One of SEOmoz's former regular blog contributors, Michael Martinez, posted his "Thoughtful SEO's Manifesto" this week. After reading it, I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the differences in how he and I think about, write about, and perform SEO for our clients. Let me just preface this by first saying I'm NOT claiming Michael's wrong or I'm right - I just think it's useful to see different sides of the proverbial SEO coin. As readers and as search marketers, you'll have to decide which pieces of advice and information serve your campaigns best - don't just take our word for everything.
Let's run through his Manifesto step-by-step:
When you create a Web site, build a site you want to read and use. If it’s not useful to you, it’s not worth creating.
I'd think about this very differently, actually, and say, instead, build a website that your target market will want to read and use. If it's not useful to them, it's not worth creating. I can't enumerate the times I've seen a site built the way the CEO or the CTO thought it should be built, only to find that no one else on the planet shared their opinion. Usability, content foci, design, information architecture, and user experience should be governed by the user, not by the creator.
Instead of thinking about where you can get links, ask yourself how you can make your linking more useful to others.
I'm a little confused by what he means there, but I think Michael's suggesting that you should worry about how you link to others and not on how they link to you. In my opinion, that's a very noble and karmic way to approach things, but not particularly strategic. Instead, I'd suggest thinking very hard about where you can get links - make it a backbone of your business concept. If you're launching a website, why are you interesting? Who are you interesting to? Who among those that are interested will link to you? No one? Better go find some content you can target towards a link-savvy audience.
Dropping links in forums tells other people you don’t know enough about search engine optimization to be doing it. Using software to drop links in forums tells other people you don’t care how much you fail at search engine optimization.
I disagree - in part. Dropping links in forums, especially in your signature, is a great way to leverage an existing social community to draw people to your site. SEOmoz's blog was literally built on this principle (from about 2003 to early 2005), so I can say firsthand that it works. As for software to drop forum links, I don't think it shows that you don't care, it just shows that you're invested in a very different methodology... a black hat one, to be specific. It does show that you don't have a lot of respect for forum owners or participants.
If you’re going to create content in volume, create it to last. Which would you prefer: to make $1000 in a month or $12,000 per year?
Damn straight!
If you think you need more links, the first thing you should do is create the content that provides those links. The second thing you should do is force yourself to NOT tell people how you got your links.
Agree on the first part - if you need links, you'd better have content or promotion strategies that will attract those links. The second piece sounds bizarre - first off, it's pretty hard to hide your link strategies from an SEO-savvy competitor, and second, who shares their linking strategies publicly? Besides me, of course :-)
If you’re using Yahoo! Site Explorer to do link research, you’re telling people you don’t know enough about search engine optimization to do link research. If you install an SEO toolbar in your Mozilla browser to check Yahoo! links for you, you’re telling people you’re too lazy to learn how to do link research right.
We strongly differ in opinions here. I think Yahoo! Site Explorer is one of the best competitive link research tools on the web today. I also like Google Blogsearch, Technorati, and Google brand and domain name searches. Using an SEO toolbar is a great idea, too - I personally use bookmarklets for all sorts of things. I can't understand why Michael doesn't like them and especially can't understand why he would take that stance and give no background - if you disagree strongly with conventional thinking, wouldn't it make sense to talk about or link to the reasons why? Then you could earn a link from this post about you :-)
There is nothing wrong with snapshot SEO analysis unless that is the only kind or the majority of analysis you do.
I'm not sure what Michael means by "snapshot SEO analysis," but if it has anything to do with this system of metasearch saturation analysis, I'm not personally a fan of it (to be honest, I've never tried it and only seen one report from another SEO firm like it that looked virtually useless to me). I really like using visitor analytics as my main form of analysis, along with link, domain name and brand name mentions across the various engines.
There is nothing wrong with creating large volumes of content as long as it’s unique, informative, and useful.
Agreed.
