Search engine stances on SEO, plus Google, and SearchKing. Options

Moderator note: This discussion has been split off from a discussion about how directory structure and names may affect ranking. - BK

The series of Elvis programs has finished now, so I can enter this discussion.

[quote=Advisor]I don't mean to pound on your personally Jim, I'm just really surprised that you were still using the methods you mentioned, as I thought they went out with the Macarena![/quote]
Contrary to your minority and misguided opinion, Jill, the methods that Jim is talking always did work, still work, and have never shown any signs of going out, except among those people, like yourself, who never used them in the first place and who never knew what they were capable of. Lesser methods work fine for the low end of competitiveness, but that's all.

[quote=Advisor][quote=Advisor]....and are basically cluttering their databases.[/quote]
In what way? I have shown over and over again that doorway pages that are created solely to rank highly in the engines do not clutter the serps - they cannot! Do I need to explain it yet again?

[quote=Advisor]These kinds of actions are the bane of their existence. If it wasn't for people adding pages like this to their indexes, their results would be much easier, and the better sites would be found just cuz they were better.[/quote]
Who cares??? SEOs want their clients' sites to be found - who cares about the better sites??? I thought this thread was about SEO.

[quote=Advisor]Instead, the engines spend much of their time trying to combat the very stuff you want to do.[/quote]
That's their problem. It's nothing to do with us. If they don't like, they can always morph themselves into a directory and review sites by hand.

[quote=Advisor]As far a page optimized for all engines, I'm sure I have plenty of them (although they may rank high for some keywords in some engines and other keywords in other engines).[/quote]
You are sure you have plenty of them? Don't you know? Isn't that what's wrong with the way you do it, Jill? It's not exactly ranking highly across the engines for a search term, is it?

Phil.

Ok, Elvis has entered the building

This is getting close to the SEO=SPAM thread. Phil, your approach is pragmatic and sensible. SEO is, I believe, so frequently emotive simply because it's a one-sided game with the engines - notably Google. We are forced to guess the rules where professional credibility and a lot of money may be at stake.

I monitor daily engine activity for all the biggies (and some lesser ones like HotBot) because I have to both learn and maintain skillsets through which I wish to make a living. I remember seeing my business site hit for six when Google did their 28/9 update. They got it wrong. Their proprietary algos are what makes it such a great engine, and these are tweaked not simply for better user experience but to combat, er, spam. There will be casualties, such as myself, when the algos are poked.

Proof is the problem. Given that there are only 12 core updates each year - and a month (at least) is a long time in the commercial wilderness - I am not going to mess around with optimising my site to see what happens. But. I don't mind test-bedding a new site on which I can afford to take calculated risks.

We each have different techniques, different levels of income and, importantly, personal value sets that may offer or destroy credibility in the game of ethics. These values are what we offer our clients and how we portray ourselves to the business community.

Even these forums pose a risk. None of us, I believe, is ever fully open with our views and techniques (except perhaps Phil and Jill :twisted: ).

I pick up many, many e-zines and newsletters, such a Jill's more recent initiative with High Rankings Advisor, all of which I enjoy and all of which often contain real gems. I doubt I will ever stop saying Blimey, I never knew that! If that happens, you can pack me in pine.

I shall now leave the building.

I only find it "emotive" when people continue to make sweeping, false statements, such as "it's never been true", in spite of all the logic, common sense, and evidence that has been presented - then it really gets up my nose.

[b]As long as search engines use programs to determine their rankings, optimizing for each individual engine will continue to work as it always has done, even though it sometimes isn't necessary.

The fact that many of the criteria are common across engines means that partially optimized (friendly) pages, and highly optimized pages for a single engine, will tend to do ok across the engines, but they will not usually do as well in some engines as in others. Then it comes down to what level of rankings one will settle for. Personally, I consider being outside the first page to be a failure - not as much of a failure as being outside the second page, and so on. Getting a website to rank highly across the engines isn't important. What is important is getting its pages to rank highly across the engines for each required search term.

The idea of a website having a page in the top 10 for such-a-term on this engine, the same page in the top 30 of that engine for the same term, and another page in the top 20 on some engine for different term, etc. etc., is a failure - not a total failure, but a failure none-the-less. In other words, having the pages of a website spread across the top 30s of the different engines for various search terms is a partial failure. It certainly isn't a success.

