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Climbing up the Search Ladder
j_heisenberg writes "Wired carries a story on SEOs or search engine optimizers. Among some bold claims: traffic is up 6 times and sales double, once you hit the first page of results on major engines. The catch: eventually everyone will use SEOs, and there is only one first page."
The catch: eventually everyone will use SEOs, and there is only one first page
You mean like the Pyramid Scheme?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Why should I truest oneupweb when they don't have the #1 position for the keywords 'search engine optimization'? :-)
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
The problem now is that the internet is looking more like a catalog. Sometimes I want to learn about something beyond what those selling things want to tell me. I'd like to see google be google and froogle be froogle and that be that.
This was tried during the dot com boom. It just dosen't work. Isn't this what Google was supposed to stop?
Just by using XHTML compliant code and writing in our blog my fiancee and I are the #1 result in Google, Yahoo, and the new MSN search for a wide variety of topics. This includes areas we only talk about in one post or something. Perhaps the $$ and time that people spend on search engine optimization sites/links/etc would be better spent writing proper XHTML?
Our site is http://www.caseyandanna.com [No link, please don't slashdot!]
A few of the common search terms that we see involve: Cinara Aphids, Shrek2 pictures/etc (my typo), Aramark norovirus
Anyway, that's our experience.
I run a music site (Yeah, i know, shameless link...) that is constantly being beaten out by 3 domains. I did a whois on the owners and they're all the same guy in india.
I heard that this is why Google signed up for domain selling. They're getting their hands on the whois information to cross reference.
That would get rid of a lot of falce pagerank building...
Am I the only one who considers SEO unethical, almost to the sense of Nvidia or ATI making drivers that would cheat on benchmark programs? If your page is what someone wants, good, if it isn't, you can pay Google and they'll advirtise it on the side of the page along with all the other junk.
Why is it stupid? Well lets look at it:
1. What keeps people on your site? Optimization? Or quality content? What got/keeps people at slashdot? Content or optimization?
2. Search engines catch on, and adjust so nobody super inflates.
3. It's not a business strategy! You ultimately need to have something more.
4. SPAM. How do you think search engine optimization promises super high rankings? They use their bots to spam blogs, forums, guest books, etc. To inflate google based on page rank. Effective? Yea, even with the new rel="nofollow", but it's not good. And could get you blackisted as a spammer as many domains are finding.
Really? Doesn't that assume that you have at least 15% of margin to play with? A lot of business would kill for that much.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
...how much does business increase or decrease when the moderators post an ad^H^Harticle on slashdot?
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Results 1 - 10 of about 48,400 for european natural wigs. (0.30 seconds)
My friend was once marketed by a company who was trying to sell car security systems. What they wanted to sell him was a website where he could market these systems himself. They claimed that all he had to do was purchase a premade website, for $12,000. After selling 15 systems, it would pay for itself. If the website didn't pay for itself, he would get his money back.
Anyway, as soon as he purchased, he noticed that his page was showing up on page 50+ on google. So, he wanted to fix this. He payed big bucks to a Search Engine Optomization company. In return, within a few months the company had him moved up to the 2nd page.
Did it work, yes! Was it worth it, no. Everything they had him do, I suggested to him (I found lists of techniques online). By the way, he got his $12,000 back (sounded like a scam to me, but I guess not).
I'd like to see google be google and froogle be froogle and that be that.
There are some keywords you can tell Google to exclude if you don't want web stores. Try adding -price or -shipping or -checkout to your query.
A study conducted by a CEO of a SEO company shows that using a SEO company can create a thriving online business, and not using one can mean banckrupty.
In other news: Mafia concludes that not paying them protection money can be hazardous to your health ! Stay tuned for more headlines from the cutting edge of research !
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Since the dawn of the web, workarounds and cheat have continually been found to "optimize" search results. The sad result of every web site's quest to appear at the top of search results is that it has prevented search engines from providing "objectively relavent" results.
While Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft continue to develop "search relevance technologies", someone out there needs to develop and bring to market a cognitive search engine that can actually understand the content of a page the way a human does and connect it with the requested search terms. Something similar to the Cyc project that Doug Lenat has been working on since the 80's (and its subsequent OpenCyc F/OSS derivative, only tied into search engines. And, no, I am not talking about Ask Jeeves or other silliness like that. ; )
Otherwise, "relevance" is just going to become a euphamism for "the people with the most money to 'optimize' their results"
I though that Google's algoritms were designed to prevent this type of crap. I know Google isn't the only search engine, but I believe it is the most used (isn't it?). Thus, these SEOs ought to have limited effect of ranking, should they not.
