OMG. RAND IS ATTACKED! (in a blog post)
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It does not bother me to see disagreement on how to SEO a page or a website. That gives the person with the best BS filter an advantage over everyone else. It also makes the person who stops, thinks, and researches an additional advantage over everyone else.
I believe that most SEO advice posted on the web is bad advice, including a lot of the advice that I give. Again, it comes back to giving the person with the best BS filter a huge advantage.
So, when I read this article my BS meter goes off here....
While I can understand that preaching “build good content, focus on growing your brand’ sounds great and it’s what people want to hear, for a HUGE percentage of search phrases, this is just no longer relevant.... I just can’t take anyone seriously who mentions these things anymore in 2013,
.... and the rest of the article doesn't make much sense to me. But, since I think that about 95% of SEO is based upon good great content, it doesn't surprise me that I don't "get" the rest of the article.
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The bulk of his argument could be summed up as "Fresh content usually wins". It has some merit. But the rest of the article could be taken as saying "Game what you can now and move on."
SEO is a subset of marketing. It always has been and always will be. SEO is where you market to the search engines.A major part of Google's problem is we don't have any idea what constitutes what they like anymore. So his guess about it all being about freshness sounds good until you find searches where that's not true. But you CAN produce quality content and still lose the SEO game. But you can lose the SEO game and still win the war.
The danger for this guy is that he seems to advocate link spam. He heavily caveats it but offers no real reasons not to engage in it. I have no doubt link spam still works. The question you have to ask yourself is "Do I want to build something on top of that which Google is trying to actively destroy?" If you can live with being a flash in the pan, go for it. Make your money and then watch as Google throws it in the garbage. And hope that the next time around they're just as gullible.
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I see no attack here. This article was mostly mush imo. I agree with EGOL.
Building your brand is all that SEO should be if you consider that SEO is modern day marketing and your brand should be your number one focus. I looked at this guy's picture and that pretty much summed it up for me.
I also think he's completely missed the point of what Rand is saying. The idea is building a brand first to strengthen your business, gain a following, increase conversion and retention and thus gain organic SERP improvements.
Anyway
Silliness
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Jesse I think personal appearance is totally irrelevant with someone's skills in an area and I do not think that can be much of an argument (or appropriate).
In regards now to what the article says as opposed to the MoZ one I can see both points. Rand goes by the book (his tweet reply confirms this) and i agree with 99,9% of everything he mentions, it is definitely what SEOs should be doing these days. But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank. I mean NONE - Keyword stuffing, cloacking, 10,000 site wide links pointin in 1 page for 1 anchor text, sites with a non-content default wordpress theme ranking on page one due EMD, domain 301 redirects with affiliate directories to other domains for link juice passing etc etc and all this in 2013. And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday.
I think that what the blogger tried to say was that the abovementioned techniques unfortunately bring results too and some times faster or easier with what Google dictate us to do. Either we like it or not black hat SEO works in many cases, especially if you are working on low competitive/profitable keywords.
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Ha! Hey I'm sorry if I offended you by linking his picture. It was meant mostly as a joke. The guy comes off as a sensationalist trying to draw attention. To me his picture screams that same thought. Perhaps it was off-base.
He claims he's not using Rand's last name in an effort to not rank for that keyword yet he uses his first name and SEOmoz enough times to rank for either. (How many other Rands do you know?)
This whole "SEO for the short-haul" technique baloney is just that: baloney. It only works some of the time and never builds business to last. Go down the list and show me of those "million cases" how many of them are established businesses that will be successful for years to come.
Your post, Yiannis, and this guy's blog post both had the same "I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS OF EXAMPLES" yet none of them are showing me examples of successful businesses ranking and proving they have a place in the market for the long-haul. Not a single example of that provided by this blog.
YouTube video rankings, article rankings.. okay. I get the point. The timing and freshness of that content won out. But it'll go away as quick as it came and what will be left?
I know that blackhat SEO is working in many examples. It works in the industry I'm doing in-house for and it drives me bananas. But I also know that the companies it is working for are not succeeding based on this. Is this because they are not focused on brand-development and a modern marketing strategy? Maybe. That would certainly be part of it if you asked me.
Google is going to screw up and fail at what they set out to do. We know that to be true. But we also know what they are trying to do. What they are trying to do is get rid of these blackhat SEOs and dissemble their tactics from the ground up. They will eventually succeed entirely. They're Google, after all.
I don't know about you but I want to build a company that can withstand the test of time and the power of Google.
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AWCthreads
I hate these kinds of discussions ... because I just have to respond. Its as if I have the angel on one side and the devil on the other - move on dude, no, no, say something (you know you have a perfect opinion)... etc.
But, what I find interesting about the post of VC is that it is only meant for one thing: to sell him and his stuff. The "I only did this because my 0 page rank two page sites were outranking my ..." etc.
When he talks about the 6 clients he has with 50 websites, and he says to people like me: "I’m a huge fan, but what Rand recently advocated on his blog is just…totally misguided the total opposite to what is really working right now." and
"While I can understand that preaching “build good content, focus on growing your brand’ sounds great and it’s what people want to hear, for a HUGE percentage of search phrases, this is just no longer relevant. I just can’t take anyone seriously who mentions these things anymore in 2013"
Really? You can't? What do you take seriously? I have copywriters on staff so you can guess where I fall in the content debate (I did not realize there was one). At the end of the day, any site, any page is subject to one thing that rules the day no matter how super clever you are with SEO: If you answer a query in the meta description and then you give the person who clicked on it exactly what they wanted, you are going to do just fine with ranking at some point and probably some point soon.