Being in the first page of results matters. Most searchers use Google or a Google partner, and the relevancy of Google serps is usually such that most searchers find what they want on the first page. That's why anything below the first page is, basically, a failure.

What we don't tend to get in forums is people stating what they accept as being a "high ranking" and what they consider to be a success. Perhaps it's because people don't want to admit that they still consider a top 30 ranking as being successful, when other people say it's a failure. It's just my imagination but I imagine that the SEO copywriting people settle for what I described above, and tell everyone that it works because it's successful. That idea of "successful" is pretty low.

I recommend doing it the 'friendly' way to start with, including SEO copywriting, and then doing what's necessary to fill the gaps - and there will be many. I don't recommend professional SEO copywriting at all because it has some serious drawbacks. The main one being that the professionally written text, that helped to achieve a high ranking, is frozen - it can't be changed without risking the ranking or employing a costly professional SEO copywriter to do it again on the new text. If money is no object, fine. Otherwise I don't recommend it.

Phil.

Top 10 rankings are certainly the goal. With top 5 of course being better!

Jill

...highly optimised pages for a single engine, will tend to do ok across the engines, but they will not usually do as well in some engines as in others.

Absolutely. When starting out with web design and SEO, I had a voracious appetite for anything SEO related and came across optimising for specific engines, using spider-sniffers and redirects to feed the desired page to the engine. I remember it being questioned then whether such activity represented spamming: no, it represents one action of professional SEO work.

The smart money is on Google but Inktomi-driven MSN listings certainly can not be discounted. Anywhere there is an opportunity for revenue the ROI is figured and if it's worth the effort then is should and must be done. It is good business practise, nothing more.

On a particular site I have a half-dozen key phrases I optimise for. A couple of these are at the top across all non-PPC engines and all but one first page. This happened more by luck than judgement. It was my first dabble at a site and I remember being over the moon when, one morning, I found it at #1 in FAST's engine. Gradually, it appeared on all the engines in the #1 & 2 spots. However, other phrases didn't do so well or so evenly. Inktomi loved them; Google buried them; AV just plain ignored them.

Returning to your comment above, Phil, I nearly made the mistake of optimising the poorly ranked phrases (pages) by spider serving. Why wrong? Because a well optimised page, as you say, does well across all engines. If you're peaking and troughing there is obviously something wrong with the page. Get that corrected first then tweak engine by engine.

I have (almost) daily ranking data stretching back to February for another site. Couple this with log data and it's a great resource for performance analysis. I also hold a log of site changes and was therefore accurately able to monitor performance hits and misses. I now know I can revisit the site and take it right to the top but (gasp! anathema to all) I can't be bothered. It's doing ok. I did one tweak today, though: stuck some Xmas bells in the header gif

Even these forums pose a risk. None of us, I believe, is ever fully open with our views and techniques (except perhaps Phil and Jill :twisted: ).

Well, enigma, I am stating right here and now that as soon as I am able to aquire a view and technique I too will express it here!

Good stuff all. I was really doubting my entire SEO existence for a few short moments, but now am realizing that there truly are different views and techniques, and they all work to varying degrees. And it's okay to have them, too!

Absolutely right, James. This is why there is still an art to SEM in addition to the science of it. For some, the reliability of ranking methods that are unlikely to ever be called spam, even by engines themselves is their chosen path. For others, the risks of slightly less approved methods may sometimes be taken where the results will justify the risks.

I tend to see most aspects of this business as options, choices and compromises. Each technique carries its own upsides and downsides and the choices we make are more likely to be dependant on abilities, costs and percieved risks/benefits than anything one could really call ethics.

Ethics (IMO) are more about keeping clients fully informed about their options than about pushing them into a path you choose for them without a full and proper discussion of the options available.

I don't currently have any clients using cloaking, but cloaking to gain high rankings for relevant searches, where the client knows what cloaking means, is not unethical to me. On the other hand, charging a client on a monthly basis for work already done would be unethical to me.

Unethical SEO is where the methods of SEO or charges are designed to suit the SEO provider rather than the client. Where the client is served honestly, and given excellent value, then there you have ethical SEO.

Good stuff all. I was really doubting my entire SEO existence for a few short moments, but now am realizing that there truly are different views and techniques, and they all work to varying degrees. And it's okay to have them, too!

