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Went Hot: June 9, 2008 - 9:56 am
Posted By: DoshDosh 391 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com) my network
Category: SEO
19 Comments
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Comments
SEO consists of:
Things you want to do.
Things you might not want to do because of the risks.
Things you want to discover your competitors doing, so you can narc on them...
"The In House SEOs
Somewhat related to developers and designers, certainly we have more in house SEOs these days. The two are closely related because both groups need something more than blackhat advice. It just goes beyond the core activities of the D&D bunch. And for in housers, blackhat tactics come with the risk of harming not just a branded site but a brand itself."
Well said, Danny.Its also a matter of trust. Company management, developers and designers trust the SEO to take care of their sites and avoid harming them by implementing blackhat tactics.
I guess abiding search engines quality guidelines is a must for successful In HOuse SEOs!
My site breaks SEO down like this:
Website optimisation - which covers a lot of stuff
Link building
Linkbaiting
Social media marketing
Major companies Like Ford and Chevrolet destroy hundreds of cars each year by smashing them into each other or concrete walls. They don't do it to be irresponsible and reckless, in fact quite the opposite, they do it to see how their cars perform under extreme conditions, and learn where the weaknesses are, and how to make them stronger.
Don't you think that by crashing and burning a few non branded, non connected sites you might learn something too? As long as you aren't hurting anyone there's nothing ethically wrong with testing google's algo and seeing if what they are saying is true or not, and if it really works the way they tell you it does.
You don't crash cars or websites with your customers in them, but you will learn something crashing cars with test dummies and websites with sock puppets, as long as you do it in isolation of your company and brand.
Anyone who is afraid of experimentation, and R&D will always be on the trailing edge and not the leading one ...
Great comment Graywolf. Nice way to look at it.
Excellent analogy and totally agree. If I had to guess, it was probably that R&D that fueled the expert recommendations that went into the "SEO Ranking Factors" articles on SEOMOZ, which is an article that alot of strictly white hat SEO's find quite useful. I think we should always push the limits and bring back our learnings, but just be weary that there are an aweful lot of people out there that consider themselves "Advanced" that probably aren't. To me, advanced means you could be handed a new computer, and turn it into a search friendly, database driven mega-site by hand.
Graywolf,
"As long as you aren't hurting anyone there's nothing ethically wrong with testing google's algo and seeing if what they are saying is true or not, and if it really works the way they tell you it does."
Very interesting indeed. Google saying something about how their algos really work? where did you read that? any examples, please?
SEO HAS turned a corner. More on that in a second. First, I want to thank Danny for hosting an excellent show in Seattle. I've attended some of your other shows and this was my favorite. I also appreciate your openness and discussion on Lisa Barone's thread. I was late on that one because I was travelling, so I'm glad I can speak up here.
SEO has turned a corner, and I'm happy to say it's for the better. As an in-house, I was thrilled to see that I had a lot of peers confronting the same issues. Many of us are the first in-house SEO people ever at our company, and we're defining our positions as we go. I think that's also redefining what it means to be an SEO.
I was a analyst and a developer before I was an SEO. Those jobs don't require much explanation or much justification for a hiring manager to create and budget. SEO used to be perceived as a collection of tactics -- use H1 tags, make a sitemap, add meta descriptions, get rid of JS obstacles, etc. That's a pretty one-dimensional view, and even a few years ago most companies looked at SEO as just a project engagement. In the past, I saw so many engagements fail due to lack of stakeholder buy-in. The fact that we even got hired in-house speaks to how much has changed.
Advanced can mean a lot of things. I think it does mean a greater understanding of how our work touches everything from development to usability, design, ecommerce, and analytics. We're also coming into our own as strategists and online marketing managers. There is no one-size-fits all way to handle even fundamental tactics. We can argue whether PR sculpting is advanced. From a technical standpoint, it may or may not be. What is advanced is (as Nathan suggested) following a rigorous decision process as to whether it's the best use of your time, bang for buck, and if so, how you would measure its results. I've spent months analyzing engine data, the search landscape, web analytics, our customer profiles, you name it. One of the major "advanced" initiatives I'm undertaking is drilling titles and alt tags with our writers. Why is that advanced? Because I've looked at my resources, my opportunity, and my expected outcome and in my long-term strategy, this is the right short-term move for my specific situation, for our team, for our site. Advanced does mean staying abreast of the cutting edge of tactics. Advanced also means the set of critical thinking and soft skills to actually get things executed in organizations of all sizes.
As to whether there were too many grey/black hat tactics, I wasn't so offended. I agree to some extent with points made by Graywolf and others on this thread and Lisa's at Bruce Clay. There is learning going on in the black/grey arena, and it does benefit even those who can't touch those tactics (although again, I think perhaps next time less of that material out of consideration for the target audience). I do agree that grey/black is going to innovate for net positive just as they do for negative. I wish Google/Yahoo/MSN could spend all their time innovating their algo's and tools instead of defeating spammers, but that's the world we live in, and I'd rather have it out there for discussion.
The only thing I would say about SMX is that I wish the tactics had been framed better at the beginning of each session to state why the tactic might be controversial but why it's being discussed nonetheless. That being said, we're all intelligent enough to realize that just as "you didn't get into marketing to be a moral person" is a hugely flawed generalization, the converse is also incorrect.
