This sums up everything that is wrong with folks who limit themselves to a narrow focus on SEO hat tricks: "It’s easy to preach great content when you have a great subject. But no one gives a shit about non-clog toilets or pulse oximeters or single phase diode bridge rectifiers."
The missing ingredient that the author can't figure out is CREATIVITY. If you're an advertising creative you can make non-clog toilets sexy to their intended audience (who will be building contractors, architects, etc.). This is the sort of 101 problem that any average PR or advertising person tackles in a day -- how to make the product a hero.
The problem with many SEO folks is that they're so obsessed with gaming algorithms that they forget that it's really all about creating content that your audience cares about. Honestly if you can't make insurance or incontinence products sexy you're in the wrong game. Folks from David Ogilvy to copyblogger have spent years documenting how to make the mundane interesting. If you can't so it yourself, then hire someone who can...
PS Radio Shack made a solid business for years by cramming a geektastic catalog with products like a diode bridge! The key is knowing your audience and knowing how to engage them.
Excellent rebuttal. Real SEO is an act of marketing. You make a website that is genuinely useful and interesting to its intended audience, and then you make it as search-engine-friendly as possible, and cultivate links. None of that is a joke.
There's a big difference between what you're critiquing (marketing messaging) and what blackhats are focused on manipulating (links).
Your diagnosis, "if you can't make insurance or incontinence products sexy you're in the wrong game," would be correct if Google had a function called getSexiness(URI uri, TargetAudience audience, String strKeyword). But they don't. Google uses citations/links instead.
I think what Kris is saying is that it's harder to drive "earned" LINKS for insurance or incontinence products than it is to astroturf your way there with blackhat techniques.
You seem to be in violent agreement with the author; his objection is that content creation is better handled by writers than SEO-experts.
That said, if I didn't think I could excite the linkerati with my single phase diode bridge rectifiers, I'd much rather my content was handled by someone focused on long tail search terms appealing to those potentially interested in purchasing single phase diode bridge rectifiers than a Pulitzer-prize winning writer.
I feel that your view may be as simplistic as the one you're criticizing.
I'm not an SEO, but my understanding of this field from people who actually work in it is that things are not so black and white. The author went a little over the top, but I generally agree with his sentiment that not everything is worth the effort to make it interesting. It really does depend of the results you want and what you have in your wallet.
If you're a little fridge repair-n-resell shop, without the marketing resources and budget required to turn your really bland business into an eye-magnet, I think it would be reasonable to dabble in the cheaper gray areas, provided an acknowledgement of the risks and rewards.
If anyone who read this was like me and generally unfamiliar with how SEO people self select into hat color I did a bit of googling. It would seem that some techniques considered "grey" would be paid link building, cloaking - the act of showing the crawlers one thing and visitors another, and purposely duplicating your competition's content so that all locations of it rank worse due to unoriginal content filters. I'm sure that's no where close to a complete list, but it gave me a sense of where he's coming from. I would have thought that stuff would have been "black", but apparently that's just reserved for SQLi's, comment spam and what not.
some of the stuff you listed there is VERY grey. The medium to lighter versions are more like self created links. Example registering at 50-60 different web 2.0 sites and link dropping. Doing mass article submissions for the purpose of links. Creating mini-nets (or link wheels if your brave lol).
Basically its like this. The big G says all links should be naturally attracted and editorial in nature. So if you are pounding the ground creating links yourself technically thats "grey".
Wow I cant believe this little post made it all the way to HN. TBH I do believe in most of what I said but the post was intentionally over the top. It was a bit of rantbait. The irony which sadly only one commenter seemed to figure out was that it was a post on how whitehat doesnt work which demonstrated it does. That post got tons of links in a very short time.
That being said my real point was don't limit yourself or the client because you believe google guidelines somehow translate to ethics. Instead do an honest evaluation of the clients expectations, budget, and risk tolerance.
Provide service based on that information. Google is in it for google. SEOs should be in it for the client. Even if that sometimes means bending googles rules.
I think the post makes an excellent point, if you're willing to take the time to understand what the author is saying, rather than bristling at his rant. Google makes ITS rules, but they're made for their benefit, not that of our clients. It's up to SEOs to guide their clients through the process of an educated risk/reward assessment, and implement a campaign according to their wishes. If the client wants me to do something I'm not comfortable with, I walk away. But if I'm going to stick around and take their money, they deserve my best effort, regardless of what the search engines might say.
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[ 15.0 ms ] story [ 406 ms ] threadThe missing ingredient that the author can't figure out is CREATIVITY. If you're an advertising creative you can make non-clog toilets sexy to their intended audience (who will be building contractors, architects, etc.). This is the sort of 101 problem that any average PR or advertising person tackles in a day -- how to make the product a hero.
The problem with many SEO folks is that they're so obsessed with gaming algorithms that they forget that it's really all about creating content that your audience cares about. Honestly if you can't make insurance or incontinence products sexy you're in the wrong game. Folks from David Ogilvy to copyblogger have spent years documenting how to make the mundane interesting. If you can't so it yourself, then hire someone who can...
PS Radio Shack made a solid business for years by cramming a geektastic catalog with products like a diode bridge! The key is knowing your audience and knowing how to engage them.
Your diagnosis, "if you can't make insurance or incontinence products sexy you're in the wrong game," would be correct if Google had a function called getSexiness(URI uri, TargetAudience audience, String strKeyword). But they don't. Google uses citations/links instead.
I think what Kris is saying is that it's harder to drive "earned" LINKS for insurance or incontinence products than it is to astroturf your way there with blackhat techniques.
That said, if I didn't think I could excite the linkerati with my single phase diode bridge rectifiers, I'd much rather my content was handled by someone focused on long tail search terms appealing to those potentially interested in purchasing single phase diode bridge rectifiers than a Pulitzer-prize winning writer.
I'm not an SEO, but my understanding of this field from people who actually work in it is that things are not so black and white. The author went a little over the top, but I generally agree with his sentiment that not everything is worth the effort to make it interesting. It really does depend of the results you want and what you have in your wallet.
If you're a little fridge repair-n-resell shop, without the marketing resources and budget required to turn your really bland business into an eye-magnet, I think it would be reasonable to dabble in the cheaper gray areas, provided an acknowledgement of the risks and rewards.
I've been a victim of this. I would have classified it as "black" also.
Basically its like this. The big G says all links should be naturally attracted and editorial in nature. So if you are pounding the ground creating links yourself technically thats "grey".
That being said my real point was don't limit yourself or the client because you believe google guidelines somehow translate to ethics. Instead do an honest evaluation of the clients expectations, budget, and risk tolerance.
Provide service based on that information. Google is in it for google. SEOs should be in it for the client. Even if that sometimes means bending googles rules.