martinibuster - 8:41 am on Jul 5, 2011 (gmt 0)

Show me your websites that are built for USERS and not for GOOGLE RANKINGS and then we will talk...

Hey Gorgy, I sent you the URL. Here is what I have to say about that site.

Check out the source code. The description meta tag on the home page is there but the content of it is empty, I kid you not. That site is the least SEO'd site out there that is related to finance. Yet that site ranks for a ton of one word, two word, three word and longtail phrases. The pages that rank in the top ten for the one-word phrases don't even that that word in the keyword meta or meta description, much less in header tags or bolded or italicized. Quantcast estimates it receives a bit under a million visitors per month. And to frustrate the toolbar fanatics, it has a measly PR of 5.

Keyword in the domain is nice to have but I don't feel it's as important as the content plus a meaningful name that is easy to remember and type.

Returning to content, this is why I feel (based on my experience and observation) that the content is important. Useful content is easy to get free links to from sites that are the hardest to obtain links from, the ones that are as far from SEO/spam/professional webmaster nonsense as possible. In my experience, those links assist the good cause, regardless of the PageRank.

Gorgwatcher has a legitimate reason to be skeptical
I am not denying that there are crap sites ranking with crap links and crap content. There is a lot of nasty stuff ranking that shouldn't be there, sites with content that is grammatically wrong and with backlinks that are not legitimate citations. I think the algo needs improvement.

Gorgwatcher has a legitimate reason to be skeptical. There is a lot of crap ranking in Google with crap backlinks. I am only pointing out that this is not an absolute black and white issue. There is an alternative to what is currently working on the black hat side.