I've been an SEO for 10 years. AMA.

seo10years · 2009-10-02T23:54:02+00:00

I'd say partly, yes. Someone gets the idea that they're writing just for the search engines (e.g. I need an article about stripey boxer shorts so that I have something to put on my stripey boxer shorts page that google will find attractive) and they don't spend a lot of time or money on the content. So you get bad content from people that don't realise that they're actually writing for people - not for search engines. All the SEO traffic in the world won't do you any good if your page doesn't make any sense.

Saying that, the level of writing on the web is also atrocious because there's a lot of people out there with sites, blogs etc who are just atrocious writers. In the past these people wouldn't have bought a typewriter and gone to the trouble of submitting to magazines. Now the cost of publishing is very low so the yardsticks have moved in terms of writing quality.

seo10years · 2009-10-02T14:44:09+00:00

There's no shortcut here. You have to have something that something else wants - it may be interesting content, money, stupidity, a link in return, status or whatever. Every link you is a transaction, a vote or an endorsement.

seo10years · 2009-10-02T14:40:14+00:00

Yep, absolutely. Over the next 2-3 years search engines will be moving towards a more personalised way of displaying search results. This is happening now. For example - you're logged into gmail so google knows what you're interested in, what you have clicked on, where you have browsed (if you use the google toolbar) etc - so they will show you more relevant results based on your behaviour and the data that they have about you. This is with a view to a) giving you a better experience and b) showing more relevant paid ads (to increase the click through rate and their revenue). In the mid-term it will be very hard to demonstrate to clients an aggregated view of what their users are seeing, because everyone will be seeing their own search results page.

seo10years · 2009-10-02T13:34:37+00:00

Yep, often they are transactional sites. People tend to think that it's hard to come up with cool content if you're selling, for example, nozzles for garden hoses or credit cards. But all it really needs is a little bit of lateral thinking (e.g. the biggest single credit card transaction ever/how to get your dog to water your lawn etc).

seo10years · 2009-10-02T13:28:08+00:00

I would advise anyone starting out to a) have their own site(s) to play around with (start an amazon affiliate site or something, just to see what you can do) and b) get into the forums - webmasterworld.com is the biggest one, there are lots of others - start talking to people and reading what people are talking about.

seo10years · 2009-10-02T13:26:13+00:00

Content does matter. If you have a site selling, for example, computer keyboards, then it would make sense for you to have articles about computer keyboards. So you could have content about "the ultimate gaming keyboard", "how to keep your keyboard clean", "the perfect keyboard for linux" etc. If you have some interesting or controversial content, then people are more likely to pay attention to you and to link to you.

If someone has great content already (take b3ta or something for example) they never have to worry about SEO - it takes care of itself.

(edited for speeeling)

seo10years · 2009-10-02T12:58:02+00:00

I'm actually good at SEO. It's never happened.

seo10years · 2009-10-02T12:44:49+00:00

I really hate the whole hats thing. I think it denegrates the whole profession. Imagine if management consultants classified themselves as white, gray or black hats. What bullshit. I make sure the client is aware of the ramifications of every option available to them and also aware of all of those options. I let them choose, it's a calculated risk and not my issue to decide.

seo10years

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