)
Aw, see, now I have to go and change the link in my big list of newbie guides. :)
The pagerank sculpting part of 2007 rocked. Looking fw to 2008. And Dan's an SEM2.0 buddy, so rock on Dan.
Thanks, all! The link should be the same, Donna, unless you were linking directly to the file.
There are at least two approaches to learning SEO. One is the technician's approach - "give me a list of what exactly to do, but don't strain my precious few grey cells" - and it gets what it asks for in Dan Thies's "SEO Fast Start" textbook.
That's where the textbook fails. By skipping the theory the technician cannot understand why for one search query working for half an hour was sufficient for climbing from # 11 to # 10 in Google, and for another search query, for which he started at # 11 as well, an effort of two hundred workhours accomplished nothing. After all there's just one step to climb for both!
I read this complaint several times a day, at the Israeli forum where I contribute heavily, from the victims of this technical approach to teaching SEO.
My first impression... a great resource! Not only will this help me be more efficient in getting the job done, I think it is going to help me improve my SEO service selling efforts. Thanks Dan!
@aschobey: how for instance does it help you calculate the amount of work required to bring a website to # 10 in Google for your prospective client's website?
@emanuelh
Yes but is any guide going to be able to tell you that? I'd argue that assessment can only be made with experience. Knowing how to assess the competitive of the SERPs and the specific issues faced by the site you are working on (as well as their advantages).
It's not fair to say SEOFS is devoid of theory - for example, recheck the parts on site structure, third level push (PR Sculpting) or how search engine work. Sure, I can see areas that can be expanded on but that is inevitable with any SEO textbook.
Importantly for me, Dan's information is correct and doesn't mislead those new to the industry. It gives any new or intermediate SEO a great bedrock of information to build on. To add more of the theory you refer to. I'd have no problem recommending it on that basis.
@NickWilsdon Experience does not help calculating (or even estimating within a margin of 40% on both sides) the amount of work required to bring a website to # 10 in Google for your prospective client's website. You have no way to assess quantitatively, within the same margins, the competitiveness of one SERP in comparison with another.
The explanation of why this is so is omitted from Dan Thies's textbook. And therefore whoever learns SEO from it is not aware why climbing from # 11 to # 10 in one SERP is quantitatively different from climbing from # 11 to # 10 in another.
I sincerely apologize to all of the "victims" who are suffering horrible consequences as a result of my desire to help. Sheesh. If you want a textbook, go buy the Search Marketing Kit. If you want more theory, read my blog, it is there to go along with the book.
@DanThies The amount of theory needed to understand why climbing from # 11 to # 10 in one SERP is quantitatively different from climbing from # 11 to # 10 in another, would be sufficient.
Dan - Keep up the great work. I use your books to train my staff. Top of the line work!
@emaneuelh, hows this?
Serp Value= T X $ X 1/P
Where:
T = traffic (number of searches for that keyword)
$ = profitablity of the niche
P = position i.e where you rank in the serps.
Emanuel, if you're reading a beginner's guide and trying to pass yourself off as a consultant to clients, I am GLAD that my book isn't helping you perpetrate that fraud.
(BTW, this topic is discussed in the six-part link building course that registered subscribers get to watch for free.)
Dan, I'm doing SEO since 1999, but I took the trouble to focus on theory as well, besides practical tips. I repeat - without understanding why climbing from # 11 to # 10 in one SERP is quantitatively different from climbing from # 11 to # 10 in another, SEO workers do not understand what they do, do not understand what they should do, and provide their clients with imaginary price quotes.
Obviously, very few took the trouble to read the six-part linking course.
@ jaybong I'm not asking what is the relative value of being # 10 for online casino versus the value of being # 10 for travel europe.
I ask why climbing from # 11 to # 10 for online casino is quantitatively different from climbing from # 11 to # 10 for travel europe. After all, the sum that's going to be written in the price quote depends on this distinction, especially if you have indeed just climbed from # 11 to # 10 for travel europe.
An SEO candidate for employment in our firm who cannot understand this distinction is deemed
incompetent.
Again Emanuel, if you're expecting a 100-page beginner's guide to tell you that, best of luck, and again I apologize with all due sincerity for victimizing you.
There are differences in the level of difficulty in creating good SERPs for different search queries. Competition is a factor in how difficult it will be for SEOs but not the only factor. Your client/victim's site also plays a part.
Amazon.com is at #8 on my Google SERP for [books] currently, with an internal page. If they want to grab the #2 position ahead of Barnes & Noble, it's not going to be terribly difficult for them to move up six spots. If Abe Books (currently #6) wants to move up 4 spots to the same position, it will be far more difficult for them.
I created the Fast Start framework so that anyone can use it, including professionals. The beginner's guide is built on that framework and illustrates how the framework can be used. If you will notice, I didn't include *anything* about running an SEO consultancy within the framework.
Feel free to create your own framework for that. Feel free to participate in the community of readers - there are a lot of consultants in that community who would undoubtedly love to participate.
Dan, one could argue that, in the absence of any other data, the relevance score gap between # 6 and # 2 is obviously smaller than that between # 8 and 2, and it will require therefore less resources to close. You could argue that, based on the observation of historical rankings data of the top 100-200 listings for [books] for 6-12 months, showing a rather high stability of the rankings of all other pages, Amazon's inner page has been gaining relevance score for some 12 months at a rate that is much higher than any other page, and it is highly probable that it will become # 2 before Abe Books's page. Moreover you can demonstrate perhaps that Amazon's inner page gains inbound links at a very high rate, all created independently by the owners of other sites, with zero effort on Amazon's part.
The point is not who is right and who is wrong in this particular debate, but whether an SEO worker trained in the spirit of a technical textbook acquires the conceptual tools needed to understand what this debate is about, and whether he is able to implement the outcome of such a debate into his daily work. I very much doubt it.
Erratum: I've meant to write: ...based on the observation of historical rankings data of the top 100-200 listings for [books] for 6-12 months, showing a background of a rather high stability of the rankings of all other pages, Amazon's inner page has climbed steadily from # 500 to # 8, demonstrating that it has been gaining relevance score for some 12 months at a rate that is much higher than any other page, and it is highly probable that it will become # 2 before Abe Books's page
Let me just add that, since I have no access to historical rankings data, this is not a description of facts but the description of a hypothetical situation just for the sake of the argument.
There's no debate here, I made a vacuum cleaner and you call yourself a victim because it didn't mow your lawn... Anyway many thanks, I needed a good laugh today.
I didn't call myself a victim. I don't need your textbook. The "victims" are the credulous people looking for a high-tech profession (and income!) with no entrance exams nor qualification exams, and who are tacitly encouraged to believe that by following a list of technical instructions their client's site will climb in rankings up to # 1.
Wow... so, because I don't explicitly state throughout the book that people with no qualifications shouldn't pass themselves off as consultants, I am "tacitly encouraging" them to do so. Nowhere have I encouraged anyone to enter into SEO as a profession, much less made any other such claims.
You can have the last word now, because continuing this conversation would surely be tacit encouragement of your trolling.
Indeed you didn't. Thanks for your time.