Blackhat spammers burn out the usefulness of about 10% of all SEO tips, tricks, and techniques that are openly or semi-openly shared on blogs and forums in about 12 months. White hat SEOs, newbies, and SEO gurus burn out the other 90% in 6 months or less.
I think I'm misunderstanding him here, because he can't be suggesting what I think he's suggesting. From reading this, I get that blackhats use up (which is to say, abuse and eventually eliminate the value of) 10% of the SEO tactics discussed in public in a year. That part's reasonable - I think I agree. It's this next bit that bugs me - I think he's saying that whitehats use up and invalidate the usefulness of the remaining 90% in 6 months... I disagree wholeheartedly . If he's right, it would mean that linkbaiting, a 3-year old tactic (at least), would have fallen out of fashion years ago. Putting important keywords in title tags is an age-old SEO tactic, and yet I still see great value there, as well. He must mean something else, but I just don't know what it is.
It takes about 2 years for a very useful aspect of search engine optimization theory to become accepted by mainstream SEOs and their followings.
Hmmm... My opinion is "not necessarily." I think that tactics like badges, quizzes, linkbait, widgets, long tail keyword research tactics, social media marketing, and local search targeting (to name just a few) all were picked up within 3-6 months of being mentioned publicly and had widespread use even in that short time period. There's a lot of early adopters on the web and on the consulting side - I've been in meetings with clients where they're espousing strategies that we both first heard about just a few weeks prior - SEO is a remarkably well-connected ecosphere.
Keywords in domain names don’t matter. Keywords in URLs do.
You're joking, right? Keywords in the domain name certainly aren't critical to doing good SEO, but if you own an exact match domain for a particular keyword, the quest for rankings (at least on that singular term) are going to be considerably easier. Saying that they categorically have no value is extremely perplexing.
Every time an SEO community leader tells you to ignore the keywords meta tag, just ignore them and go back to adding relevant content that Ask and Yahoo! still index to your pages until Ask and Yahoo! stop indexing the keywords meta tag.
I'd strongly disagree. Keyword meta tags are best for competitive intelligence, so yeah, keep putting them on your pages. Your SEO friends will appreciate it more than Yahoo! or Ask ever will. Besides that, I ran an A/B test a few years ago (and obviously, things might have changed) showing that while Yahoo! would index a nonsense keyword in the meta tag, you couldn't rank any better by having it there. I like Danny's post on this.
PageRank doesn’t have anything to do with relevance. Google uses PageRank to decide which pages will be displayed as the most relevant to a query regardless of where the most relevant pages actually are to be found.
I think he's saying that PageRank is just how Google orders search results, and thus, is only important for SEO, while many relevant results that are unpopular are ignored. I guess I agree with that - there's certainly a lot of very relevant, but not "popular" content or sites that's ignored by the search engines. That's why SEO exists - to help bring great content to light by using the tactics of successful search targeting.
“Aged domain” has joined the list of ambiguous SEO expressions like “relevant link”, “authority site”, and “SEO friendly” that mean nothing and provide no value to a discussion.
I strongly disagree with this entire sentence. Every one of those phrases means something and is very useful in conversation (at least, to me). In fact, I had a meeting with Seattle Children's Hospital about their SEO today and I think we used at least 2 of those to help facilitate our communication. Here - I'll detail what each of them mean:
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Aged domain - a domain/host that's been in the search engines' indices for several years and has some quality links that have pointed to it for a long time.
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Relevant link - a link from a site/page that's actually on the same topic as your site and might provide not just raw link popularity, but topical link weight and even actual visitor clickthroughs.
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Authority site - a domain that ranks very well for a wide variety of terms in a particular niche and has a considerable amount of traffic and link popularity.
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SEO Friendly - used to describe a domain, CMS software, or a particular tactic, simply meaning that it's properly structured for search engine robots to access and links/content to be properly counted/indexed.
Why wouldn't you use them in a discussion?
If you believe firmly that the age of a Web site or domain can matter, how do you explain why it matters to yourself? If you cannot offer yourself a rationale, who else do you think will believe you?
