YMMV. There's plenty of someone posting something cool they did, or a startup who just got TC'ed and is giddy with excitement to show the world. As long as it's "on topic" or whatever, it doesn't seem wrong. Of course then there's the matter of "what's on topic for HN?" -- which I will not comment on because everyone seems to have a different opinion.
In this case I personally think it's fine -- Franz is just linking to a piece written by him, which to me is like linking your own blog post. We see that fairly frequently I'd say...and SEO is of relevance to most people here (I would think). A shameless self-promo piece might find a more negative reception here.
If it's on topic, adds value, and isn't simply spam, then often yes, it's OK. Many readers, perhaps most readers, don't notice whether something is self-linked.
But if someone consistently self-links, and the lunk-to items are of marginal, or zero, value, then people start to notice and the person in question loses face, karma, and possibly good-will.
If it's on topic, adds value, and isn't simply spam, then often yes, it's OK. …
are of marginal, or zero, value, then people start to notice and the person in question loses face, karma, and possibly good-will.
This is, I assume the rule of thumb with anything on HN.
"Is it OK to type a comment?" "If it adds value, yes" etc.
Exactly, which is why "Me Too!" comments often get hammered. They add no value, information or insight.
The question that's becoming more relevant is "Value to whom?" With the increase in participants, the HN focus is diluting and widening. It seems to some that the topics on the front page are no longer as niche as they once were. It's claimed that they used to be more tightly focussed on topics of interest to hackers more than non-hackers, and that now the emphasis on being targetted at hackers is dying.
But still, "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." I still upvote strongly technical, hackerish articles, or articles that I think wouldn't appeal to a general audience, if they "add value."
> A website which does not get at least 70% traffic via organic search seriously under-performs (and for good search engine optimized sites the truth is more in the 90% plus area).
I really don't agree with this. If you depend on organic search to bring you users then:
a) you're at the will of the search engine's algorithm which can change at any time (like Google just did)
b) it means your users aren't the loyal type, and they will easily forget you
Take Reddit for example; If tommorow Google removes them from their index, I doubt much will change in terms of visitors since they have loyal users who know them by name.
I don't think that's a "pure" statistic. Perhaps StackOverflow users rely on Google returning StackOverflow answers? I know I do; for example, I often append stackoverflow to my programming queries because I know Google will give me StackOverflow answers. Although the referral is Google, I am forcibly limiting results to include only StackOverflow.
yeh that comment bothered me as well, different site have different targets.
Some commercial sites are aspirational, they want their their customers to know they exist out side of some impersonal google search, some places are more your home on the internet that google is, some want to be found through your friends.
I would be surprised if apple, facebook, zynga are in that 90% category and its very hard to say they are "under performing"
Its self important generalisations like that that give SEO as an industry a bad name.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 31.1 ms ] threadI think every startup, webmaster, marketer, SEO and wannabe SEO should at least read this.
In this case I personally think it's fine -- Franz is just linking to a piece written by him, which to me is like linking your own blog post. We see that fairly frequently I'd say...and SEO is of relevance to most people here (I would think). A shameless self-promo piece might find a more negative reception here.
If it's on topic, adds value, and isn't simply spam, then often yes, it's OK. Many readers, perhaps most readers, don't notice whether something is self-linked.
But if someone consistently self-links, and the lunk-to items are of marginal, or zero, value, then people start to notice and the person in question loses face, karma, and possibly good-will.
So, it depends.
This is, I assume the rule of thumb with anything on HN.
"Is it OK to type a comment?" "If it adds value, yes" etc.
The question that's becoming more relevant is "Value to whom?" With the increase in participants, the HN focus is diluting and widening. It seems to some that the topics on the front page are no longer as niche as they once were. It's claimed that they used to be more tightly focussed on topics of interest to hackers more than non-hackers, and that now the emphasis on being targetted at hackers is dying.
But still, "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." I still upvote strongly technical, hackerish articles, or articles that I think wouldn't appeal to a general audience, if they "add value."
I really don't agree with this. If you depend on organic search to bring you users then:
a) you're at the will of the search engine's algorithm which can change at any time (like Google just did)
b) it means your users aren't the loyal type, and they will easily forget you
Take Reddit for example; If tommorow Google removes them from their index, I doubt much will change in terms of visitors since they have loyal users who know them by name.
I don't think that's a "pure" statistic. Perhaps StackOverflow users rely on Google returning StackOverflow answers? I know I do; for example, I often append stackoverflow to my programming queries because I know Google will give me StackOverflow answers. Although the referral is Google, I am forcibly limiting results to include only StackOverflow.
Some commercial sites are aspirational, they want their their customers to know they exist out side of some impersonal google search, some places are more your home on the internet that google is, some want to be found through your friends.
I would be surprised if apple, facebook, zynga are in that 90% category and its very hard to say they are "under performing"
Its self important generalisations like that that give SEO as an industry a bad name.