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i agree with DarkMatter on this one. There are so many grey areas out there that it's natural for spammy services to crop up and anybody looking to engage with an SEO firm needs to know what they're getting (and not getting).
Nice follow up to the previous post. The point you're making is valid in theory, but in practice the scenario doesn't play out that way. For example, if the disabled veteran happens to find a directory that will provide a link to his business, the anchor text probably won't look something like "hardware stores in akron, ohio, owned by diabled veterans." More likely, the link will simply be categorized and provided with anchor text representing the name of the business. As such, the relevant information doesn't get tranferred by the anchor text and the link simply becomes another generic back-link.
of course the implication in an article like this is that you're doing something wrong and want to keep hidden.
jason continues to game this community. here's my take on it - http://www.tinpig.com/2008/04/jason-calacanis.html
it's a little ironically funny and sad at the same time that all these comments are grumblings over what a mean man calacanis is. either make an intelligent response as to why what he's saying is incorrect or be quiet. this insecure whining gets us nowhere.
i get it.
look beyond the surface of the ecommerce sites and find distinguishing elements you can use to go out and build new links. in this example, maybe you could get links from minority owned business directories, or a support group for single mothers? Ooh – maybe the owner could even be featured on one of these sites – great PR.
but tell me again what those links have to do with an eCommerce site and the bulk of users who will be conducting long-tail searches for specific product? In what way do these links contribute to the relevancy of an ecommerce site when probably what matters most is quality of service, competitive pricing, and on-time delivery?
maybe the mother is also 5'6" tall and you could create a highly optimized landing page for people who are 5'6" tall and provide backlinks to the ecommerce site.
@sza - i tend to disagree with you on this one. sure, the way google sees it those links count. but realistically, what relevance do those links have to somebody searching for a specific product?
i can see where they have value for searchers wanting to find minority women owned retail businesses, but otherwise they're out of context. it's the additional PR that get's filtered down to individual product pages due to these links that i have an issue with.
it's again a way of working (spamming) the link-based page rank system.
being prone to gut-reaction posts myself i am happy to see i'm not the only one afflicted. and, by the way, i agree that so much of what get's writting online (especially in the name of SEO) is rehashed and repurposed.
i agree that standards to protect clients against unethical service providers are not needed. however, there is another party involved here that most of the discussion on this topic overlooks, and that's the user. like everyone else, i've offered my own take on this issue - http://www.tinpig.com/2008/04/seo-standards.html
this is a well written and executed article. usability is a practice unto itself, requiring specific skill sets, and shouldn't be confused with SEO. usability addresses the human interaction with a web site while SEO addresses the search engine interaction with the web site. clearly the two intersect with on page text elements and basic navigation, but considerations will diverge when looking at strategies for both.
if i were hiring an SEO who also said she would do a usability study for me, i'd question how focused she could be on either.
i've been following this discussion for the past week or so, reading the various blog posts and comments, etc. I think where the argument get's confused is the semantic difference between standards and regulation. Lisa Barone put it best when she said:
"...search engine optimization is a form of advertising. It’s not a matter of should it be regulated, advertising MUST be regulated."In my mind, the issue isn't around a set of standard dictating how an SEO does her job, but rather are the results ethical. Naturally, "ethical" is a tricky word and that debate could rage for years - but in it's simplest form it can be expressed by the following question: Is the searcher being decieved in any way?
Listing the same keyword 10 times in a row doesn't really make a web page more relevant, and so if this influences the search results it would be fair to say that this would be an unethical practice. These are the types of "standards" the industry needs.
@jack - oh. my mistake, i thought you were referring to yourself. see how easy it is to admit when you're wrong? it's okay to do.
still with the insults, though? are you sticking your tounge out at me too? how about you try to actually engage in the discussion then resorting to a 5th grade mentality.
@jack - you're funny.
my mommy raised me to believe that calling somebody ignorant and suggesting they lack basic reading comprehension are insults.
anyway, this has gone way off course and you're clearly not interested in discussing the substance of your post.
till next time - good luck.
wow.
of all the meaningless, ill-informed, self-indulgent, drivel that get's posted by SEO's trying to maintain their "personal brand," this is the worst i've read in a long, long, time.
