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Avatar Went Hot: September 20, 2007 - 9:31 am
Posted By: DavidWallace 353 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.bruceclay.com)
Category: SEO
Lisa Barone writes, "I’m sure there are parts of the SEO process that can be automated, but the bread and butter of your search engine optimization campaign has to be human engineered. Automated systems may help you to get the bleeding to stop, but if you want to be at all competitive, you need more than fancy computers and tools. You need brains and creativity and relationships and people capable thinking outside the (computer) box."
9 Comments     

Comments

from planetc1 353 days ago #
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Nice to have received a link, thanks to Lisa. Love this topic!

from Jill 353 days ago #
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If the Bruce Clay tools aren't automated, I guess I don't know what automation is.

from 0thelisa 353 days ago #
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There's a pretty large difference between using automated SEO tools as a compliment to a larger SEO campaign and automating the entire process itself. If tools were all it took to run a successful SEO campaign then finding a competent SEO company wouldn't be such a difficult task. And yet it is.

from betweenstations 352 days ago #
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Tools are automation. The judgement when to use them is not.

from AndyBeard 352 days ago # - show/hide this comment
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Some people are scared about footprints, but if you use Wordpress and just modify a fairly common theme, lots of those footprints disappear in the surf.

from werd 352 days ago #
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Welcome my son, to the machine.

I disagree. As long as Search Engines use automation, then there is always a place for automation in SEO.

I program, most every programming tool on the market will automate production of your code to some degree. Add a blank page with Dreamweaver and you don't get a blank page, you get a template with a title, and space for your content in the very least. Thats some minimalistic SEO right there. CMS and Blogs as an example automate page creation to a large degree. Not everything needs to be human written.

What is to stop us from making an SEO blank page template? Nothing.

I wrote a 'doorway' generator in the old days. It worked for a while. Google changed it's automation, but I didn't change the generator and it failed. However I would not claim that a doorway generator could not be built now which might work.

Content is the key, am I right? Isn't that what we all say?

Well spam is content optimized for an engine, throw in cloaking and you have yourself a way to make your Black Hat SEO spam immune to negative effects of user experience. Throw in some good testing and QA and a measure of time and you will succeed.

I guess what I am trying to say is that automation will always be possible (not easy). It will work till you get caught, just like the MIT kids that took on Vegas as card counters.

Automated SEO will exist as long as engines put links in their farms (yeah you too Google) which no human ever looks at. Don't underestimate the resources of programmers.

Google defends itself by giving links so much weight, under the assumption that link building cannot be automated. SES - 'Why Paid Links Are Evil' addressed Google's response to automated link building. They fear automated link buys and have created as much FUD as possible to stop it. They are funding a 'war on link purchasing' and it's working so far.

So what about directories, human edited ones? Lack of automation means they don't have as much content when one compares them to an automated form of link discovery. However their results have less potential to be affected by automation.

I personally feel that it's a boon to the potential for automated SEO for Google to be the 800 pound gorilla which it is. They are ripe for exploitation, and who among us would not want to exploit them?

from Jill 352 days ago #
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Oh, so the Bruce Clay tools aren't sold or used as a stand-alone thing then? I didn't realize that. I was under the impression anyone could use them an an automated manner without hiring someone from the BC team to help them implement whatever needs to be implemented.

If that's not the case, then I stand corrected.

from MiriamEllis 352 days ago #
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I couldn't agree more.

When I read the post that sparked this response, I was struck by the assumption that seemed to be inherent in it that the majority of SEO work is related to using tools. Is it?

The majority of my work revolves around dealing with human beings who want a human being to explain to them what all this search engine stuff is about. Seriously, telling my clients that I'm going to give them tools or that I have tools is not what they are interested in at all. They want an intelligent mentor who is going to analyze their business and figure out an effective strategy for them making the best possible use of the web. No tool can automate the unique conversations I have to have with individual clients.

Now, if SEO is simply about keyword research, or finding strong pages, etc....sure, automate away. But to think you can replace human relationships and brilliant ideas with automated calculations will work out as well as that concept of keyword density people took seriously just a few years ago.

Nice article, Lisa!

Miriam

from Scottie 349 days ago #
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Unfortunately, some tools out there focus on things like "keyword density" down to individual words (as opposed to phrases) and mislead people into believing, even in this day that they must have a breakdown like: the- 22%, keyword- 34%, phrase- 38% in order to have a page that's been optimized.

Too many people are still selling tools that make web pages worse if "used out of the box". 

Sure, we all use tools for competitive analysis, ranking, and benchmarking.  But tools that tell you to change the number of times a word appears on your page are a step back, not forward. 



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