This is true of virtually any piece of information a human being believes. If you can't understand or justify a belief, it's called "faith" and is probably not good to introduce into an SEO campaign (or any non-theologic work environment).
I did not say that aged domains don’t matter.
I agree; he did not say that.
If all you had to work with was links and content, what would you do with your search engine optimization?
This isn't a statement and thus, doesn't fit particularly well with the manifesto/antifesto format, but I am confused about what you really have to work with in the SEO world outside of links and content - maybe historical and user data? But even these are dictated by links and content (the latter more than the former). I suppose offline marketing and social media aren't directly content and links, but I'd still consider them in the "content" realm, particularly if we're talking about a online-specific entity.
If you want to buy an aged domain, are you hoping to leverage existing link value? Are you buying that domain on a blog or forum used by blackhat spammers who milk every domain for as much as they can get from it? Do you look at the domain as a fixer-upper with potential long-term brand value? Are you ready to invest more time and money into building value in that aged domain than you feel would be required for a previously unused domain?
I'd agree that these are all good questions to ask oneself before purchasing a domain.
The real value of an aged domain lies in its future, not its past.
I think this sentence is a paradox (or, more correctly, a performative contradiction), but maybe he meant to phrase it as "The real value of an aged domain lies in what it can do for you in the future, not necessarily what it has done in the past." That, I would certainly agree with.
Every link counts in your backlink analysis, but not every link counts in search engine results.
Yep. That's what makes backlink analysis so hard.
You cannot determine which links count for search engines, but you can decide which links matter to you.
Also true.
You build linking pages, you find linking partners, you use linking resources. If you blur the distinctions for yourself, don’t be surprised if other people get confused too.
I agree that doing all those things is a good idea, but I'm not sure why they can't have any overlap with one another, or what the dangers are. I'd be interested to hear Michael expound on why he phrased it this way - is he worried that we'll "find linking pages" or "build linking resources?"
Anyone who says that search engine optimization is all about links doesn’t know enough about search engine optimization to be talking about it.
Damn... I guess no more talking about SEO for me. The problem is - SEO IS all about links. Anyone can optimize a page or create relevant content, but only an SEO knows that it's not just about the right keywords and good semantic markup, it's about the links that content can earn. If you're thinking about links when you design your business, thinking about them when you architect your user experience, thinking about them when you brainstorm your content, and thinking about them when you're developing a marketing strategy, you're going to lose out to a more link-savvy competitor. The problem is that information on how to put keywords in the right places, how to build good URLs, and good site structures is easily accessible and easy for anyone to accomplish. On-page SEO is NOT a competitive advantage - content that's focused on link acquisition and a business strategy that recognizes the power of getting attention from online peers and networks IS a competitive advantage.
On the flip side, Michael's right in that SEO is sometimes just about identifying the problems that hold back great rankings and traffic. We've worked with plenty of enterprise-sized client, from NPR and Yelp to Microsoft and Fast Company (and more), where the goals were much more focused on simply fixing canonicalization or duplicate content or URL structure or internal links. Although, to be fair, there is almost never an aspect of website design, development, content creation, or marketing that doesn't relate back to the links argument. Fundamentally, links are a proxy for votes, and we want the web's voters (the online "influencers") to cast their ballots in our direction. Maybe it's just a case where Michael and I hold different perspectives.
Whew! That was actually a lot of fun - I think it's great to see where you hold agreements and disagreements with others in your field, and I'm even a little curious to learn more about the areas where Michael and I have different opinions. Naturally, I'd love to hear from you as well - any points where one or both of us are completely off-track?
Keywords in domain names don’t matter. Keywords in URLs do.
I think what this means is that you don't really need to worry so much about getting your hands on a keyword-rich domain name. No matter what your domain name is, you can still have keywords in your URL, and there's enough advantage in that.
Besides, a keyword-rich domain name, if it helps, only helps on searches for that keyword. And if you have to hyphenate the domain name to make it possible for search engines to parse multiple words within the domain name, I think you're giving up too much in branding and convenience for whatever you might gain by having the keywords in the domain name.
