Slashdot Mirror
SXSW: Google's Amit Singhal Talks SEO "Experts," Mobile, Search
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google senior vice president Amit Singhal, one of the executives heading up the company's search-engine operations, sat down with Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple and author, at one of this year's SXSW keynotes in Austin, TX. 'Our dream is for search to become the "Star Trek" computer, and that's what we're building today,' Singhal said. But he seemed reluctant to share much about his company on a more tactical level, parrying Kawasaki's queries about everything from the amount of code in Google's search platform to recent cyber-attacks on the company's systems. But the two did have an interesting back-and-forth about SEO. 'We at Google have time and time again said—and seen it happen—that if you build high-quality content that adds value, and your readers and your users seek you out, then you don't need to worry about anything else,' Singhal said. 'If people want that content, your site will automatically work you could make a bunch of SEO mistakes and it wouldn't hurt.' When Kawasaki followed up by asking, 'Is SEO bull****?' Singhal replied: 'That would be like saying marketing is bull****.' That drew a laugh from the audience—and maybe some gritted teeth from people who position themselves as SEO experts. The two talked about much more with regard to Google's future plans."
SEO - Search Engine Optimization.
#DeleteChrome
You missed the one in the headline: South By South West
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Yes, but they're both successful bullshit that help the most diuretic shitters rise to the top of the giant manure heap that is the modern economic system.
The 10% of "SEO" that is "fixing your website" is fine - good even. Make your URL's friendly, make your site accessible (to both handicapped humans and robots), follow standards, validate your code, organize your pages, etc.
To the degree that any of the other 90% works, that's a bug Google should be (and usually is) actively fixing in their search ranking algorithms. In the meantime, thank goodness for Akismet for keeping the leeches away.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
OK, just at a basic level, but it's still all good advice.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34397
I can understand that there will be people who do SEO, just as their are people who do spamming, send junk mail, and phone scams aimed at vulnerable old people.
What I don't understand is how these people function within broader society? Do they lie about what they do? Do they hang out mostly with others of their kind? Are real people too cowardly to shun and loath them?
In my opinion, SEO is just one form of advertising, just like buying an ad in a phone book. I have done "SEO" professionally many times, but in my mind assume my employer wants more than just search engine optimization. It really comes down to being an online advertising expert, which is a real job. For example, determining the ROI (return on investment) on advertisements has real value for any business.
The problem is that the employers do not understand what SEO really means. If you are spending money on SEO, maybe you should spend money on advertisements as well and track everything to see what pays off. Run a small marketing experiment, find ads that make you money and then focus all your money into those ads.
In reality, SEO is usually just a one time short job of renaming directories,images & files, adding alt tags, and generally cleaning up HTML code to follow standards. Some companies charge monthly fees to post blog comments and other content regularly, which may actually help your site gain rank, but rarely is worth the monthly fee.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The summary should mention that Guy Kawasaki now works for Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/guy-kawasaki-joins-google-as-an-advisor-2013-2
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
It's the scummier things that some SEOs might do which make them the enemy of search engines - padding sites with meta tags, astroturfing, incestuously linking to the site from shill sites, hiring people to do automated +1 ranking, spamming forums & blogs with links, click jacking and any other scummy practice they can come up with. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these tactics actually count against a site's relevance if they are discovered.