Hey, if ya wanna make more work for yourself, that's your perogative! Personally, I'm like Kim. I'm lazy, so I find the easiest, most effective way to achieve top-10 rankings that last for years. That way I don't have to think about it once it's done. Don't have to worry about getting penalized or banned. Don't have to worry about algorithm changes, don't have to worry about anything. I really don't like to worry.

Jill

Lesser methods work fine for the low end of competitiveness, but that's all.

I tend to agree with this. Depends on what the accepted value of the term "work" is. I won't mention where, but I did rub elbows with a 3 person search engine department who spent nearly all their time working their company's sites (60 main ones containing countless pages for niche markets plus several hundred hosted sites) by meeting each spider at the door with a special set of code directed specifically to that engine. The maintenance for this was mind boggling.

They could not, regardless, get their sites to remain in the top spots because the sites did so many things from a functional perspective (were designed for both buyer and sellers). It was determined the only way to survive was cloaking, but they couldn't follow through with it because of the intimate relationship they had with each engine and their paid advertising deals.

I do know the struggles of giant websites. The maintenance alone for the SEO's I became friends with was daily, and frustrating for them. None of my clients would've considered paying me for this kind of diligence because I would have needed to charge them more than they could afford (start ups and home businesses were my target market.) What was funny was those same SEO's used Cre8pc.com for advice or resources. I'm aware that at least one of them still does.

When we're all discussing tactics it may help to include the target market, size of site and its business and functional objectives and requirements. A website dealing with an entire industry as a whole, such as food, or science, healthcare or industrial but has one website leading to that industry and that website does various things, has a set of obstacles smaller sites don't have to tackle.

Search engines fail these huge websites who want to come up in the top 10. They can afford to pay for branding their message, etc. but this just gets a person to their homepage. For the company I'm referring to, this wasn't good enough. Management wanted users being taken further into these giant sites as the result of a keyword search that bypassed the homepage entirely and not just to hub pages, but to actual catalogs and other functions contained within the site. The other obstacle faced were that these sites were all database generated via sophisticated means (proprietary software.) As soon as a crawler saw one of the URLS on these sites, they fled.

I have great sympathy for involved websites and what they go through. For the majority of sites on the 'Net, though, the road to success doesn't always mean it must be expensive or terribly time consuming. There's a lot to what SEO is, and many companies welcome more "creative" SEO, and even some tactics that may risky to some people. With investors and stock holders breathing down your neck, sometimes decisions aren't pleasant.

Kim

It was determined the only way to survive was cloaking,

That would have been the wrong determination, as there are always other methods that can be used. Cloaking doesn't bring high rankings. You still have to optimize pages (and then cloak them).

It's a common misconception that somehow cloaking brings higher rankings than more traditional SEO.

Jill

Yes. To make a long story short, when the idea got to my department, I led the effort to shoot it down. Not because of cloaking itself, but because their plan, as spec'd out, wouldn't have met their objectives. Sadly, their sites needed so many things, including better usability. It was in this environment that my birth into the world of usabilty began...

I had sought the advice of Ralph (Fantomaster) for this project and even he had his doubts on the plan. This is how I became friends with him.

SEO tactics aren't bandaids for an already ailing project.

Kim

Hey, if ya wanna make more work for yourself, that's your perogative! Personally, I'm like Kim. I'm lazy, ....

Me too. That's why I've written the programs I need. I bet I put a helluva lot less work into it than anyone else here

Phil.

I just want to mention that the rankings gained by hard SEO techniques are not unstable and are not prone to being bounced around by every tweak of the algorithms. In my experience, they are just as stable as the rankings produced by soft SEO methods. (I'm using the words "soft" and "hard" to differenciate between the two ends of the spectrum). If you stop to think about it, it is obvious that one type of SEO cannot produce less stable rankings than another type of SEO unless the SEO work isn't done very well.

In the old days, there was no difference between a top ranking hard SEO page and a page at the top that got there either by soft SEO or by chance. However the pages got there, they fitted the engine's algos. When the algos changed, none of them fitted quite as well, or perhaps some of them fitted even better - by chance. There was nothing more or less stable about any of the pages at the top.

That changed when linkpop became important. These days, pages that are at the top are not there wholly because of their content. They are there because of linkpop and other off-page factors. A hard SEO doorway page isn't likely to get to the top any more solely on account of its high degree of optimization, and neither is a soft SEO page. They all have to depend on off-page factors. What is different now is that the pages that the soft SEO methods are applied to are likely to get more of those off-page factors than pure doorway pages. That's because soft SEO is applied to a sites content pages. It isn't the on-page SEO that does on its own any more, or hard SEO doorways would win hands-down - as they always used to. A hard SEO page will still beat soft SEO pages every time, given the same off-page factors.

