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Sick of SEO Scumbags

thehodge.co.uk

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Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#11

Post by nulluk »

hackerboos wrote: post #8
davidroberts wrote: post #6

Maybe the OP should write an 'SEO for Dummies' book that helps people avoid becoming victim to SEO scumbags.

All the information needed for good SEO is publicly available from Google.

My SEO 101 has always been "Build a technically sound website with good content and UX. Then talk about it."

Google will follow, you shouldn't be chasing them. They are in the business of providing the most relevant results, make it easy for them to crawl you and the rest will come over time with trust.

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#13

Post by Nursie »

thehodge wrote: post #2

I know HN is typically anti-seo and I understand the reasons why, it's an unregulated industry that gives an impression of witchcraft rather than stable practices.. But worst than that, there are many people in it just in it to make as much money out of people in the shortest amount of time without thinking of the long term relationship or the consequences for that business. I wrote this so that the next time someone…

I'm not anti SEO because it's unregulated or unstable. I'm anti-SEO because it seeks to subvert the search engine's mission (return the most useful results for the searcher* ) to something more akin to advertising (return the results that the person paying for SEO wants).

It pollutes and subverts the web experience for everyone.

It's not the practices that are the problem, it's the whole idea.

[*]OK so I acknowledge that that's a simplistic/altruistic outlook on what the likes of google and bing do

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#14

Post by seivan »

I am sick of them to. Especially the abuse. Recently the keyword LCHF got so polluted with this shitty website that hijacked all the search and always popped up a banner when visiting them that pumped up my CPU to 100.

The company who made it is on my shitlist. They got loads of "SEO experts".

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#15

Post by ericcholis »

camus wrote: post #9

Why are we using the expression SEO since there is only one search engine people are targetting/using ? do businesses really care if they are numero uno on Bing or duckduckgo ? I never understood that. Let's cut the crap , SEO is Google rank optimization. It means there is no SEO since the only player that decides how SEO works is google. If tomorrow Google decides using the word "FLOWER" in your header improves your…

Sorry, this is way to broad of a generalization. Yes, "SEO" is a bit of muddied term. Yes, people target Google first. However, there are quite a bit of standard practices that aren't Google specific that need to be followed. Schema.org and Sitemaps.org are great examples.

Also, a serious business would be kidding themselves if they thought that targeting engines like Bing wasn't important. Reaching customers is important.

With that being said, Google is the biggest player in the game. This means they can make up whatever rules they see fit. However, one of the biggest SEO "secrets" has nothing to do with Google:

"Build for readability, good content that fits your targeted keywords."

Again, this is a general rule, and only a starting point.

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#16

Post by thehodge »

davidroberts wrote: post #6

Maybe the OP should write an 'SEO for Dummies' book that helps people avoid becoming victim to SEO scumbags.

As others have suggested, there is a vast amount of resources for basic search optimisation, I'm on my mobile at that are online, but I will write a pos linking to them at some point

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#17

Post by tlrobinson »

What exactly is "link building"? That itself sounds pretty scumbaggy to me...

In an ideal world (white hat) SEO should include things that make the site better for their users and search engines, and hopefully improve search rankings organically.

"Building" links in order to increase PageRank sounds like it's manipulating the system.

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#18

Post by oinksoft »

camus wrote: post #9

Why are we using the expression SEO since there is only one search engine people are targetting/using ? do businesses really care if they are numero uno on Bing or duckduckgo ? I never understood that. Let's cut the crap , SEO is Google rank optimization. It means there is no SEO since the only player that decides how SEO works is google. If tomorrow Google decides using the word "FLOWER" in your header improves your…

IF Google were to bias in favor of "FLOWER" while disregarding content relevance, it would be an abuse of their dominant market position. But from the outside looking in, it seems like Google strives for nothing but providing the most relevant search results for their users. Controversies tend to arise when Google tries too hard, it seems, localizing based on fragile heuristics and such.

If this is the scam, what's the alternative? An open search engine, perhaps, where development, ranking algorithms, etc. are completely out in the open. I'm not sure this is realistic any time soon though given the cost of hosting a search engine.

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#19

Post by the1 »

camus wrote: post #9

Why are we using the expression SEO since there is only one search engine people are targetting/using ? do businesses really care if they are numero uno on Bing or duckduckgo ? I never understood that. Let's cut the crap , SEO is Google rank optimization. It means there is no SEO since the only player that decides how SEO works is google. If tomorrow Google decides using the word "FLOWER" in your header improves your…

eh? what about baidu?

Re: Sick of SEO Scumbags

#20

Post by znowi »

Whenever I hear "SEO", I instantly feel a presence of something shady and unpleasant with a desire to wash my hands afterwards :) For me, it became synonymous to con artists and fortune tellers.
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