There is no clear understanding of where white ends and where black begins. It's like porn, you generally know it when you see it. I think it's much easier to think about the spirit of the law rather than the letter. As my teacher used to say: "integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching." Think about what's important to you, what's important to your company, and to your brand.
Great conference Danny.
@javaun Great and extensive comment, there NPR guy! Nice to meet you at SMX :-)
I think that a very large portion of "innovating their algo's" is so they can combat SPAM so that the SERP's are useful and not full of crap.
Not wanting to learn or know grey/blackhat SEO even if you never practice or implement it is just crazy. It seems so many grey/black tactics can be extracted, strategize, and formulated in a whitehat manner. It's a matter of creativity.
Network security admins often get good by learning the ways of the darkside and learning how to hack servers themselves. I feel it's great to get a mix of BOTH kinds of content at SMX Advance.
I love SMX Advance and can't wait for it again next year.
I wish Google/Yahoo/MSN could spend all their time innovating their algo's and tools instead of defeating spammers, but that's the world we live in
The world we live in is not a sterile world comprised of content, site architecture and relevance, though search engineers would surely love it that way so they can just play with whatever part of the algo they feel like playing with.
"Unfortunately" for them, it's a world full of intents and interests, and accepting the existence of those (not only on the user side but also on the content provider side) is as important as innovating the algo.
Most of us are just tired of working inside the envelope and looking for new things to try. That's usually where black hat SEO comes in. And while some people maintain there aren't any short cuts or secrets in SEO, there are plenty. It made me think twice when a spam site I build went from 0 to 6,000 uniques/day in 30 days while a white hat site I spent months on continued to struggle in the SERPs. At that point I realized search engines are "dumb" pieces of code and often can't tell a good site from bad. Like GTA suspends disbelief to make you think that pixels you're seeing are cars, Google makes you think they're returning the right search results and things are working as they should. But that isn't "real." Some rules can bent others can be broken.
Danny,
This article, where you talk about "toning down" SMX and buying into the "blackhat vs. whitehat" mentality, strikes a sad note in me.
I go to the shows to get potent, real-life inormation about what is working for other people... and the biggest complaint I hear about them is "the speakers didn't say anything really juicy or in-depth... I learned more at the bar."
Even if I don't do any "blackhat" SEO, I sure need to be razor keen on what the compeition is doing. You HAVE to know about "blackhat" SEO to be a good competitive webmaster... or you are as useless as bartender who only knows how to make non-alcoholic drinks.
So please don't make SMX content more toned-down, tame or "safe and corporate friendly"
It would be a real shame.
If you're not cheating, you're not trying.
Hi all-
Danny, I think you bring up a very, very good point. I do not believe advanced SEO automatically equals search engine spam, and I do think it is a shame that many SEO professionals who practice "advanced" optimization tactics are labeled spammers.
I believe one of the problems is that our industry does not clearly define what "advanced" SEO is. To some, it is SEO practitioners with programmer skills. But you can have very skilled programmers who are not very good at search, and some really advanced SEOs who are not really great programmers.
I very much admire and respect that you put ideas and tactics out in the open, whether I (or anyone else) agrees with those ideas or not.
Keep up the good work!
"In part recently, I wonder if the frenzy over links has kept our attention off design, as an industry as a whole."
Danny, the above is a very importatnt statement because that is a big part of the problem. SEO started out as primarily a webmaster discipline. Then a bunch of us started using direct/response marketing techniques to increase conversion and CTR's. That is SEO the rest is web promotion. To confirm it just look in any topical directory and you'll see link development is under web promotion generally SEO and SEM either have their own category or are under some sort of webmastering or marketing top level.
Frenzy is a nice way to describe SEO's obsession with links. Links have replaced competitor/niche content evaluation and content development because links are given way more credit for rankings than they deserve. The bottom line is nothing has really changed that much the biggest SEO myth is the myth that SEO is constantly changing because algos change. That is a fallacy because if you don't build sites that rank by exploitation of algos then when they change you are for the most part rising because the changes aren't the basis for your rank. Content and KW research are the basics for and the foundation of any good SEO campaign. Always has been and always will be. The rest is web promotion passing as SEO!
Hi all
Sorry for being late to the party.
In general I agree with Danny's desire to educate the masses about all aspects of SEO - both blackhat and whitehat. I think it's important that people understand what blackhat tactics may be used by their competitors, both against themselves and against the search engines. So I can see how some blackhat education, clearly labelled as such, could be useful.
However, I have a couple of questions.
My first question is "What's in it for the blackhats?"
Ultimately people talk at conferences because they gain something from it. I'm interested in what blackhats gain from talking at SMX Advanced about blackhat tactics.
My second question is "Are blackhats the most appropriate people to be giving this information?" I don't mean that in a pejorative sense - I simply mean that there are alternatives to being told about blackhat tactics by blackhats. Two alternatives are whitehats and search engine spamfighters, both of whom know perfectly well what blackhats do - either from being victims or from hanging around in bars at previous shows!
Final thought: would it be appropriate, in a session discussing "blackhat PPC" issues such as click fraud, to invite click fraud perpetrators to describe how they do it?
SOME blackhats gain business from it, they get hired by website owners to deface competitors sites and such which is a lot of money for a few minutes work.