So to use hard SEO methods on doorways, really needs the doorways to be integrated into the site so that they can aquire those off-page factors. Then hard will always win over soft, and the rankings they achieve will be as stable as it is possible to be.

In a nutshell, it isn't the use of doorways and hard SEO techniques that makes the rankings unstable - it's the shortage of off-page factors and the reliance on on-page factors. Neither soft nor hard SEO methods produce unstable rankings any more than they produce stable ones. They are equal in that respect. If the page fits the algo, it will rank well no matter what SEO methods were used. If the algo is tweaked away from the page, the page will drop in the rankings no matter what SEO methods were used.

I just wanted to dispell the myth that one form of SEO produces more stable rankings than other forms. It isn't the type of SEO that does it, it's the off-page factors. And if off-page factors are applied to hard SEO pages, they will win.

I still make doorway pages when required, of course, and I don't usually integrate them into the site. Arranged well, they still get top rankings (and very stable I might add), but they can also be created to support the site's content pages, so that it's the content pages that get the rankings because of the support given by the doorways. That's a different and effective use of doorway pages, although "doorway" is the wrong word when the pages are used in this way. Perhaps "support pages" would be a better term.

Phil.

I still make doorway pages when required, of course, and I don't usually integrate them into the site. Arranged well, they still get top rankings (and very stable I might add), but they can also be created to support the site's content pages, so that it's the content pages that get the rankings because of the support given by the doorways. That's a different and effective use of doorway pages, although \"doorway\" is the wrong word when the pages are used in this way. Perhaps \"support pages\" would be a better term.

I like that term, Phil: \"support pages\". I think this was exactly the concept I started this string with.

Boy, I have missed being on Holiday this past week; the break was good though. Nice and refreshed. Happy Holiday's all!

I prefer to call 'em Zebra Pages.

Jill

I'm probably coming at this from a slightly different angle that most people here with any interest in SEO. Yes I read searchenginewatch daily, but I utterly agree with this:

Yahoo!, AltaVista, and every other search engine had turned into a baroque soup of front-page categories, banner ads, and tiny blue links. For those lucky enough not to remember the web before Google, a typical \"hard\" search, (like trying to find an obscure recipe, or a device driver for Linux ) would require you to run queries on several sites, some of which were slow, and all of which were being gamed by \"search optimizers\" trying to rise in the rankings. In that context, Google was a real revolution: you got a blank page, with just a search box, two buttons, and a logo. They were even cocky enough to suggest you go straight to the first result with their \"I'm Feeling Lucky\" link ? which worked! It was amazing.

From: http://www.idlewords.com/weblog.12.2002.html#79
I may be interested in web sites, but I'm also a surfer, and I feel that I've got an interest in Google's defeat of the parasites (sorry if that sounds emotional). I've had lots of offers from optimising companies, and none of them add up to a hill of beans in my view...
Tell me that none of you really feels any more sympathy for Bob Massa (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/g.../google_pr.html) than for any regular email spammer....
Maybe I'm in the wrong world altogether...but I'm with Jill all the way here.

Hey backword! You are NOT in the wrong world. You are most definitely in the RIGHT world! :smilecolros:

J

Hi backword,

You are completely wrong about the Bob Massa vs. Google thing. Bob Massa did everything right and Google may have done it wrong. If you can come up with anything that Bob Massa did that was wrong in any way, please do - but nobody has managed to do it yet.

To be honest, it isn't yet known publically if Google penalised SearchKing because of the PR ads or if that just drew attention to something else about the site. What is common knowledge amongst people who think for themselves (a great many don't) is that pricing links according to their perceived value is entirely ethical and in keeping with standard business practises. In other words, there's nothing wrong with it what Bob Massa did. Putting it in the same sentence as email spam is just plain silly.

Phil.

There's nothing "right" about creating a situation for yourself that you can't get out of, and then foisting the blame upon others while further creating a smokescreen in attempt to confuse others regarding the true facts.

Jill

Quite right Jill. But as that didn't happen in the SearchKing case, I don't know why you mentioned it here.

Phil.