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If you speak to all the best Internet Marketing Pros they tell you SEO is a waste of time longterm, everyone in the industry has lost their position at somepoint from what I gather - or am I wrong?
I want to hear from anyone who has had long term success with SEO say for 6 months or longer....
If we're talking return on investment, I'd argue that a lot of people do badly at PPC too. Others however, use it to make very good money.
I would have to say that in my opinion if they are telling you that, then they are not really the Best and your speaking to the wrong ones.
I've found, that a skilled Web Designer who is good at SEO and builds it into the design of the site instead of hiring a SEO company to do it after the site is built who does not specialize in site design, seems to be able to create sites that can withstand Google over the longer haul.
This of course is my own opinion and experience. Mileage will vary:)
I really SEOer will realize that it's ongoing work. Because if everybody moves forward and you do not, you effectively move backwards.
Even if algorithms wouldn't change, assuming SEO lasts would also asume that your SEO is perfect and nobody can do better. If that is not so, somebody else will continue working and out-SEO you eventually... unless you seeit as a continuous effort.
SN
Sounds rather like advice was given to you from someone who would prefer a thinner herd in which to compete for those prime ten blades of grass, aka page 1.
SEO is SEO whether its long term or not.
The idea of SEO is not SPAM EVERY OPTIMIAZATION but good decent SEO folk are more like advises for site structure and layout etc.
I don't see any difference in long term SEO and short term SEO.
(only spammers will try to make use of a little google bugs)
You build a site for a particular reason to provide and present information. Sometimes part of a business module or just for informative purposes. How you present the information depends on the audience you want to capture.
Big companies like Coca cola can do flash as their brand image is more important then being ranked 1st for Coke. However smaller companies and guides need to structure their sites in a way that all the information can be searched by any user.
Your computer files and folders are the same, structure your site like your folders and files and it can be searched more efficently.
So if your site is a big brand name don't worry, but if your a small business or guide then structure the site like your PC make it easy to search. Put A.document in A.folder and B.document in B.folder.
This is good SEO advice those who say long term SEO is waste of time does not understand the idea of SEO. You could say we are more like SEARCH ENGINE ORGANIZES.
Build you site for usability, I have studied programing to help maintain my customer base and the usability of the sites. Search Engines is just one part of the whole module.
:)
And SEO it until you blue in your face otherwise you will never be found.
supposed to be a satire, incase you didn't get it.
I was a firm believer in SEO working and ongoing SEO work was like general health checks etc....My site was up for about 2 months (position 2) and then suddenly it was nuked, i.e. no where to be seen on most of the keyword phrases.
It's strange that I had not done anything to cause this, and still have page ranking so maybe it was a bug or some other problems occured when Google was updating?
Everyone says be careful of this advice or that advice, is it possible to control the position or do sites suddenly fall out of the SERPS for no reason and then find themselves back there in a few months time?. . . also what is the longest a site has stayed in the top positions for as a result of ongoing optimisation support? (based on your experiences).....
I guess i'm in that box with around six years of successful SEO and a few years of web work before that as well. Only, i did not know that i (also) did SEO until early this year - i thought i just made good web content for my user base. This statement is very true:
Search Engines is just one part of the whole module.
>> long term
Exactly how long is "long" one might ask. I started before Google did; if Google ever stops, i'll want my content to remain attractive to my users. If another SE beats Google at the SE game, it will probably be better - i see no reason to focus exclusively on Google. I make content for live human users, not for machines (i don't even have a rss or xml feed anywhere).
To your question:
>> Is Google SEO a waste of time longterm?
...there is only one answer, and that is the one you got, although it was surprising: YES
To see that it is the right answer you need to think about it more than once. Google SEO (as SEO for any other search engine) comes automagically if you do the right things. Google SEO is not what you want to be doing - you want to be making good content for your user base. When that is done you want to add more, and then refine what you already have, making it better. And then you will want to repeat the process. If you have any spare time, you will want to use it for attracting new users, and then repeat the cycle for them as well. Google will follow, as will the rest of the SE's.
SE's have only one purpose and that is to return the best results to their customers. If you build the best result then they will return your pages, otherwise they will lose customers "long term". They have no loyalty to you - the moment you slow down, somebody else will take over "your" positions.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. You can't optimize long-term for any SE without optimizing for human users. As human users pay the bills, optimize for them in stead - include your knowledge of search engines in the mix, don't let it be the mix.
/claus
[edited by: claus at 4:08 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
TJ
Yeppers. Top-notch.
Let's say the fifty most useful sites in the world suddenly all did something that was altogether different from what the search engines of the day were looking for.
