What I’ve learned about SEO (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#31

Post by anon1m0us » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

joegahona wrote: post #21

emerongi wrote: post #6

The real SEO is getting backlinks. They dominate every other aspect. Getting a high rank through "natural" SEO is really hard. I know someone who makes $12MM/year from high-ranking websites in extremely competitive keywords... and it's all about peddling links, really. The first page of results rarely has any correlation with quality (of information/product) and more than likely the correlation is actually negative.…

> I know someone who makes $12MM/year from high-ranking websites in extremely competitive keywords... and it's all about peddling links, really. I am curious what you mean by "peddling links"? > The first page of results rarely has any correlation with quality (of information/product) and more than likely the correlation is actually negative. Isn't the first page of results supposed to be more about relevance than qu…

Peddling links means networking with people who you can pay to link key words in their existing content or new content to your content. For example, I've had businesses contact me and say, "hey, for $100 we'll pay you to link these two words in your blog post to our website."

And also vice versa where you reach out to others to sell keywords in your content to them to improve their SEO.

> Isn't the first page of results supposed to be more about relevance than quality?

According to whom? What google tells you? If google made more money sending you to a web page with regurgitated content on it surrounded by adwords that would actually send you back to google to click on an ad making them more money, why would they send you to a high quality original source that was written in 1999 by someone who cared about the topic and got them zero revenue?

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#32

Post by anon1m0us » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

seriocomic wrote: post #27

I'm actually surprised that this article made the homepage and has received the upvotes it has on this (typically SEO sceptical) HN forum. Probably less than 30% of the article would be considered "effective" (e.g. the advice is specific to, and likely to materially increase SEO performance) and the rest is either unsubstantiated (semantic tags and image compression leading to SEO ranking improvements) or unrelated t…

Well, hey look. They got their web page on HN and a corresponding bump in SEO cred just by hiring some folks to upvote it to the front page.

You too can be a success on the internet! Just follow these 10 tried and true techniques. For just a simple investment of $999, my system will show you what to do.

Do you want to be a millionaire too!?

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#33

Post by petra » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

emerongi wrote: post #18

IAmGraydon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I know someone who makes $12MM/year from high-ranking websites in extremely competitive keywords... and it's all about peddling links, really. How are these sites monetized?

A combination of ads and referral links. Ads are not Google Ads (or similar), but sold directly, no middle-man. The business very starkly displays a core truth: if you really know how to do SEO, you will run your own websites instead of selling "SEO services".

Running your own websites works in some niches. Very crowded ones, probably.

In others , if you don't have a well run business with a competitive offer, SEO won't help much.

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#34

Post by andrei_says_ » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

seriocomic wrote: post #27

I'm actually surprised that this article made the homepage and has received the upvotes it has on this (typically SEO sceptical) HN forum. Probably less than 30% of the article would be considered "effective" (e.g. the advice is specific to, and likely to materially increase SEO performance) and the rest is either unsubstantiated (semantic tags and image compression leading to SEO ranking improvements) or unrelated t…

Could you link to one? Would love some high quality writing on the topic.

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#35

Post by TenJack » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 12:50 AM UTC

> Medium blog posts are poorly referenced by Google.

I've never heard this before and in fact have only heard the opposite.

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#36

Post by hluska » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

chao- wrote: post #20

hluska wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does organic traffic show your LTV !> acquisition cost?

I feel like there are a few unstated assumptions in whsheet's post. Even with those, of course, no advice is universal or without exception. They do make a good point, though. My version of the thought process is that, all else equal, SEO has three key disadvantages: 1. Attribution is often harder than some other channels, and your experimental design has to account for that. 2. There is a less direct, unitary throug…

Thanks for taking the time to write that out. It makes more sense now!

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#37

Post by seibelj » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #22

seibelj wrote: post #8

Use keyword search tool to find searches that have no high quality results. Then write a blog post for that topic and post the link casually on Reddit comments, twitter, etc. then wait a few weeks and it will be the #1 result. I have used this strategy for several years, it basically comes down to writing quality content on topics that don’t have any content.

What search tool do you use to find search keywords?

Here's a guide from a few years ago that explains in detail how to follow the strategy. I don't bother with the really esoteric tweaks because the 95% solution is to identify keywords, write good content, and spread it around the internet.

https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-s...

Re: What I’ve learned about SEO (2018)

#38

Post by seibelj » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

petra wrote: post #16

seibelj wrote: post #8

Use keyword search tool to find searches that have no high quality results. Then write a blog post for that topic and post the link casually on Reddit comments, twitter, etc. then wait a few weeks and it will be the #1 result. I have used this strategy for several years, it basically comes down to writing quality content on topics that don’t have any content.

Searches/topics that don't have any content , usually have very low traffic. So what's the point ?

I focus on the "long tail" because as a side-hustle entrepreneur you will never rank on the very popular keywords. You must monetize a lot of lesser-searched keywords, which in aggregate equal one very popular one, and you don't have to defend it obsessively.