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Minimum Viable SEO

blog.priceonomics.com

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Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#41

Post by xander54 »

TomGullen wrote: post #33

We've spent a lot of time doing whitehat SEO on our website, and it's paying off (2x search traffic in 6 months). I really would recommend most startups spend a few days reading up on it from good quality sources. Nearly 40% of all our traffic comes from search so it makes sense to pay it some attention. It's not hard. What is hard is navigating your way through the crooks/spammers/quacks who will try every trick in…

2x search traffic over 6 months? That is not something to be proud of. A real SEO would have got 6x easy on a site with no existing SEO.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#42

Post by danneu »

tibbon wrote: post #21

Don't do SEO. Do accessibility. Seriously, don't worry a single bit about SEO. Yet, if you make it so that your site's content, navigation and URLs are screen-reader friendly, then you've probably made a site that has solid SEO and is accessible to people with vision problems. Yet, just doing SEO doesn't make for a very accessible site all the time. Once this is done, make good content, be real and responsive humans…

Climbing search engine rankings has less to do with on-site SEO perfection yet much more to do with backlinks. Look at what porn and gambling kings are doing to compete with eachother.

Too many posts about SEO get everyone obsessing over marginal website tweaks/details when a single backlink to their webite doesn't even exist outside of their HN account.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#43

Post by davidw »

trevin wrote: post #28
weeksie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but what the hell does that have to do with building the site. Inbound links are obvious. Wow, really, is that all? And there are entire communities devoted to this? Seriously, I really want to know what I'm missing because I feel like I must be whiffing pretty hard here not to see it.

It's a lot more complicated than you are letting on. What you are saying is like saying architecture is just drawing diagrams or good journalism is just writing about stuff. Like many industries, there's an art to SEO and plenty of nuances far beyond clean coding and user friendly design.

I think many SEO type people have done a terrible job of marketing their field, because the place they occupy in most people's minds is not a particularly nice one.

I think emphasizing statistics and analysis would make a bit better impression on some of us. It turns on a light that says "aha, there is something real there!".

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#44

Post by pinchyfingers »

randfish wrote: post #29
tibbon wrote: post #21

Don't do SEO. Do accessibility. Seriously, don't worry a single bit about SEO. Yet, if you make it so that your site's content, navigation and URLs are screen-reader friendly, then you've probably made a site that has solid SEO and is accessible to people with vision problems. Yet, just doing SEO doesn't make for a very accessible site all the time. Once this is done, make good content, be real and responsive humans…

I read this, and all I can see is: "Don't do marketing." "Just make a good product and people will find it." I think this is the downfall of many great products. The current startup world has an idealistic belief that better products always win and if you build something people want, they'll find it, when in fact, this has never been true. The "best" politicians consistently lose to those better at marketing and bran…

Totally agree with you Rand. My sentiment was down-voted for being too hostile, so I'm glad you're weighing in on this.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#45

Post by blauwbilgorgel »

jaredmck wrote: post #36
tlack wrote: post #2

A bit off topic, but relevant to the suggestions in this post: a few of my friends are finding it more effective with Google to use a flat file structure rather than the highly nested folder trees that are usually recommended. Anyone have any thoughts/experience with this?

who recommends highly nested folder trees? i've not heard this and have certainly seen it hurt sites. all things equal, flatter is better. my rule of thumb is go as flat as you can while still having an organized, navigable URL structure.

I sometimes recommend nested folder trees, but never deeper than 3 folders. 3 folders deep is enough for millions of pages.

I like nested folders for a couple of reasons, some of which are:

- Clarity. A good structure will instantly signal what the page will be about, before a user or searchbot follows that link.

- Bolded keywords in URL in the SERPS.

- Using pages to flow juice to categories.

- Benefit of targetted anchor text, when using the URL for anchor text.

Compare: big-ecommerce-site.com/yoga-pilatus/accessories/yoga-mat/

vs.

big-ecommerce-site.com/yoga-mat/

And search queries like: "pilatus mat" or "yoga accessories". Which will work better for these queries?

- Structure. Your URL's will reflect in your breadcrumbs, allowing users to navigate your site through URLs (By removing a folder and going to a higher level in the site).

