Is Brett's 5-Year-Old "Google Success" Post Still Relevant?

Newb seeks opinions from members

[aj113]

Hello All,
As a newb both to the SEO world and to this forum, I was stimulated - ultimately - by Brett_Tabke's post from February of 2002 to join up and take part in the forum.

[webmasterworld.com...]

Brett's post seems to give invaluable help and advice to someone like me, but taking into account the advance of technology and indeed the changing face of SE algorithms, how relevent do members think it is in 2007?

[Habtom]

how relevent do members think it is in 2007?

I think they are pretty much timeless principles :)

[edited by: Habtom at 11:41 am (utc) on July 15, 2007]

[mack]

I think that thread will stand the test of time. A lot if not all of the points in that post are fundimental.

Mack.

[youfoundjake]

I still have it bookmarked, one of the few "pages", as oppossed to a website in general. I often refer back to it, to see where I'm at and what I need to be working on.

[glitterball]

I'm going to be controversial and disagree with one point in the 'Bible'.

I think that keyword domains are very valuable. In all of the sectors that I operate in the no.1 established sites are the keyword.com or keyword1Keyword2.com sites.

As well as any algorithmic boost for having the keyword in the domain name, these sites will also attract the sought after anchor text in an organic way.

There may be a branding argument against using generic keywords, but search engines love them.

[tedster]

The advice about submitting the domain root to the major search engines is a bit dated - I can't tell you the last time I fired up DumpTruck (remember that program?)

And you can go with HTML 4.0 now, rather than sticking with 3.2. Spidering is much more sophisticated today. Still, only go with xhtml if you really need it [webmasterworld.com] - and if you don't know if you need it, then you probably don't. I advise strict html rather than transitional. Not only will you future-proof your site, you'll learn a lot as you develop the site, too.

But the overall sensibility in Brett's post - of keeping it simple, low file sizes, regular ongoing development, etc. - that is still right on the money.

[edited by: tedster at 5:11 am (utc) on July 16, 2007]

[newborn]

Definately still relevant. However I believe that more is needed. It just depends on where you want to start. If you are into internet marketing to earn income then you must do more. Analysing the copetition is a fundamental principle. What gets me is if Site 1-10 started out doing exactly what Brett recommended and maintains his philosophy if you start after them then you will be in the dog house.

It means that you will have to work twice as hard to beat them at the BRETT GAME. It becomes incumbent on a serious webmaster to get new tools to help with this. SEO means staying on the Google Ball coming here reading understanding not what Google thinks is relevant but what readers think is relevant.

[lakr]

Is Brett's 5-Year-Old "Google Success" Post Still Relevant?

Yep, I followed his guidelines on September last year, and now, July 2007, I got result, Thank you again, Brett and WebmasterWorld.

Lakr

[M_Bison]

points that are no longer relevant/need updating etc etc:

1. search engine submission
2. Free Yahoo listing (for commercial sites)
3. Logging and Tracking - Lots of whizz bang analytics programs available - no longer do you need to use server logs/web host analytics programs.
4. Links - could probably include social media in the "ethical" link building category.

[ogletree]

No matter who you are you still need server logs. Anyone who says that log file based or tag based is the only way to go is wrong. You need both. They both can do things the other can't. If you are not doing both your throwing away iformation.

[beren]

D) Page Size:
The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can - I trust you are getting the idea here.

I still agree with this, although in another webmasterworld thread people said they didn't follow it. While it's no longer true that 80% of surfers are on dial-up, even users on DSL or cable prefer fast-loading pages. I'm surprised at the bloat on some new sites.

[tedster]

Efficient file size is nearly a secret weapon today. So many developers code as if broadband removed all need for economical pages -- or as if they don't know how to do create them in the first place. If you follow Brett's advice on this, your competition may just think that you're "lucky", but really, you're being very smart. What they don't know will hurt them!