| LED Digest 2242: Special Issue - The Search Guru |
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Nathan's points are basically that SEO techniques are straightforward,
but that many industry insiders perpetuate an air of complexity to the process. As such, the "guru" mentality permeates the SEO field.
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======== CONTINUING ===============================The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................. September 8, 2006 Issue no. 2242 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Introduction --== The Search Guru ==-- ~ Michael Motherwell "I personally can't see search ending." ~ Michael Martinez "There are, in fact, secrets." ~ Maty Matyszak "...how much can you trust a SEO who does not rank in the top 100 for the term?" ~ Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian "...character is what anyone in business needs if they wish to be...successful in the long term." ~ Dirk Johnson "Nothing is complicated, hidden, or mystical." ~ Mark Whitman "...but what if you want *above* average results?" <Moderator Comment> Earlier this week, Nathan Holley wrote an insightful and controversial post on the state of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry called, "The Search Guru." Nathan's points are basically that SEO techniques are straightforward, but that many industry insiders perpetuate an air of complexity to the process. As such, the "guru" mentality permeates the SEO field. If you haven't been following this thread, get up to date by reviewing these previous issues: LED Digest 2239: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/945/55/ (Nathan's initial post that started the debate) LED Digest 2240: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/955/55/ (responses from Eric Ward, Shari Thurow, and Detlev Johnson) LED Digest 2241: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/979/55/ (responses from Michael Linehan and Beth Ann Earle) Enjoy the discussion that follows, and please send in your comments. All are welcome! Have a great weekend, Adam ------------------------ From: Michael Motherwell Subject: Search guru > In a field without walls, secrets, insider information > or special privilege, why and how has the search guru > become such an important, even ennobled figure online? - Nathan Holley, LED 2239 In the business word, the tax advisor has become such an important figure. Why? It's all written there - in the law ;). Not trying to be fascetious, but the best answer is often to change one or two words, and see if the argument holds. The reason SEOs are viewed the way we are (yes, me being one) is because we offer businesses what they need: a way to get there faster for a better ROI than learning it themselves. Sure, it is " all right (there) - online", but who wants to read that when, and this is the crux of the issue, there are far better ways for 99.9% of business peole to spend their time? Business is about knowing what one can do inhouse well, and what is better outsourced. As an example, I have a client whose business is predicated on sourcing bargains from around the world. Is his time better spent reading online to understand SEO, or finding the next deal that could make him significant money? Time is the most precious resource for any business, and Search Gurus offer time back to businesses, by taking away the need to research a niche field that, although absolutely vital in online marketing, isn't essential, and more than likely isn't their core competency. > I have no answers or even questions. Just an insight that > the search guru, being a product of the evolution of the 'Net, > will also eventually become a product of the past. I never understand that argument. It is either wrong or a truism. Wrong, because it won't happen in a reasonable timeframe, or a truism because, if we take a long enough time period, you are guaranteed to be right. After all, humans probably won't last another 10 billion years ;). For a comment like this to have any usefulness, it needs a timeframe. So you need to define when this is likely to happen by in order for the comment to have any merit in discussion. I personally can't see search ending. And while there is search, there will be search marketing. People confuse this a great deal, IMHO. They think that the next big thing will kill the last thing, but that rarely, if ever, happens. Video didn't kill the radio star, who in turn still can't kill the pesky Opera star. Very little ever ends, particularly in marketing. After all, there are still people who just do direct mail, others who just do flyers, booklets, junk mail, TV ads, heck, some people still do signs for shops. We don't kill old ideas that work simply because we have new ones. Rather, we just add the new ideas to the the repertoire, and use as appropriate / relevant. I made this same argument recently in a forum, and someone commented that Disco was dead, as proof against this view. I have thought about that a bit, and counter that anyone who has heard the Scissor Sisters play would greatly disagree, and anyone who saw the Abba tribute show Mama Mia is probably disagreeing even louder. Sure, disco isn't king anymore but, no matter how much we try, disco still hangs around, and the Bee Gees just refuse to go away. I mean for goodness sake, if Michael Hutchence's death can't kill INXS, very little indeed dies. SEO, like INXS, is here to stay, for better or, in INXS's case, probably worse. And not just the short term of 1-5 years, but the longer term as well; 10-16, maybe even 50 years. Sure, its market share will stabalise, exponential growth eventually slows, and it may even contract a little as TNBT(tm) (The Next Big Thing) hits, but that is as far from ending as the sun is to exploding. My $0.02. Michael Motherwell -------- next post -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Search guru > ... I find that SEOs' knowledge is often limited... > I wish many of my colleagues had the same > drive to improve their knowledge and skills. > ... I wonder how SEO as a discipline is > going