Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A technical guide to SEO

ma.ttias.be

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#21

Post by davemel37 »

Maarten88 wrote: post #15

> Content is, as always, still king. It doesn't matter how technically OK your site is, if the content isn't up to snuff, it won't do you much good. Shameless plug: friends of mine have been building Webtexttool [1], a tool aimed at helping content writers (who often are unaware of SEO technicalities) write optimized content. They are still adding features but it already works quite well. [1] http://www.webtexttool.c…

Shameless rebuttal: it's 2016...isn't it about time people stopped polluting the Internet with content written for search engines?!

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#22

Post by davemel37 »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #19

Solid resource but ultimately this kind of stuff plays a very small part in rankings. Targeting the correct keywords and building backlinks are what it's all about. This article came out not long ago, thought it was really good. http://www.siegemedia.com/strategy/increase-website-traffic

With all due respect...if search engines can't crawl and index your site...everything else you do is worthless for SEO. Get the technical part right and you are a mile ahead of the pack.

Building backlinks? Targeting correct keywords? This advice is obsolete for half a decade already.

With hummingbird and rank brain Google understands context, topics, entities and their relationships, etc...

There is only ONE sustainable seo strategy outside of getting the technical parts right and that's to be an indispensable resource for your target market...with content that cannot be found anywhere else...and that your users cannot live without!!!

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#23

Post by obstacle1 »

davemel37 wrote: post #21
Maarten88 wrote: post #15

> Content is, as always, still king. It doesn't matter how technically OK your site is, if the content isn't up to snuff, it won't do you much good. Shameless plug: friends of mine have been building Webtexttool [1], a tool aimed at helping content writers (who often are unaware of SEO technicalities) write optimized content. They are still adding features but it already works quite well. [1] http://www.webtexttool.c…

Shameless rebuttal: it's 2016...isn't it about time people stopped polluting the Internet with content written for search engines?!

This isn't a "rebuttal" of anything. It is just an expression of your distaste for SEO.

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#24

Post by jonesb6 »

I had an essay for a Philosophy course in college (titled Critical Thinking) where the professor provided the following slide, aptly named "Who should I mistrust".

Point two of four said: "Mistrust the first internet sites that pop up when you search for debatable issues".

Hurray for SEO.

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#25

Post by davemel37 »

obstacle1 wrote: post #23
davemel37 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless rebuttal: it's 2016...isn't it about time people stopped polluting the Internet with content written for search engines?!

This isn't a "rebuttal" of anything. It is just an expression of your distaste for SEO.

I do SEO for a living! No distaste here for anything other than spam and decades old strategies that are a net negative for the world and the SERPs

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#26

Post by techdragon »

davemel37 wrote: post #25
obstacle1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a "rebuttal" of anything. It is just an expression of your distaste for SEO.

I do SEO for a living! No distaste here for anything other than spam and decades old strategies that are a net negative for the world and the SERPs

I literally cannot agree with you more. I've noticed that the bulk of my "searching behaviour" of about the last 2 years, has been a constantly increasing level of "aggressive specificity" to fend off the SEO spam. Multiple quoted segments, parentheses, OR keywords, the insanity that is the "required term flag", all used with increasing frequency to get decent results out of an increasingly irrelevant pile of garbage that I get when I perform basic "simple searches" for facts, references and other topic related information while working.

Don't get me started on the disgusting amount of stack overflow close sites I see frequently rated higher than SO itself due to content spam tactics, keyword stuffing and other grey hat SEO methods to make the sites more "appealing" in technical topic search results.

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#27

Post by davemel37 »

techdragon wrote: post #26
davemel37 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do SEO for a living! No distaste here for anything other than spam and decades old strategies that are a net negative for the world and the SERPs

I literally cannot agree with you more. I've noticed that the bulk of my "searching behaviour" of about the last 2 years, has been a constantly increasing level of "aggressive specificity" to fend off the SEO spam. Multiple quoted segments, parentheses, OR keywords, the insanity that is the "required term flag", all used with increasing frequency to get decent results out of an increasingly irrelevant pile of garbage…

5 years ago we could easily differentiate between thin content(I.E. MAHALO) and quality content...but now there is so much "not quite spam, but overly redundant" content, regurgitated listicles and other keyword targeted content spawned by content writers instead of subject matter experts that I can't seem to find the really good content from search anymore.

Carefully Curated content is how I find the good information. Search used to be a convenience, now it adds layers of complexity to my search needs.

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#28

Post by watchdogtimer »

tbirdz wrote: post #13
pibefision wrote: post #10

Search Engine Optimization starter guide from Google: http://goo.gl/zTsclA

That link is broken. Here is the real link: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...

Thanks for the correct URL.

FWIW, I find the original article easier to read than this SEO guide from Google. Google's guide has so many different methods of highlighting important body text (different combinations of bold, blue/dark blue/red, underlined, and yellow background!), it's difficult to read. Reminds me of amateur desktop publishing back in the 90's.

Re: A technical guide to SEO

#29

Post by rcarrigan87 »

davemel37 wrote: post #22
rcarrigan87 wrote: post #19

Solid resource but ultimately this kind of stuff plays a very small part in rankings. Targeting the correct keywords and building backlinks are what it's all about. This article came out not long ago, thought it was really good. http://www.siegemedia.com/strategy/increase-website-traffic

With all due respect...if search engines can't crawl and index your site...everything else you do is worthless for SEO. Get the technical part right and you are a mile ahead of the pack. Building backlinks? Targeting correct keywords? This advice is obsolete for half a decade already. With hummingbird and rank brain Google understands context, topics, entities and their relationships, etc... There is only ONE sustain…

I wish that were true.
Post reply on HN