By naming directories and files based on their keywords (and their content), you get keywords in your URLs without the problems that come with using them in the domain name.
Even if that's not what Michael meant, it's how I've always seen it.
The bottom line, to me, is that you both are successful at what you do. That means that either a) your approaches are actually very similar, you just have completely different ways of explaining them; or b) there's more than one approach to successful SEO.
Either way, I always enjoy reading your differing points of view.
"The problem is - SEO IS all about links. Anyone can optimize a page or create relevant content, but only an SEO knows that it's not just about the right keywords and good semantic markup, it's about the links that content can earn."
Phew. I dunno. I think that argument could become a snake eating its own tail. I mean, you could conversely argue that anyone could "get links" (and please note, I'm not talking about quality, relevant links... I'm talking crappy links), but that only an SEO would be able to set up a quality site (architecture etc-wise) that would be able to take advantage of those links to their full effect.
I'm not downplaying either side. Just that I don't think you can say that SEO is "all about" anything, really.
i agree with rand on this one. if i was restricted to *one* big lever that i was allowed to pull on to get a site to rank, it's links every time.
this actually reminds me of a discussion that greg boser got into with michael a couple years back, where an go-kart site was ranking for phrases related to amish furniture, simply because the amish furniture domain was resolving to the go-kart domain.
while that example's obviously out of date, it's still true that links can outweigh content on the page when an engine attempts to determine relevancy.
This is one of the most interesting posts I have ever seen on SEOmoz.
One thing that struck me was the symbiosis of thinking at work here even though there is a much disagreement. Michael's post on its own is interesting and a good indication of what he feels but sheds no light on why he hold those opinions. Rand's responses, often disagreeing, explain why and this adds value to the original post. Thus the two together form a very useful picture that neither would have achieved on their own. This is a truly postive result and I can't think of a better example of constructive criticism that I have seen for a long while.
“Aged domain” has joined the list of ambiguous SEO expressions like “relevant link”, “authority site”, and “SEO friendly” that mean nothing and provide no value to a discussion."
Are we saying domain and link age are somehow unimportant? In the market I'm in, the sites are so old I swear they were created on C-64s. Try knocking one of those sites off the front page of Google!
Once a domain hits ten years old or so it seems like the domain becomes G's version of the Giza pyramids- an immoveable object.
No amount of fresh, useful content, quality links, or quality code seems to be able to beat a domain that was registered back when Matt Cutts was still using Mosaic on his IBM PC/AT, listening to Menudo in his Underoos.
Rand:
"I'm a little confused by what he means there, but I think Michael's suggesting that you should worry about how you link to others and not on how they link to you."
Rand I think what Michael meant here is how the links pointing to your site can be more useful to visitors, which is the right conception I believe. When creating a link building campaign we should think of having links comming to our sites that are going to enrich the user's experience.
That's the way I read it as well Rand. I was only confused when I saw how it could be taken another way :P
"Rand I think what Michael meant here is how the links pointing to your site can be more useful to visitors"
Not really.
If everybody linked out generously, we have to put less effort into hunting for links.
If that was the intent (not sure it was even on a re-read), then I'd agree that making your linking strategies useful to potential clickers of those links is a very good thing. The only point I'd add is that it's very tough to control, unless you're manually placing or buying links (which is the opposite of the link strategies I usually opt for).
Quick point about forums - this all depends on how you go about posting. As a forum owner I'd say about 90% of the people trying to do this (or more) are just spamming. They show up, post a bunch of short, useless, uninformative posts, and are never seen again. I'd hate for people to read this post and think that they should do more of this! We spend a lot of time trying to keep this sort of junk out of our forums.
On the other hand, as a forum owner I think it's great if people want to become active, contributing, positive members of our forum and get some traffic to their sites from it. This is the way people need to go about it - become a real part of the community, help people, post more than one sentence answers, stick around for longer than a day etc. Build your reputation as a good person and people will get to know you and visit your site (and possibly link to you from their own sites, social bookmark your articles etc.). As a forum owner, I'm happy to let such people get away with a little more than I would otherwise.