Specifically, here are the problems I have with this post - point for point (and copied from the comment I just left on the post itself) -
Per the first and second points, googles needs SEO’s because otherwise the search results would be non-relevant. And my point is exactly what the author stated - on-page SEO work is relatively trivial compared to off-page, and off-page largely consists of link building. And so, without the link-based page rank algorithm, a large piece of SEO work goes away and perhaps people start to wise up and realize that the on-page stuff isn’t that hard. Follow the best practices and integrate it into your content production work-flow. Educate your staff instead of paying lofty prices for external SEO companies. Like the author said, it doesn’t take much time to teach.
The third point states that Google needs SEO’s building inbound links because otherwise they’d never find content to index. This makes no sense. Create a site-map, submit it to the search engines, and add it to your robots.txt file. I’ve created many brand new sites that get indexed without ever having a single inbound link. Google subsequently tries to use inbound links as a means to attribute value to individual pages, which is another issue.
The fourth point credits spammers for helping Google fix problems with their search engine. Sure, but this is like crediting bank robbers for helping police improve their detective work. Every software company on the planet revises it’s product based on feedback from the field. There’s nothing specific to SEO about this.
The fifth, and last point, really doesn’t seem to make a point at all beyond saying SEOs are making money helping clients optimize their content. I fail to see how this supports the argument that Google needs SEOs.
Finally, SEOs do not create content. They optimize existing content for search. There’s a huge difference.
@Jac k - we clearly have a different idea of what content is. the NY Times creates content and i guarantee you their SEOs aren't writing articles for them. The Onion creates content, and i gurantee you their SEOs aren't content creators. quality content creation requires a specific creative or editorial expertise that has nothing to do with SEO - and it's the SEO's job to work with content creators for optimization purposes. As an SEO, if you're creating content then it's likely content purely for the sake of SEO, which has no inherent value. if that's what you call content then, again, we have a different view of what content is.
just because you own "one of the biggest SEO Companies in the world" (nice ego, by the way) doesn't make you a good writer or artist or video producer or any type of content creator.
@johathompson - oops, sorry to have left you out.
actually, if SEO's do nothing but run around fawning over Matt Cutts i'd question where the original thought is in this industry. as for getting "owned" on jack's blog, my impression is that there's been zero response to the point by point objections i had so i can only assume he agrees. i mean, he called me ignorant, which isn't worth responding to, and he made a thin response to the content creation issue by basically saying "yes i do create content" which is without substance.
so, actually, if you call getting "owned" having nothing to say then, sure, agree with you.
Is this really news - that the title is worth more than the body text? Perhaps somebody should write an article about what "SEO" stands for and we can all vote for it.
like mahalo, clearly stumpedia is an attempt to solve the relevancy issue that exists with the purely algorithmic search engines.
i think it's too early to say if it's useful or not since, as crimsongirl states, it's too new and there's not nearly enough in there. it's unclear to me why they're relying 100% on user link submission. the problem for them will be adoption, and they'll only get the volume they need if they provide value. it could be a catch 22 since, as a content producer, there's little reason for me to submit my sites until they have good traffic, and as a user there's little reason for me to use the service until they have good content.
google simply has way too much power right now and what's worse (brilliant?) is how they've indocrinated the public with the "do no evil" mantra. last time i checked, google remained a for-profit public comany whose board of directors and institutional share holders care more about share price than anything else.
@aimClear - Excellent article. I rarely hear SEOs so comfortably discuss the failings of the link-based Page Rank (and thus Relevancy) algorithms. It's really quite a delicate and tenuous position Google and the SEO industry are in right now. As you state so clearly, the current environment cannot be effectively managed by Google (or other search engines). Yet an entire industry (SEO) and the fate of tens of thousands of web sites would be adversely affected if the link-based strucuture was dropped or changed significantly.
Story: SEO has really gotten expensive