People make statements like this guy does to drive traffic. That is what he is doing. He mentions not using Rand's surname as if he is a stand up guy, but do a non personalized search on Rand and tell me what you come up with. Then do Rand, SEO and tell me. There are so many Rand's in the world...not.So, let the guy have his few seconds to sell him and his knowledge. The easiest way to sell knowledge is to tear down others. Someone will always listen. So, quit listening to the dummies who say things from the Franklin mint will not appreciate, go by that coin set they just made - you are gonna be rich!!!!
Best
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- 1 -- well put.
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Hi EGOL,
Nice to see you here. I remember reading your comments / forum posts as far back as 2006/7 when I used to be a member of Web Workshop.
I find it interesting that you would simply say 'the rest of the post makes no sense to me' without really backing anything up. That doesn't seem to be your style at all.
If you could clarify anything I would love to take it on board. I know I can't please everyone but I'm always happy to improve
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Thanks Jesse,
Your photo is so alpha that I unfortunately can't make a single negative comment about it. Nice to see where your priorities lie when it comes to discussing SEO information though (did a dude or a chick write it? what do they look like?)
I never missed that at all. It has been a nice message everyone preaches for years. If you think it's as relevant as it used to be for search results then I urge you to use Google more often.
I have never said that building a brand is bad and I still highly advocate writing good content (I even mentioned it in my latest post and in the comments after someone wrote "Fuck Rand and Moz"). They work great and I try to follow this as much as I can, but it's not really helping my marketing right now when it comes to search traffic.
Anyway
Silliness
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I hardly think that I tore down anyone else.
I tried reading your comment but it seems like you just went off on your own tangent that doesn't really seem to have anything to do with me or the post. I have writers too - I'm not relying on them to get me top rankings with their amazing link baiting skills.
If you think I'm going to rank for 'Rand' (who would even search for that?) then I have some handsome pills to sell you.
I shouldn't be surprised that the argument is very one-sided here. No matter what I reply it will be nit-picked apart in defense of Rand. After all, this is his website. The same thing would happen if you were to comment on mine; you would be nit-picked and 'proven' to have no idea what you're talking about.
It's a shame you read the first 10% of an article and went on this mini-rant. However, I have to thank you for allowing me to have my few seconds. It was nice to have readers for the first time in my life
P.S. Just to make you dislike me even more I'll be the bearer of bad news; Your website is down.
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Wow, that's quite the headline! I'm not going to dive into that post itself, but I would like to make the point that people counter what Rand says all the time. It's nothing to get too shocked or worried about, it's quite commonplace.
Believe me this post is quite soft on Rand. -
I'd like to comment here that while I have no idea if Robert read the entire post or not, I can say that that does happen often on our blog. I can't tell you how often someone comments on the blog and they clearly haven't actually read the post. Drives me batty.
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Hey Jesse, let's keep appearance out of the conversation. That shouldn't have anything to do with anything.
Thanks!
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"If you answer a query in the meta description and then you give the person who clicked on it exactly what they wanted, you are going to do just fine with ranking at some point and probably some point soon."
Plus one and thumbs up!
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Dont put me on the same line with this guy cause I mentioned I have seen examples. You can find my blog by googling my name and find posts proving bad techniques that rank on page one (with screenshots etc) for more than a month, its not that hard. Also I did not say that I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS of examples of successful business rankings. I said in pure copy paste " But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank". I also say And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday, so again your "long-haul" claim (which you claim, i didnt) does not put me to a different direction to what I truly believe or what most people say in this post. Thanks
In regards to branding, ofcourse black hat will never work. To me black hat is a popular practised to micro niche small web sites that makes revenue from adsense and amazon for keywords that are low competitive and the owner is lucky enough to own an EMD or do good SEO because he actually cares. But even in this case in the long-haul as you say I am pretty sure they will be beaten.
Hope you find these clarifications useful.
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Hi Jen,
I've not been receiving any email updates for responses submitted. Was that feature turned off for this post or is something amiss in my settings?
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At the bottom of this post there's a button that says Email Updates. If there's no check in that button, you won't get any updates about your thread.
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As the poster, I should be getting emails (yes there is a check).
This is the first time I've not gotten emails on a post I generated and since the staff edited the title for clarity, I was wondering if anything else was tweaked.
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First off, thank you members for your input. Since the dust appears to be settling I want to share my thoughts since I solicited yours.
1. Why the post: Because I believe it matters. We should always be improving our filters to see through the smoke and fog. Consider the audience. People are developing their knowledge and sharpening their skills at something that is difficult to learn and lends itself to shortcuts and gaming. Here's an example this morning of a member trying to tune the quality of his filter.
2. Why the headline: To get eyes on post (see above). In my opinion Rand's credibility was attacked as well as the principles he promotes. Add Edit - it is the first time I've ever seen Rand countered, called out of touch an considered irrelevant. I thought he was a Unicorn.
3. My allegiances: I have none. I don't know VC and I don't know Rand. Aside from his freshness post, I've never read VC's work. My only brush with Rand was a Moz forum smack-down for being unkind to jennita regarding the use of H1's.
4. Regarding VC's post: It lacked focus (it tore down without building up), wreaked of anti-establishment sentiment, smacked of an-axe-to-grind and winked at gaming the system.
5. Regarding best practices: I try to use and promote them and will always lean-in to those who do the same.
Thanks again.
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