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I feel that this needs to be clarified, as when I read that SEO stretches so many forms of optimisation it worries the honest webmaster such as myself.
This morning I have read posts about SEO being bad, engines not wanting SEO etc. However I have a feeling that we are all talking about different types of optimisation or perhaps not (maybe I am wrong).
We optimise all our sites, with Keywords, clean valid code (thanks to web/world), good content etc and as far as I am concerned all of this is allowed.
But because it at least seems to me that some people throw in what could be called spam or cheating into this SEO tag it at least confuses me.
Any comments on this? Could we not clarify once and for all what exactly is SEO, and should cheating / spam / unallowed forms of SEO of any form be put under a different name?
I always think an SEO comes in 2 varieties. The good and the bad.
The bad: Will attempt to give your site an instant boost by using all sorts of spammy techniques to attempt to gain rank that the site is not due
The good: Will legitimately make alterations to your site that will help it gain positioning within search engines. The good seo does not attempt to trick the search engine, the good seo simply gives the search engine what it wants.
A legitimate SEO should be interested in good page content with a reasonable keyword density, valid code and good "real" inbound links from similar content sites.
The spammy SEO will use hidden text to make the spider see a very high keyword density, use poor methods for gaining PR, gain links by any means ffa pages link farms etc.
A good seo does not break any rules, he/she just enables a site to show it's true potential by correcting things that pull it down, as oposed to ranking high by any means possible.
With all this stuff in this thread about google being this and that, and seo being this and that.
Can we not have a clear definition of SEO not good and bad just good and call the bad form of SEO something else.
People use the term SEO too lightly for it to mean both.
I now suspect it is impossible to have a universally "clean" definition because cheaters will always present themselves as clean, but the percentage of cheaters in the population can be continually reduced through education and exposure. Cheaters can't thrive in an efficient market, and sunlight is the best disinfectant.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I think what I would do is to ask for a list of clients that they have worked for and take a look at their sites to see what they have done. If you smell a rat then you're probably right.
What I am saying is that these forums are full of people saying SEO is of no use is this and that purely because Google has 'possibly' changed its algo which has meant changes in positions for some users.
But when the term SEO is used so broadly it confuses the average user, such as my humble self.
I think though Rjohara hit the nail on the head with it is not possible.
All my optimisations (and how I understand SEO) are clean and allowed, keywords, placement etc and as GoogleGuy said somewhere with the end user in mind, so I can understand that.
But when I read a thread about how SEO is bad obaviously it is talking a about another form of SEO. I just feel it would be better to call that something else so not to confuse.
No matter what changes Google makes to it's algo we will still nees SEO's. Although possibly not GEO's :)
There are still a few non Google engines out there.
For example, I have a page on my site that is titled "How to Widget". I could make that page title "New Page 77" but instead I optimize my page by giving it an appropriate title that a quality search engine can now find and deliver to an interested searcher who types in "how to widget".
If on the other hand I title the page "Britney Spears phone number", I likely would get a lot more traffic from that title. This spam though would not truly be optimally presenting the actual content of my site.
