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The internet is an SEO landfill

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Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#311

Post by nickfromseattle »

This is 100% how search engine optimization works, the consultants are correct.

As a marketer, when I search for marketing information on Google 70%-90% of the time all of the stuff on the 1st page generally isn't teaching me anything I didn't already know.

But as someone who does this exact thing, I know how expensive good content is - hiring an author to write 3,000 words of valuable information for a reader can cost $500 - $1000 per page. Add another $400 - $1,000 for the consultants time on that page.

Or you can hire writers that produce lower value information for $30 - $120 per 3,000 words that ranks just as well as high quality content.

The first thing I thought when I saw Elon Musk's writing AI was how powerful of a search marketing tool this is.

Reducing your content cost to effectively zero gives you a HUGE competitive advantage.

I know a publisher programmatically generating content and generating millions of organic search visits a month for marginal costs reaching 0 - they pivoted to a tech company after identifying their #1 problem was content costs were too high and ad revenue was too low. Now they're selling this technology to other publishers.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#312

Post by elamje »

visarga wrote: post #224
nightski wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to make money is precisely the reason Google is the way it is. I don't think starting another business is the answer.

I've been thinking about a distributed search where each participant in the network crawls and answers queries related to a part of the web. Make search more like bittorrent. Is there such a project?

Cool concept. Let me know if you find anything!

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#313

Post by novia »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #228
ajmurmann wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why Google doesn't hell ban these pages. It seems trivial, at least as a human, to detect them. You don't even need to do this for all of them. Just banning a few hundred will deter everyone else.

What exactly is being hellbanned here? Any web page with an uninteresting preamble like most articles and blog posts online?

Spammy websites. A flag tool given to long time Google account holders would be helpful.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#315

Post by dreamcompiler »

shripadk wrote: post #294
dreamcompiler wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably nobody has no conflicts of interest ever. But right now Google is heavily biased toward advertising and data collection which is not good for -- pretty much everybody.

Then how do you propose companies market their products/services? You want us all to go back to pre-90s era where advertising was controlled by few media conglomerates who favoured only the giant corporations? Today, a mom-and-pop store has as much an equal footing as a big-box store when it comes to advertising their products/services online. Spammy articles should be dealt with the way spam is dealt with in email.…

I don't think advertising is bad, provided:

1. It's easy for people to tell the difference between advertising and not-advertising.

2. The collection of private information is strictly opt-in, owned by the collectee, and deletable by the collectee.

3. Advertising is a healthy competitive industry with no one company controlling a majority of the business.

None of those things is true in the Googleverse today.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#316

Post by corodra »

plotteddancer16 wrote: post #251
detaro wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite the same as the pattern the parent describes I think: There's a longer post before the recipe, not integrated into the recipe.

Ya, I believe the OP was talking about the five pages of story-telling before the recipe that requires you to annoyingly scroll until you find the recipe ingredient list. I came here for a cookie recipe, not a story about how you discovered you liked oatmeal cookies when you were 12, but then became a raisin-cookie fanatic, before moving back to chocolate chips, when you suddenly remembered your Grandma baked you pea…

Oh, you forgot all their allergies. Every cook on the internet has an allergy to everything but the substitute. "That's when I found out I'm allergic to flour, eggs, milk, butter, salt, chocolate, meat and fruit. Here's my healthy recipe for chocolate chip cookies made from tofu, himalayan sand, gerbil presents and wheatgrass." No! First, it's not a chocolate chip cookie then! It's an unholy abomination of sadness. Wheatgrass is just lawn clippings! Something is wrong with you!

Look, I have the very sad allergy to hazelnuts... I love hazelnuts... but they don't love me. Also soy. Soy is borderline deadly to me even in small amounts. So, I can't have asian food without cooking it myself. Fish sauce sans soy fermentation is my substitute. I do get the allergy issue and being left out in many foods. But I find it so damn hard to believe that all these people are allergic to everything but these "healthy alternatives" that end up being nutritionally empty. Then they wonder why they're suddenly anemic. Then they don't get enough sun because their skin "suddenly" became sensitive. Then they have depression issues. Then they can't shit straight. Then they start cutting back on other foods. Then they have to live on horse pills.

Sorry, rant. Got angry.

Fun argument to have with the next anti-vaxxer you meet. If they argue about mercury or lead being in vaccines, agree with them. Just flat out agree with how terrible it is. Then ask if they like Himalayan sea salt. There's like a 99.9% chance they love it, along with essential oils. "You do know there are more trace amounts of mercury and lead in Himalayan sea salt than in vaccines?" You will then agree with me that mental gymnastics needs to be in the next Olympics. It's amazing how they'll talk around it. Make some popcorn, open a beer and watch the show.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#317

Post by x0x0 »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #274
x0x0 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google search was and is a big improvement, but we could use another couple Panda s.

Pandas?

Panda was an update aimed at downranking or removing some of the super thin SEO content from google's index

https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-panda

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#318

Post by shripadk »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #315
shripadk wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do you propose companies market their products/services? You want us all to go back to pre-90s era where advertising was controlled by few media conglomerates who favoured only the giant corporations? Today, a mom-and-pop store has as much an equal footing as a big-box store when it comes to advertising their products/services online. Spammy articles should be dealt with the way spam is dealt with in email.…

I don't think advertising is bad, provided: 1. It's easy for people to tell the difference between advertising and not-advertising. 2. The collection of private information is strictly opt-in, owned by the collectee, and deletable by the collectee. 3. Advertising is a healthy competitive industry with no one company controlling a majority of the business. None of those things is true in the Googleverse today.

I agree with all your points! Makes sense.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#319

Post by TAForObvReasons »

notatoad wrote: post #262
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: recipes, one of the potential reasons for this is that bare recipes are not copyrightable by law. Courts see them as algorithms, almost -- e.g., there are only so many ways to cook a grilled cheese sandwich. > 17 U.S.C. 102(b): In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of…

Subscribing to r/baking has been enlightening. The people who write those pages of text you have to skip over to read their recipes actually think they're adding value and that the readers of their recipe blogs are there for the stories as much as for the recipes. Maybe they're right and some people do love the stories, but they're definitely not just there for SEO anymore. At the very most cynical interpretation, sc…

Many essays-before-recipes summarize the experimentation process, what worked and what didn't, why an unconventional ingredient is used, why no stock is used when traditional recipes call for it. Without the context, many recipes just seem wrong and some real gems would be passed over

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#320

Post by bartread »

schachin wrote: post #291

This post is just flat out wrong. We are not using tricks when we tell you to create content. We are telling you what Google considers quality. Tricks are for blackhats and they can work and there is nothing wrong with that, but what you are talking bout is actual white hat SEO that Google demands from sites to be considered quality enough to rank. And the "it's easy" garbage. Go ahead. Let us know how easy it is whe…

> We are not using tricks when we tell you to create content. We are telling you what Google considers quality.

That may very well be true but taken to its logical conclusion all you're really admitting is that Google does a very poor job of accurately assessing the quality of any given piece of content. And that pretty much nails the point of the post.

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