Would the search engines change? Of course they would! The objective of search engines is to return the most relevant and useful sites - if they can't do that, their credibility is damaged.
Far better to write a high quality, useful site and let the search engines catch up with you, than try to endlessly analyse search engine algorithms and set about catching up with them.
Far better to write a high quality, useful site and let the search engines catch up with you, than try to endlessly analyse search engine algorithms and set about catching up with them.
Nicely put, ronin!
The codicil is that a high quality site attracts visitors (and links) independent of search engines. Thereby solving three problems at once instead of optimising for just one of them!
DerekH
With good content (content that TRULY is good), link popularity will come with time.
-panic
I'm relatively new at all this and I really an amazed at the depth and breadth of knowledge in this forum. After reading posts for so long, it becomes apparent that there are several classes of masters here. There are those who know the system "inside and out" and know how to manipulate it. There are the "solid base" builders who make sites with great content and don't worry about PR. Then there are the technical edgies, and the newbies.
I put my site up with enough knowledge to make it solid "content wise" and enough to make it SE friendly. I keep adding content and pages, and I keep getting rewarded with visitors. I'm not afraid to change it. I learn.
Google likes it. Inktomi, Ia, Zeal, and others. I keep feeding my visitors, the SE's feed me.
There's way too much focus on pleasing search engines and way too little on pleasing customers. And so many have missed the point that if you focus on the latter, you'll be pleasing the former.
I put my site up with enough knowledge to make it solid "content wise" and enough to make it SE friendly. I keep adding content and pages, and I keep getting rewarded with visitors. I'm not afraid to change it. I learn.
I think I left my initial response a little too open ended when I said that you should focus on having good content. I think content should be the #1 priority, but that doesn't mean that you should have tons of junk HTML code, etc.
I think the ideal page has a clean (but light) layout, a limited number of images (with no Flash/JavaScript), easy to read text, and overall good content. I think W3 conformant HTML helps too :D
-panic
I did not believe this and then I wake up to find my site gone - somewhere in the 500 mark.
Turns out that my ISP have had problems last month that have effected me this month so that is why I posted the question. - Now all I need to do is find an ISP that optimises for 5 9's of reliability.
The paradox was this: UPS failure - I mean what a laugh - UPS - did they mean IPS? Interupted Power Supply? - That lead to 100 servers going down, that lead my server being last in the queue, that lead to check disks on Linux that lead to a currupt hard drive that lead to a shafted back up server that lead to a new IP address that lead to DNS convergence time.
Wow and I thought I was one lucky dude when I got my site into number 2 position - how wrong could I have been. Thank God Google responded to me and told me I was ok and the problem was here until the next update, I can once again fly the SEO flag high and proud. I am optimising for users, my next step - look for a reliable ISP. . . . .The guys in this forum are true professionals, together we can change and build a better Internet for our next generation of wiz kids - keep up the good work guys :-)
If it all goes pear shape, im offering PPC management...
Hallelujah, claus. Nice post. :)
I have one site which has been at number 3, 4, or 5 (mostly #4) on google since the beginning for the one word name of the technology which that page is about. How long has google been around, about five years?
Dominic knocked some of the other related pages out of the top 20 for that search term but four of them are back in the top 20 now.
SEO in the general sense is a waste of time. But you do have to know what NOT to do, and that can be considered SEO by some.
Other than that, many people have already said: focus on your customer and what they want to see *gasp*, and the rest will come.
um.. but make sure you do submit your site to SE's though... lol
Can't remember last time I did such a thing. A link from a frequently spidered page ought to be enough.
I do very little SEO. I try to create good content and make it easily accessible for human visitors. And then I may do some small SEO tweaks.
Google are constantly trying to make googlebot and the algo behave more and more like a human visitor. So longterm the best Google SEO is to optimise your website for humans.
But without decent SERPs, there are few visitors. (Assuming here the site traffic isn't largely from links for other sites.) Thus, you need to design for both humans and bots. Designing for just the latter is foolish. Then the visitor just hits the browser back button.
I wasn't on steriods for update florida, and my results are more or less where they were.
Therefore, if I want to to make money via search engines, by far the quickest way seems to be copying these sorts of techniques. Especially if I wasn't interested enough in, say, inkjet cartridges to be able to make a truly great resource about them!
However, in the current climate it is very unpredictable. It is now very hard to say if Google won't change things around in a few months (meaning all your hard work could go to waste)... best to diversify online income streams. Build a few sites, not just one - and don't rely on 'free' results to build a business.
[edited by: James_Dale at 11:32 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2003]