- Silo's. After the Panda update, and this is speculation on my part, Google might lower the imporance of "parts" of your website. Let's say only your blog is of very low quality. Google could discount /blog/ when you have nested folders. With a flat structure your removed "parts" or higher level categories from your site, and don't allow for this.

Ofcourse there are benefits to going flat too. But nested folder trees are not neccessarily a bad thing.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#46

Post by danneu »

weeksie wrote: post #26
WillyF wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're definitely missing the incoming links part.

Ok, but what the hell does that have to do with building the site. Inbound links are obvious. Wow, really, is that all? And there are entire communities devoted to this? Seriously, I really want to know what I'm missing because I feel like I must be whiffing pretty hard here not to see it.

Backlinks are everything. Nowadays, I think you have to try pretty hard to produce markup that Googlebot can't interpret.

I rocketed my forum community to the top of Google by generating backlinks. Some people consider it grunt labor, but I found it a lot of fun, especially if you get a program that keeps track of your rankings. It's addictive.

And this is forum software that is rife with duplicate content, has URLs like `/?forumdisplay=22952920&v=92348232`, and is so unSEO that a third party company started up to sell an expensive product that SEO's the softwre via plugin.

Guess what, despite all the little marginal tweaks and SEO obsessions I don't sweat over, Google miraculously figured stuff out. Backlinks are obvious and they work. It's the reason why you can overtake encumbent #1 rankings that have no backlink campaigns.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#47

Post by davidw »

xander54 wrote: post #41
TomGullen wrote: post #33

We've spent a lot of time doing whitehat SEO on our website, and it's paying off (2x search traffic in 6 months). I really would recommend most startups spend a few days reading up on it from good quality sources. Nearly 40% of all our traffic comes from search so it makes sense to pay it some attention. It's not hard. What is hard is navigating your way through the crooks/spammers/quacks who will try every trick in…

2x search traffic over 6 months? That is not something to be proud of. A real SEO would have got 6x easy on a site with no existing SEO.

When I read that, I can't help but think

"Grow 6 inch...errr times, or your money back! Real SEO!"

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#48

Post by rmc »

tibbon wrote: post #21

Don't do SEO. Do accessibility. Seriously, don't worry a single bit about SEO. Yet, if you make it so that your site's content, navigation and URLs are screen-reader friendly, then you've probably made a site that has solid SEO and is accessible to people with vision problems. Yet, just doing SEO doesn't make for a very accessible site all the time. Once this is done, make good content, be real and responsive humans…

This is a simplification. Yes, I agree that making your site accessible improves SEO, but there are lots of things that fall under SEO, and not accessibility that you should do. E.g. "What am I ranking for?" will tell you what the wider internet thinks your site is good at. "What search terms are bringing people to my site?" will tell you what your visitors really want. "How many people are searching for X and Y?" will tell you how popular X and Y are.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#49

Post by alain94040 »

WillyF wrote: post #19
weeksie wrote: post #17

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I read something about SEO. I keep expecting there to be more to it or that I'm missing something. Other than that, SEO is just making sure you have reasonably semantic markup and clean URLS. Isn't that just plain old best practice anyway? What am I missing? I swear there must be something!

You're definitely missing the incoming links part.

Agreed. In my experience, people linking to you is 90% of the work. Everything else (canonical URLs, etc.) doesn't really matter. Case in point: I now rank close to #1 for the terms "startup conference". Why? Because since I launched the new name for the conference, enough people linked to it. 6 months ago, I barely made it to the first page of Google results.

And by the way, there is one repeatable way to get high-ranked sites to link to you: produce quality content. So karma and SEO are not that far off.

Re: Minimum Viable SEO

#50

Post by jsm386 »

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #38

I did a quick SEO analysis on priceonomics.com. Most of these tips fall into the 20% category. Maybe they can use some of these tips to perfect their SEO strategies. 1. Blog on a subdomain. Though sometimes easier for administration, subdomains might dilute your SEO efforts. Links to a subdomain don't count 100% as links to your main domain. A /blog/ could help with the generation of incoming links and addition of fr…

On point 1 - if you do have your blog already stuck on a subdomain (blog.site.com) this a neat solution to serve it through site.com/blog that might work for you: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-c...
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