That part of the TFA about Eastwood seems a little weak to me. They said they refurbished their website and then began to get more sales. They attribute tht to search engines. Could it not also be because the new design was more conducive to customers needs and thereby increasing sales?
no. because the system that you are optimizing for will continue to change as the optimizers continue to sabotage the quality of the ranking algorithms.
let's face it: people use google because the front page is full of links they find useful and relevant. as optimization services get better, and more and more companies looking to hock their wares pay to get on the front page, google will lose it's edge. the result will be an improved or different ranking algorithm and... the optimization cycle begins again.
hell, it's happening right now. google has announced that they will no longer be counting links with rel=nofollow in anchor tags when calculating pange rankings.
2 1337 4 u!
"Slashdot carries a story on First Posts posting. Among some bold claims: Moderation is up 1000000 times and karma plumets, once you hit the submit button. The catch: eventually everyone will try to do a FP, and there is only one first post."
My sig can beat up your sig
Maybe Google could reduce the page rankings of pages with bad/incorrect/non-standard HTML?
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
The point of a search engine is not for the comopanies to be found to sell things to people... the point is for people to be able to find the information they are LOOKING for, thus the most visited, or however x search engine runs things. This DESTROYS that method, so whereas when you now look for "2005 Corvette" Chevy's website comes up, in a few months, it'll be Yo Mama humping a camel, because the pr0n site hosting that crap will be able to pay the most....
Christ I'm not crying cause my site won't be found, I'm complain cuz I won't be able to find the site I need.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
In most trades, when someone comments on SEO, it's almost always a quote from one of the founders of SearchEngineWatch, a subscription only forum and web site focused on "Search Engine Marketing." Reasearching the site, it really is amazing how many people and companies are involved in "optimization." This field is getting huge, and as the article says, just about every major business is doing it. FYI, most of the strategies involved aren't fraud (like farm linking) but rather how certain keywords and meta tags result in different search engine rankings.
Where I work right now, they spend about $120,000 a week on advertising on google, yahoo, cnet, basically all the big search engines. Bring in about $500,000 in internet sales. Service is not that great, deals are the same you get anywhere else, but because we're at the top on search engines, we make money. Advertising is funny. Just like my post.
It makes you good at getting a higher score on the SATs, not actually improving your abilities.
Similarly, if your web site is aimed at getting a better page ranking, you'll get more attention even though you're not actually better.
It's a way to defeat - or at least get a leg up in the system. Unfortunately it means that everyone will have to do it in order to keep up, and eventually search engines will yeild the results of a popularity contest, not which web pages are most relevant. Especially when they're trying to sell something.
Come to think of it, this sounds just like politics as well...
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
You think so? The truth of it is this: Most websites are not well thought out. Many websites don't even include important keywords anywhere in their page title, heading tags, or even the page content itself!
It's so easy to blow past 90% of your competition on most keywords, it's silly. Only a small fraction of the hottest search buzz keywords are difficult to optimize for, and even in areas with heavy competition, there is a long tail that's fairly easy to grab.
You want to optimize your site, here's the whitehat way, and it's a piece of cake:
You don't have to be a blackhat or break the bank to get results.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Google's official statement on search engine optimization gives a number of reasons to be wary of search engine optimizers. While not condemning them outright, they have almost nothing positive to say.
I would think anyone paying money to "guarantee a higher rank on Google" would want to first see what Google itself says about the subject.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I'm considering Google as a broken search engine.
SandBox, overating links - link farm impact, hilltop oligarchy, big sites oligarchy, 2x32 double index as not able to go on 64Bit therefore sites dumped in secondary index, 301 redirects not working, 302 page hijacking...
There are a lot of faults they have to be blamed for doing nothing to solve it out.
But the sandbox massacre is a real crime they are responsible for to the Web community:
They dump about a year now 90 % of the new opened domains into a secondary index (mainly its assumed tha G$$gle is be not able to go over the 32 Bit barrier for siteids as all money is pumped in opening new shops and not in the core bussines SE) and thus never pop up in top SERPs. But as well a lot of this sites would in Googles normal algo if not Google would filter them out.
They block 1 year of 10 Internet year - what a crime!
Try this to see unfiltered results:
keyword keyword -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf
Or see all the great new domains filtered out for your keywords here.
They want the 8-year-old grandmother
Ah, the 8 year old grandmother. She must have been busy!