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What every Web Developer should know about SEO

polemicdigital.com

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Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#11

Post by kendallpark »

alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

> I believe we are already in the post-SEO age of the Internet, maybe we have been for a few years now.

Could you expand on this? I'm interested in your thoughts.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#12

Post by ssharp »

There is some good technical execution advice here, but the basic premonition is wrong:

"From a development point of view SEO is the concern of how well a robot can read and understand your content. As we will see, a robot being able to read your content easily is normally a good thing for humans too."

I don't think we need different points of view of what SEO is. SEO is about getting your page ranked as high as possible for whatever keywords you're targeting. Technical execution is a tactic that supports that, not a different view of it.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#13

Post by programminggeek »

For basic on page SEO when you are building a site, this is all good and useful information.

Developers should also know that creating good technical content and open source projects on your site will over time generate links and attention for your website. While those links aren't going directly to your product pages, the long term benefit of those pages linking back to your main company pages/products will help those pages rank, which makes you money. It's a bit indirect, but still is worthwhile.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#14

Post by ssharp »

alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

I disagree with you, but I certainly would like to know your reasoning behind this.

Most people are going to use a search engine if all they get are paid ads. People go to Google for the organic results and sometimes the paid ads are useful for those people. It's still in Google's best interest to provide the most relevant organic results as possible.

Most businesses I've worked with still get more revenue from organic than paid and even if the percentages change, it's mostly from increased paid spend leading to more revenue and not decreasing organic revenue.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#15

Post by gildas »

mootothemax wrote: post #10
gildas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another additional bonus of doing that is that you can serve "true" 404 pages (i.e. not soft 404) for invalid URLs when the page is requested with the _escaped_fragment_= query parameter.

Another additional bonus of doing is that you can serve "true" 404 pages (i.e. not soft 404) for invalid URLs when the page is requested with the _escaped_fragment_= query parameter. For one of our sites, the Angular router redirects the user to a "true" 404 page if the in-app page cannot be found, along with the troublesome URL. For example: https://example.com/products/name-does-not-exist/ Will do a JS redirect to:…

Interesting and good to know! I was actually wondering if a JS redirect would suffice.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#16

Post by josefresco »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #3

If you want to see how Google ranks your site speed and user friendliness check out google page speed insights. Very handy tool for guidance on what's slowing down your site. A constantly updated and properly marked up site map is also good to have.

I have no affiliation but do use GTmetrix quite a bit when optimizing client websites: http://gtmetrix.com/

It works like an aggregator of all the existing speed tools and provides a nice speed testing resource that is outside my local network.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#17

Post by alphadevx »

kendallpark wrote: post #11
alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

> I believe we are already in the post-SEO age of the Internet, maybe we have been for a few years now. Could you expand on this? I'm interested in your thoughts.

> Could you expand on this? I'm interested in your thoughts.

Sure! Here goes...

SEO was supposed to give you a competitive advantage, with your highly-optimized site appearing ahead of your (supposedly) less-optimized rivals in the search rankings. With the majority of above-the-fold space on Google being taken up by ads, those looking for free traffic via organic SEO are really just fighting for scraps.

For the past few years, the companies I have been working with have been competing for rankings on relevant search key terms on Adwords with their rivals, meaning the guys with the biggest advertising budgets wins (and Google wins either way). Organic SEO does not suit Google, in terms of their business model. They want you to pay for placement.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#18

Post by butler14 »

alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

Yes search engines make their money from adverts, but without decent organic listings (where ~90% click volume still goes), there's going to be no one to click to ads. It's a fairly simple mechanic.

SEO is likely depreciating gradually as Google gets better at 1) devaluing link spam and 2) accessing and assessing website content for its meaning, but it's unlikely to ever be perfect at doing either.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#19

Post by alphadevx »

ssharp wrote: post #14
alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

I disagree with you, but I certainly would like to know your reasoning behind this. Most people are going to use a search engine if all they get are paid ads. People go to Google for the organic results and sometimes the paid ads are useful for those people. It's still in Google's best interest to provide the most relevant organic results as possible. Most businesses I've worked with still get more revenue from organ…

> Most people are going to use a search engine if all they get are paid ads.

Most people will just click on the first few "results", even if they are in fact ads. They can hardly tell the difference. That's why businesses are paying so much to be on top of certain lucrative search key terms: if they we not getting a return on their advertising spend, then they would not be spending it.

My main point is, even if your website is horribly un-optimized in terms of SEO, if you have a bucket of cash to spend on Adwords, you will still get a tonne of traffic. SEO in this instance is almost irrelevant.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#20

Post by kendallpark »

alphadevx wrote: post #17
kendallpark wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe we are already in the post-SEO age of the Internet, maybe we have been for a few years now. Could you expand on this? I'm interested in your thoughts.

> Could you expand on this? I'm interested in your thoughts. Sure! Here goes... SEO was supposed to give you a competitive advantage, with your highly-optimized site appearing ahead of your (supposedly) less-optimized rivals in the search rankings. With the majority of above-the-fold space on Google being taken up by ads, those looking for free traffic via organic SEO are really just fighting for scraps. For the past…

When you talk about "organic" links do you mean non-advertising links from other websites like blogs/news sites?

It seems like you get diminishing returns on SEO. What's the point at which you'd recommended a site stop SEO and try other means of maximizing exposures. What would these other means be?

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