I think it would be valid to say that "Dropping links in forums for the purpose of improving your backlink profile/PR shows you don't know enough about SEO..." (? would like some SEO experts to expand on this!) It's more about reputation building than pure SEO (and participating in the wrong way can certainly impact your repuation in a negative way!).
By the way, I don't eat most meats, so could I get extra cheese, and maybe some peppers with my antifesto?
I had a great antifesto prior to my delicious Italian dinner the other night.
Saying that White Hat SEO techniques expire in 6 months of use is absurd. Successful search engines will always aim to get the searcher what they are looking for, and one white hat technique that will never expire is providing things that people are looking for, and making it clearly visable to search engines. That 'White Hat Technique' that will never expire. Crazy guy...
Michael's post - Man that was so confusing. At so many places I found myself doubting on every thing that I have learnt so far. And his writing style is very confusing. Feeling much better ater reading this antifesto though...
In general I feel that both manifestos are interesting and informative reads for anybody interested in or actively practicing SEO. However, we should definitely understand that each was created based upon the opinions, preferences, and personal experiences of their respective author. As such, some of the advice is great and some is less than great. Ultimately, we have to decide which tidbits of information and advice we can take away from each and use to help us create a greater positive impact on the sites we optimize.
Case in point, I do not believe that using Site Explorer tells the world that one does not know enough about SEO to do link research. Maybe this statement was made merely to be controversial? Regardless of the intent, it’s just not true. I would like to offer that not using Site Explorer means only that you are missing out on a powerful competitive research tool that your competitors are using to learn more about you.
- Eric
To be fair, I should also include a point that I did like and agree with:
"There is nothing wrong with creating large volumes of content as long as it’s unique, informative, and useful."
Where the most important term is "useful." What's the point of building out a section of your website if your audience probably won't consume it?
But building out that section of your website with awesome content would probably bring a large audience to it naturally, both in terms of search engine traffic from additional optimized pages and in terms of referals from consumers of your great content.
I feel much of this discussion is redundant.
It IS links kids.
Today. SEO right now.
Yes, that may change in the future. Unfortunately, we can't exactly predict how rankings will be affected by all these other elements or if they'll really impact how results are ranked - that story will continue to play out.
You can't sit here and say "I'm not gonna worry about my backlinks because they're not going to matter in 6 months or a year". Try selling that to a client.
I'll be building content and links to that content in the meantime. You guys can spend you're time discussing the politics.
Evolvor...
i've told a client exactly that. (well, kinda..)
and I quote:
"we don't concentrate on linking strategies because you and your company have no control over the content or domain that you are linking to or being linked from. what is a nice site full of links today is an amish porn site tomorrow and paying us to check links everyday is a waste of your budget."
(saying "amish porn" always lessens the fact that you said "porn" in a business meeting.)
No SEO without backlinking strategy? i respectfully completely and vehemently disagree.
For same client: (now on 3rd year of SEO)
Results:Out of the 60 terms we are tracking for them on a monthly basis.
7 are not on the first 3 pages. (10 new terms were added Jan. 1, 2008 and 3 of the new 10 are #1 result now.)
53 are in the top 3 pages.
39 are on the top 10 results.
18 are #1
9 are #2
note: when we started for them only 3 terms were in the top 3 pages now we have monthly tracking on 60 terms and can directly attribute business from Organic SERP referral link to unique contact page tracked based on keyword.
Seriously.. other than Yahoo! Directory, PRNewswire and channel specific magazines that give us a weblink/banner ad bundled with a print media buy, we don't do links... of course we do have a full blown PR dept. that gets great (SEO optimized copywriting) news coverage and those links don't hurt either..
"Damn... I guess no more talking about SEO for me. The problem is - SEO IS all about links."
