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Sphinn Home » SEO
The Answer To All Your SEO Questions!
SEO News Source: http://searchengineland.com
Published: Feb 07, 2009 - 12:20 am
Story Found By: Harith 1204 Days ago
Category: SEO
Jill Whalen: I recently appeared on Vanessa Fox’s new Webmaster Radio show, “Office Hours” where we discussed some of the simple things business owners can do to increase search traffic to their website, but which are often neglected. During the show, Vanessa answered a bunch of frequently asked questions, and her answers often started out with something like, “People don’t like it when I say this, but there are no specific numbers or formulas for that, because it depends on a variety of factors to determine relevancy.”
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from onreact 1204 Days ago #
Votes: 3

Who deleted my comment? Is criticizing Jill Whalen forbidden on Sphinn? This headline is highly misleading and you know it.

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from Jill 1203 Days ago #
Votes: -3

How is the headline misleading, onreact?I can’t really think of an SEO question that has a different answer.

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from johnandrews 1202 Days ago #
Votes: 2

Wow... was whatever was deleted worse than evidence that Sphinn is deleting comments that are critical of a moderator? What’s up.. a comment was deleted? Why?

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from suncao 1201 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Agreed, what was the comment and why was it deleted, this place is bad enough with silly posts getting huge sphinns because of who posted them without have the comments removed. P.s.  I can think of at least 50 SEO questions that are not answered by this post as I am sure any hafl competent SEO could.

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from KateMorris 1200 Days ago #
Votes: 1

I am going to agree with Jill on this one, the lone answer to almost all SEO questions is "it depends". I, like Vanessa and Jill and so many others, find myself saying that more than giving a straight answer. Marketing is not a black and white science. It’s always going to be relative.

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from johnandrews 1199 Days ago #
Votes: 1

I think a marketer who answers "it depends" for everything is lacking in communication skills.  Many of Jill’s "quick answers" are better answers than the "it depends" answers, which are vague and unsatisfying. In this case, however, the questions are almost silly. "How many words should my pages be" and "to what extent is seo effective" are not questions that deserve definitive answers. They also don’t represent SEO, hence the concerns with the title of this Sphinn submission.When answering SEO questions, be decisive and prepared to back up your claims. Oh, and when Sphinning articles, consider that your own reputation is at risk when you attach a Sphinn to a low value submission.

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from Jill 1199 Days ago #
Votes: -2

The problem, John, is that those are very typical questions that we in SEO hear all the time (at least I do). I disagree with always having to be decisive in your SEO answer, because as Kate mentioned above, there are very few things that are so black and white.Oh, and when Sphinning articles, consider that your own reputation is at risk when you attach a Sphinn to a low value submission.You think this is a low quality article? Please feel free to desphinn.

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from Halfdeck 1199 Days ago #
Votes: 5

It depends is a legit answer. Here’s an example. A fortune 500 with 100,000 pages in the main index asks should they implement internal nofollow. The answer is yes IF most of the pages on the site has a low outbound/internal link ratio. If not, internal nofollow results in increasing PageRank bleed.<div></div><div></div><div>Now if a webmaster with a 10 page site with a TBPR 2 home page asked me the same question I’d say do not bother. If you’re tinkering with nickles and dimes nofollow isn’t going to make a difference.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Another example: say an owner of a big corporate site with 1,000,000 pages (e.g. Chicagotribune) asks should she focus on on-page/internal link structure optimization or should they focus on link marketing and social media marketing? The answer is they should focus on on-site SEO first because small tweaks on a site like that can make a big difference.</div><div></div><div></div><div>The same question posed by an owner of an invisible brand, small 10 page site leads to a completely different answer. In that case he should not focus too much on TechSEO beyond the basics (making the site crawlable, optimizing title tags, etc) because again low site visibility marginalizes effects of SEO. Nailing the basics is still needed to future-proof the site but focus should be increasing visibility by hiring top-notch bloggers, creating something better than free, gaining marketshare, etc. Recommendations would also obviously depend on the size of a client’s monthly marketing budget.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Finally, there are many ways to skin a cat. I think a marketer who thinks there is a single "right" answer for everything either lacks creativity or experience. Knowing alternate paths is critical when situations arise that prevents you from taking the "best" path.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Sure, you can say given a specific website and a marketing budget there is usually a set of definitive choices. But if someone asks a question without a URL then often the answer does depend on a whole host of factors. And even if you have all the specifics there will often be gray areas. Why? Because SEO, like black jack, is about playing the odds.</div>

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from KDye 1198 Days ago #
Votes: -11

As an SEO with a scientific background who is constantly amused by all the "assumptions" and "multiple factors" and "maybes" that I have to work with on a daily basis, I thought the slant on "it depends" was great, and the title was therefore appropriate.

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from johnandrews 1197 Days ago #
Votes: 1

@JillWhalen it’s a matter of presentation. If Sphinn (the community) shows "The Answer to all your SEO Questions!" as a headline, but it’s an article that answers only a few very basic questions, and with an answer like "it depends" for all of them, it makes us all look silly.Nothing is black & white and yet people here had little trouble summing up the pros and cons of the possibilities, without resorting to "it depends". @Halfdeck did a great job... and it took merely a few paragraphs to cover the bases (a big site considers THIS, while a small site considers THAT). I can empathize with @OnReact  here because by using our images and our profiles, Sphinn represents a community of marketers. If you moderators are censoring posts or otherwise misrepresenting that community, you are abusing your authority and we need to know that. That’s why I asked directly over here http://sphinn.com/story/101135

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from graywolf 1196 Days ago #
Votes: 1

if it makes your day more funfilled to think we have a secret agenda please do, however the truth is pligg is a pretty unsophisticated platform, and until the new platform comes out we just have to live with some of it’s idiosyncracies.

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