Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Currently page 2 on Google. And now on first page
5th result.
It's the first one for me now.
How SEO Ruined the Internet
261–270 of 296 posts
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems to me like you have it backwards. The reason you even got a chance to click on it is because they wrote it that way. If they didn't, it wouldn't be as visible in Google = nobody would see it. When most websites do this (to survive) folks don't have a choice. Also, advertisers don't pay for something that's invisible.
To base your income and your future on something as volatile as Google search seem to me a terrible idea. What if algorithm changes will tank your all your fleet of poor content websites you've spent last few years on?
Then you shut down the servers and move on. You got the ad dollars at that point, what do you care?
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#263As I see it, maybe 1% of the web is not junk. I think we need an alternative search engine based on community vetting. I.e. you submit your url to the search engine but it isn't present in all search results until a certain number of real people will say it's meaningful and useful. You can do that by only showing it first in 1% of search results and ask people to rate it. You don't have to index 10 billion websites,…
Agree. If you would like you can read an article where I propose how such system could be implemented: https://medium.com/@TautviIas/it-is-time-to-create-a-decentr...
I wonder if Medium would get included in the index.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Say I want a recipe. A tried and true delicious recipe. Can I search and just find a recipe? Nope. Through the magic of SEO, I now have to scroll through 15 paragraphs of somebody's life story before being able to examine the time and ingredients. How much time and energy was wasted on building "tag" systems? All those fun little term link clouds that sites used to have. I know I wasted time on it. I had somethi…
Even worse when you do find the recipe it uses some crazy measuring system! What is one "cup" of flour? It obviously depends on how fine the flour is. Use grams! Use ounces! But above all use some kind of real measurement!
Yeah, cups of flour annoy me to no end. The difference between a cup of packed down flour in the bag vs flour that's been sifted is something like 30% by my rough estimate.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recent example: I wanted to find out why the directions on those Banquet pot pies say to let it stand for five minutes. The words on the box say it finishes cooking in those five minutes. I want to find out more about that: why didn't it finish in the oven? Is it cover for liability, so people don't get burned? All Google returns is page after page of recipes and posts about Banquet pot pies that have no connection t…
This could perhaps be illustrated well with a hard boiled egg. If you remove an egg at the 7 minute mark, the internal temperature is still around 100c, and it will continue to cook. To stop it cooking, dunk it in cold water. Similarly with the pot pie, the filling retains a ton of heat, so it still is cooking for those few minutes, as the heat dissipates. If you left it in the oven five minutes longer (to 'finish')…
I thought it might be something like that. You're way better than Google. Thanks.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#266It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO ruined content. Many people think that SEO ruined content, in this post, we are goin to explain why SEO ruined content. When you finish reading this post, you will know why SEO ruined content. In the last years we have observed a grown in the quantity of conten…
I just searched (1) "SEO ruined content" in duck duck go and this Hacker news page is the first entry. We are very lucky that, as far as we know, an accumulation of irony doesn't create black holes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=SEO+ruined+content&t=canonical&ia=...
Even above the article that we're discussing. Hilarious. And a very good demonstration of the problem.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like we've flipped APIs on their heads - humans use tools to obtain the minimal data (just the recipe), while the bots make requests and receive the whole dump of pointless, extraneous fluff in return.
And here comes the business trick: API access is paid and restricted and requires you to enter a relationship with the data provider. Websites are purposefully made machine-unreadable, because otherwise a lot of people would use third-party scripts to avoid viewing ads and filler content. The Internet is the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. Instead of giving efficient access to high-quality information, it…
> Websites are purposefully made machine-unreadable.
This is a sad result of incentives which ruined RSS, semantic web, and the original purpose of the Internet: to effectively share and communicate information globally.
Advertising (including propaganda and surveillance) and copyright are major forces in that ruination - not to say they don't have legitimate uses and benefits, but their concentrated financial interests conquered the domain. It's a kind of colonialism of public (cyber)space and collective mind.
Tax is an apt analogy, since the power lies in the control of "media" in the most general sense, to force itself in every transaction between things and people.
I believe "dis-intermediation" will help improve the free and direct flow of information. That is, to reduce the middle layers - the gate keepers, the walled gardens, intercepts (lawful or not), filters - by re-decentralizing the net.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#268Content today is written for machines, not for humans.
There is no bigger turnoff than coming across waves and waves of listicles and "alternatives to" articles that provide no real insight, beyond dumping a bunch of links, adding 1,000 words of nothing, titling it "Ultimate Beginner's Guide to X in 2020" and calling it a day.
Sometimes, to find "actual person" content, I'll add "reddit" to the end of my search query, but that won't be enough, as some enterprising content marketer has decided that they need to rank for those searches too, and created posts like "What reddit thinks about X".
SEO is the symptom, not the problem. The problem is that businesses create this kind of low-quality "linkbait" as "inbound marketing", which is getting eyeballs on a page (by whatever means necessary) and upselling their own services. That's why the content feels so soulless.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#269It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO ruined content. Many people think that SEO ruined content, in this post, we are goin to explain why SEO ruined content. When you finish reading this post, you will know why SEO ruined content. In the last years we have observed a grown in the quantity of conten…
This is sooo true, every time i look for a recipe online it's all i ever see.
I cannot say this enough: buy a recipe book.
Online recipe sites will always be absurdly verbose, because if they just posted a list, Google would either rank it poorly because it is "thin content", or scrape it and post it as a Featured Snippet. There is seemingly no in-between.
The site authors have no choice but to fill it with a bunch of warbling about their childhood, to meet Google's minimum word count, which of course the company swears doesn't exist.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#270It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO ruined content. Many people think that SEO ruined content, in this post, we are goin to explain why SEO ruined content. When you finish reading this post, you will know why SEO ruined content. In the last years we have observed a grown in the quantity of conten…
Every time I land on websites that have such content I am wondering why anybody would want that kind of traffic. I mean, don't they have server costs? It's like they own an infinite amount of money bucket that constantly gets refilled somehow. Why are advertisers even paying them for such impressions? Are they so ridiculously retarded in their business model? Can we all hurt advertisers by setting up a website like t…
That traffic is monetized in a few ways:
- Autoplayinig video ads
- Affiliate marketing (meal kits, cooking courses, etc)
- Adsense display ads
- Taboola/Outbrain
These don't bring in much money on a per-site basis, but the owners usually own multiple sites, so it can add up.
If you're able to get the site to grow, it becomes the easiest digital property in the world to maintain. The content doesn't need to be fresh, or engaging. People will always search for generic recipes.