It's so hard to make all encompassing statements that use words like "all" and have them hold true, but I do think that the short term future of SEO does make this true. However, the current landscape doesn't make this true since all basic SEO concerns are not addressed out of the box. For instance, it's still mind boggling to me that popular CMS and forum software (ex. Drupal and phpBB) require quite a bit of under the hood work to address basic SEO concerns such as friendly URLs, duplicate content, canonical domains, META data, etc. Therefore, while a highly successful linking strategy may yield better results than technical changes to your content platform, the SEO professional still needs to evaluate a client's platform before moving forward with link building strategies.
I do think that the short term will hold drastic improvements to software platforms off the shelf and level the playing field so that SEO does in fact become all about passing authority from one page to another.
The only problem I see is that the "links or bust" landscape won't exist for very long even when it does arrive. With personalized search, custom search engines, social driven engines such as Mahalo, user based answer services, better user tracking, geotracking, etc. I think you will see a shift from making sure you rank highly for search terms on a broad scale to making sure you accurately tag and code your content so that it reaches a higher conversion rate population. Right now SEO and search engine technology is more like throwing a bunch of darts against the wall (search results) and seeing which one sticks (which results the user clicks on) without much targeting when it comes to the user's intent, location, expertise level, etc.
Great post Rand - I really appreciate your posts when you breakdown SEO information on a point by point level making seemingly nebulous topics very specific and easy to understand.
I should like to compliment Rand on a post well done.
To parse the comments of another and point out potential flaws, contrary views, and points of agreement (something I have done to randfish, himself) is what transforms a statement into a conversation.
I truly appreciate, while not wholly agreeing with either, each gentleman's article and the resulting commentary.
In fact, this one is so well done I really have to ask if MysteryGuest ghost-wrote it? Kidding. Honest.
That's remarkable insight... MG did not write this, but she did edit it, and helped me to tone down some of my criticism and flesh out some ofthe constructive elements. I think it's hilarious that even in editing mode, her style comes through :)
I am a fan of both Micheal and Rand. I have discussed search with both of them, they both make very astute points within their expertise.
They have different approaches to the problems that are set forth by search. I agree strongly with the end of Rand's disclaimer:
"As readers and as search marketers, you'll have to decide which pieces of advice and information serve your campaigns best - don't just take our word for everything."
I think the most important thing to look at is this:
Micheal:
Blackhat spammers burn out the usefulness of about 10% of all SEO tips, tricks, and techniques that are openly or semi-openly shared on blogs and forums in about 12 months. White hat SEOs, newbies, and SEO gurus burn out the other 90% in 6 months or less.
Rand:
If he's right, it would mean that linkbaiting, a 3-year old tactic (at least), would have fallen out of fashion years ago. Putting important keywords in title tags is an age-old SEO tactic, and yet I still see great value there, as well. He must mean something else, but I just don't know what it is.
Search optimization, white hat or otherwise, is essentially taking advantage of the system. We as an industry are 100% counter productive to the goal of the search engines. Whether we are following the rules or not we are gaming the system and necessarily changing that system to compensate.
Whether you believe that you are raising up the most appropriate content the ultimate goal of a search engine is to put up what pleases the masses, not what pleases us as marketers.
The best that we can ever hope for is to better serve the masses than the search engines.
Isn't the problem here the translation of search queries into results? The search engines are attempting to please the queries not the masses.
They can never please the masses because if I type in 'shoe' into a search engine I might be looking for something completely different to another user who types in the same query. They don't, yet, have a chip in my head analysing what I'm thinking about when I type a query.
Or, thinking about it, did you mean the majority of the masses?
Tom
They don't have a chip but they do have a lot of testing. Consequently they know that you don't want fruit when you search "apple" and you don't want computers when you search "apples" -- statistcally.
I 100% disagree with this, Carlos:
"We as an industry are 100% counter productive to the goal of the search engines. Whether we are following the rules or not we are gaming the system and necessarily changing that system to compensate."