to evolve. I think it's chaos right now, > with black-hat techniques dominating.... - Shari Thurow, LED 2240 Many search engine optimizers seemingly read all the FAQs, tutorials, eBooks, and eNewsletters and then have the epiphany that SEO is where they should be. After all, it's all about links, you can judge the quality of links by looking at the little green line in the toolbar, and every link you get is a quality link anyway. > ... I am fascinated how this industry has taken shape, > grown, morphed, and become the driving force behind > Internet marketing, promotions, visibility and traffic.... - Nathan Holley, LED 2239 "driving force behind Internet marketing"? I don't think so. > In a field without walls, secrets, insider information > or special privilege, why and how has the search guru > become such an important, even ennobled figure online? I disagree here, too. I think there are huge skyscraping walls of ignorance permeating the SEO community. Mine is not a popular opinion, so there may be some heated replies to me. There are, in fact, secrets. Not because the information isn't available, but because of the nonsense that SEOs pass around like a virus. SEOs don't benefit from formal education. They mostly get their "knowledge" from whomever they think wins a silly argument. Take so-called Google-bowling (the alleged technique of pointing thousands of bad links at Web sites to hurt their search results rankings). People claim they have seen proof that it happens and that it works. And though no one has ever published such proof, the mere claim it exists is enough to sway some SEOs. Why? Look at the Google Sandbox Effect. To avoid it, you just have to know where to get trusted links. I have heard that one top SEO allegedly tells people not to bring any domain to him that is less than 2 years old. Why? Take the never-ending debate over content-versus-links. I rank on content all the time. I have now publicly disclosed a commercial query for which I recently achieved the number 1 ranking on Google. Yahoo! currently thinks I have 179 links pointing to the page. Google acknowledges only 14 references to the URL. According to Google, URL references for pages below mine include: 10000, 16000+, 282, and 592. One page, from a small company called Microsoft, shows 70,000+ URL references. No one stays on top forever. Eventually, my page will drop, my day will be done. But for now I'm number 1 and I got there on a mere smidgen of links. Try explaining that to the SEO community. They'll just shuffle their feet and say, "Well, your homegrown links must have a lot of juice." Maybe they do. But anyone's homegrown links can get that kind of juice. Just add truly optimized content, mix, and stir. I'll add more links when I think that becomes necessary. Not before. > Even though we don't see it now, someday search > too will evolve, and yes, Google will give way to another > giant. Not necessarily in the search realm. I agree with you, Nathan. To every thing there is a season. One day, today's SEO gurus will be a thing of the past. Michael Martinez http://seo.xenite.org/ -------- next post -------- From: Maty Matyszak Subject: Search guru Would it be right to say that a good, established site that is authoritative in its own niche does not need SEO? Or that SEO can't help a bad site for long? And how much can you trust a SEO who does not rank in the top 100 for the term? "You can fool some of the engines all of the time You can fool all of the engines some of the time But if the site you are pushing is a load of crud You can't keep it up there forever." - (Almost) Abe Lincoln Maty Matyszak www.knowyourcat.info -------- next post -------- From: Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian Subject: Search guru > I'm not against making a living, but I am against preying > upon ignorance, and the easiest way to do that is to make > a task seem complex when it isn't, or likewise let someone > believe a task is harder than it really is. - Eric Ward, LED 2240 And Eric's a guy who walks the talk. I recently enjoyed the experience and contacts of the man for a campaign to build awareness for my Congenital Heart Defects site and the September 9th Heart Kids Blogathon. When going through the 'sales letter' on his http://www.URLwire.com site, I noticed how of the 2 options Eric offers on his website, it's easy to miss just how much EXTRA value is added to the "Advanced Site Announcement". If anything, Eric goes far to the opposite side of the spectrum in DOWN-PLAYING the value of what he's including! For an extra $300, you get 'endorsed' access to his personal contact list (which as you have heard, was built up over 14 years of consistent action) - the value in that may not even be apparent to someone getting started, yet is worth considerably more than what is being charged! Is it any surprise, then, that Eric is disgusted with crooks who charge $4,500 for 8 directory submissions?! However, I'm willing to bet the SEO firm in question is out of business, while others with higher ethical and professional standards are going from strength to strength. Yes, character is what you do when no one else is watching - and character is what anyone in business, online or off, needs if they wish to be viable, sustainable, and successful in the long term. Thanks for a nice post, Eric. > But still, the search guru lives on - thrives even - in > an atmosphere of bewildered neophytes and lesser > professors and initiates. There seems to be so much > astonishment at rankings. I'm just wondering, why? > It's all right here - online. - Nathan Holley, LED 2239 And to 'answer' Nathan's 'question', I'd resort to something interesting a friend once told me (and which has more than a little truth to it): "If you know it, and they don't, then it's a SECRET!" ;) All success Dr.Mani The Heart Kids Blogathon is on Sep.9th http://www.heartkidsblogathon.info -------- next post -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Search guru > But I also see SEO experts helping to foster > this climate of intellectualism, that can take on > an air of the pedantic at