Search engines survive because they can retrieve good stuff for their searchers. Our job, collectively is to make that good stuff and make it accessible and popular. The search engines have only to weed out the good from the bad. They count on us to know what searchers need or fill the unfilled gaps (and make a better version of what existed before).
The adversarial mindset in Information Retrieval and SEO needs to stop - we're usually on the same team - making searchers happy.
Okay, you got me, I hyperbolized a bit in my first comment.
But i doubt that you disagree with the statement : the difference between white hat and black hat is most often degree of use.
If I use a word 3 time every 100 words I am a white hat, if I use a word 11 times every 100 words I am a spammer.
Jill Whalen is one of the biggest proponets of NOT using every white hat tool on every page. Even doing everything in moderation can lead to too much total and set off red flags.
Certainly most people here are acting in good faith, trying to fill the gaps, but I am sure we have all had to step back a change because it did not create a net positive.
"The adversarial mindset in Information Retrieval and SEO needs to stop - we're usually on the same team - making searchers happy."
The adversarial mindset will go on: Google wants to make searchers happy, while 90% of SEOs want to make their clients happy.
If a client hires me to outrank another client and both are template websites running on the same database, for example, my job isn't to make searchers happy - they're already happy no matter which site they land on. In some cases, a client may be outranked by a superior site and still refuse to improve his site because he thinks its cheaper and quicker to employ "SEO wizardry" than build value into his site.
The current mentality in the SEO industry is "who gives a crap about searchers? They're Google's problem." It's all about keeping clients happy - and if that means worsening search results, so be it.
I agree it shouldn't be the way, but right now, that's how things roll. As they say, money is the root of all evil.
randfish: "Search engines survive because they can retrieve good stuff for their searchers. Our job, collectively is to make that good stuff and make it accessible and popular."
Not so.
SEs survive by returning reasonable results - but not extraordinary results - such that clicking an accompanying ad becomes a viable search alternative and revenue stream.
An SEOs job is to optimise each page such that it is returned as well ranked as possible for pre-determined search queries, given assets available.
Quality of content is not necessarily paramount in either case.
That implies that the SEO's job is limited to getting the searcher to see the client's page on a SERP. It wouldn't matter whether they clicked through, how long they stayed on the site, how many pages they looked at, whether they converted, or whether they ever returned to the site.
I recognize that there are some people in the business who consider that to be the extent of our jobs, but I disagree.
Gladstein: "That implies that the SEO's job is limited to getting the searcher to see the client's page on a SERP...I recognize that there are some people in the business who consider that to be the extent of our jobs, but I disagree."
Some people, myself included, differentiate between optimising for SE position and converting the resulting traffic.
Domain development is a holistic endeavour but for convenience various considerations can be isolated and examined as sole entities. If you prefer to be more inclusive, that is personal preference.
My concern with expanding SEO is that it then overlaps with SMO, other link building, and direct traffic. My preference is to treat traffic flow and conversion as complimentary but also separate to traffic origin.
Of course if all you target is Google life is simplier.
"SEs survive by returning reasonable results - but not extraordinary results"
That's also untrue. Google survives by providing INFORMATIONAL results on the organic side and pushing COMMERCIAL results to PPC side of things. Searchers are then trained to click on AdWords when their looking to buy. That not only improves conversions and adds value to searchers looking to buy but also entices more advertisers to buy ads. It's a win/win/win situation.
PPC and organic results combined, Google hopes to provide the complete picture and "extraordinary results" - which is required to maintain Google's marketshare over Yahoo and MSN.
Contrary opinion is one of the most powerful things - if you are correct.
There is so much useful information and debate in this article, that it's hard to know where to start to do justice in lending some value added commentary.
At the outset, I give this a thumbs up because of Rand's creation of the word AntiFesto. Just reading the word made me start drooling and longing for Italian peppers and assorted meats.
Rand's counter arguments truly made this discussion a veritable AntiFesto salad - complete with a few peppers and a lot of meat.
Secondly, I would give another thumbs up if I could for using the plural of focus (foci). I can't ever recall seeing the word used.
The one thing that stuck out especially for me is this imperative:
"On-page SEO is NOT a competitive advantage - content that's focused on link acquisition and a business strategy that recognizes the power of getting attention from online peers and networks IS a competitive advantage."
This is not merely a chicken and egg statement. Non-paid link acquisition requires good content, and profitable campaigns rely on targeted traffic substantial to drive enough conversions to realize an ROI.
Links and great content, therefore, can be viewed as having a symbiotic relationship. They need each other to succeed, or dare I say, be "optimal".
Well, it's no secret that Michael and I don't agree on a few things in SEO. Using 'nofollow' to sculpt a site's link juice is one of a few I have ran into with him. I think it works well . . . he disagrees.
His manifesto just adds more to the list.
I do think that Rand undervalued on-page SEO. Done properly, it can provide a significant advantage. But I do whole heartedly agree that links are where it is at . . . links are the ballots that Google is using to cast votes today. Perhaps in the future it will be based on something more advanced.
Good article and I am definitely more under Rand's school of thought (though I am sure Michael is loving the buzz Rand just created for him).
Brent D. Payne
"Anyone can optimize a page or create relevant content, but only an SEO knows that it's not just about the right keywords and good semantic markup, it's about the links that content can earn."
While I agree with a HELL of a lot that you say, but this is where we differ.
unless.. you mean the links from Google, MSN and Yahoo! to the website.
if that's what you meant i agree.. and if that is what you meant.. that is VERY prophetic.. but i don't think it is.. I've always tried to stay away from linking as an SEO strategy.. but then again I just helped a client buy 8 category sponsorships in Yahoo!
and that's a linking strategy too.
but this kind of crap..
Dear Sir/Madam,My name is David, and I am contacting you on behalf of our client www.abisinc.com.I have visited your site and see that your site is sufficiently related to abisinc to merit a link request and wondered if you would consider it. We are trying to develop a relevant resource for our visitors and feel that your site meets that criteria.Should you consider it our reciprocal link information is as follows:Title: Nortel BCM Description: ABIS INC provides excellent Nortel BCM equipment, Nortel Network Phone Equipment and Nortel IP Telephone for all small or large businesses.URL: https://www.abisinc.com/nortel-bcm.htmPlease send me your Link information so that we could also link you back here: https://www.abisinc.com/resources.htm.Thank you very much for your time.RegardsDavidhttps://www.abisinc.comP.S. Although I hate unsolicited email as much as the next person, I felt a link exchange between our sites would be mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, please let me know if you are not interested in a link exchange with our site and I will personally remove you from any mailing lists. Thanks again.
makes me head over to Google webmaster tools and fill out forms..
am I a hypocrite?
"I can't enumerate the times I've seen a site built the way the CEO or the CTO thought it should be built, only to find that no one else on the planet shared their opinion."
ok.. this is priceless.. and happens ALL the time
CEO.. wants "xxx xxxxxxxxx" as a keyword, so i get them first in google for it...
then they (mktg dir., president, project manager, etc.), freak out and say, why does the link to our page say "xxx xxxxxxxxx" on our listing in google..... (first words of title tag), we aren't just an "xxx xxxxxxxxx" company anymore but our CEO still thinks we are.
CEO did "think" to sign the yearly renewal check tho. =)
(keyword removed to protect my ass from NDA)
Good post Rand, exercising the old linkbait controversy hook I see :)
Michael's comment about PageRank not being anything to do with relevance is interesting, and the more I think about it the more it makes sense - PageRank alone is a voting system in essence and a vote from a completely non-relevant website is still a vote. However, PageRank is used with other factors in the algo to determine relevance... Google says:
I love discussion and debate like this, and it would be great if Michael could write a post on the main blog to keep up his side - not only for the sake of professional debate, but also as some hot linkbait.
Lindop
Thanks for explaining the 'why not' of meta keywords tags. I never understood before, but I still imagine that obfuscating your keyword research is not so important on smaller scale projects.