times, when they pontificate > about linkage, keyword research and the "long > tail of search." - Nathan Holley, LED 2239 An excellent post. Nathan makes a number of valid points about the state of the SEO industry, while also admitting to a bit of frustration about it all. Having been in this industry for about as long as Nathan, I can only say that the situation is worse than ever, in terms of the business owner's ability to sort it all out. Yes, valid information about SEO is out there for anyone to access. The problem is that it is mixed in with all manner of crackpot theories. Unfortunately, the crackpot theories tend to be more sensational than the "tired and true", and they attract attention. Some SEO gurus like to present themselves as "leading edge" thinkers. They glom on to the latest fads and theories, (or make them up), and then promote them. Cure-all remedies can come in all kinds of new flavors. I have taken to referring to all of these cooked-up theories and tactics and strategies as "SEO Fad Du Jour". The failure of these various theories to hold up to close scrutiny in real search results is palpable. But they keep coming, unabated. These theories are usually identifiable by their level of complication. The more time-consuming, unusual, and difficult it is for the business owner to understand and act upon it, the more likely that it's all just snake oil. The more that it sounds like gaming for the sake of gaming the search engines, then it is. I can't tell you how many clients we've had here that were fed up with the obfuscation tactics of some SEO company that they had hired. It shouldn't be that way. A good SEO company should be able to explain exactly what they are doing, and why, in layman's terms. Certainly, the most glaring example of a thoroughly confused SEO industry is with reciprocal linking. From what I have observed (from doing reciprocal linking work every business day for several years), very few of the leading SEO pundits seem to have the hands-on experience to truly understand this practice and how it affects the search engines. Instead, many of them seem to speculate endlessly about it from the sidelines, while harboring a pre-conceived bias against the practice that clouds their ability to see the facts. This confusion is readily exposed in their own writings, when compared with real search results, but few people are qualified enough to call them out. So their mis-conceptions are published widely, believed and, worse, passed along by those with even less experience. If they can't understand something as gut-level basic as reciprocal linking, then what else don't they understand? As Nathan rightfully implies, there are SEO specialists out there who do have the correct approach, and occasionally they are able to get their word out to the masses. Their advice can usually be distilled into three main tactics, as follows: 1) Optimize your site pages so the search engines can find them, index them, and score them in a way that is advantageous to your business. That means good keyword research, proper navigation practices, good URL structures, optimized tagging (title, headline, etc), and good page / content structure. All designed with both search results and real site visitors in mind. 2) Build enough pages to make your site a genuine resource about your subject. The more, the better. If you can get your site visitors to participate in building that content, that's probably even better still. 3) Link your site to and from other legitimate sites within your realm(s) of interest. Again, the more, the better. Before the search engines came along and rewarded links, the linking task was just basic Branding 101, and independent from SEO-related work. But since linking now helps with search results, it's become a part of the SEO mix. Successful sites simply do those three things, but very thoroughly. Nothing is complicated, hidden, or mystical. It takes commitment, time and money. The demand for shortcuts, quick solutions, and tricks that might work is considerable. So snake oil can be easy to sell in this business, at least to the unwary. It's much harder to sell it to people who have considerable experience in web marketing. That experience often comes the hard way. What is overlooked here is that, each and every day, the bar gets raised by someone. The threshold to compete goes up, in terms of time and money. Those who are new to this world of SEO are the most vulnerable, as they want top search results for their site immediately, and they fail to understand the commitment that has been made by those who are already well-established. They think it is just a matter of paying someone to do it. Sorting out the good advice from the bad is hard to do. As I said, most of what is written about the subject of linking and SEO is just flat out wrong. Finding good advice on the subject of linking is almost impossible. You'd have to stumble across it. And that's just one subject related to SEO, of many. In the end, though, it is generally the sites that do the right things that get to the top and stay at the top. We've seen that time and again. Eventually, I hope that this will become self-evident, and this atmosphere of goofy gamesmanship and confusion will wane. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com -------- next post -------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Search guru > But there are no real secrets in SEO! Everything > you ever wanted to know is available online. - Nathan Holley, LED 2239 That's fine if you want average results but what if you want *above* average results? Until you can see the actual algorithms used to determine index placement there are in fact secrets. Anyone who has those secrets or comes close to figuring out what they are will get above average results (theoretically :). That's what separates a high quality SEO person from the average Joe using the "just use relevant content" theory. M.Whitman
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merely what others think you are." - John Wooden
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