Matt Legend Gemmell’s article “SEO for Non-dicks” makes for nice reading, but the reality is very different.
Simply writing good content, if you follow Matt’s advice, will not get you good ranking in Google’s search results for competitive keywords and terms.
There are some great comments to the post that attempt to explain what the reality actually is – that link-spamming works well to fool Google into giving great (but undeserved) rankings to sites that know how to play the game.
Adamb suggests using an alternative SEO approach – offline, real-world SEO:
A little tired of seeing these types of posts pop up.
I’m not saying I don’t agree with it, but the reality is – SEO done the above way = no rankings – at least for anything worthwhile.
I’ve tried it, my neighbor tried it, my moms brother’s cousin tried it.
It doesn’t work. Unless you’re trying to rank for your name, or you’ve branded yourself somehow – you will not rank for anything worthwhile by just writing good content and making sure your on-page is done correctly.
Welcome to the real world of SEO.
Google is the one making the rules, not your Personal Code of Internet Ethics.
Until they start rewarding the above tactics, spammers will be spammers. It worked 10 years ago and it works today.
It would be nice if we lived in a Google world where genuinely good content was ranked higher than link-spammed-to-death sites were, but that’s not the case – I’m sorry but it’s not.
Scenario #83156A: Mom-and-Pop shop that sells legitimately good products that wants an online presence literally has no chance to make it using the above tactics, assuming their “niche” is moderately competitive – as most lucrative niches are.
So what are they left to do? 2 Options:
A) Hope and pray that sometime Google will get it’s act together and stop rewarding the exact people their building the algorithm to devalue. Which will probably never happen, at least not the next decade or two. Or…B) Do what everyone else is doing to stay competitive and get some real world SEO done – and get the exposure they want and deserve.
Is anyone going to naturally link to mom-and-pop shop? Probably not. At least not enough to stay competitive. Does that mean they should be ranked #348 for their money keywords. Google seems to think so.
While I share your sentiment Matt, you’re not looking at it from a practical business perspective. Businesses exist to make money. If there is exists a way to increase the amount of profit your company can make without breaking the law, it often makes sense to do it. This applies to everything, not just SEO. Giving your company an edge over the competition is how you make it successful.
You and the commenters act like you want to take the high ground by condemning the use of tricks to game the system, as if this technique is wrong or immoral. Unless Google says no, you should say yes. So long as a company can do something like this that won’t damage their long term growth or income, they should do it. It’s how free markets operate, for better or worse.
Back to SEO, posting well structured, quality content is great. But as others have said, if you’re in a competitive niche where everyone is fighting to rank you need an edge over your competitors. Using all methods that aren’t banned by Google can give you this edge. Using site or link networks as you discuss is a technique that has been around for years. I guarantee that many of the sites that rank at the top for competitive keywords are already using this or a similar techniques.
In the end it’s up to you to decide if you want to take that step to get an edge.
Weezer gives an example of how bad, but well-spammed content ranks better than good content:
The problem with SEO advice about just writing “good and compelling content” is that it doesn’t work.
Google search quality was not improved any by Panda, it just shifted results around, pulling up articles from brand name publishers.
Check out keywords like “Best Free iPhone Apps” and you’ll see poor quality results from both black-hat SEO blogs alongside poorly written blog content from brand names like Time.
Google and blogs like these can say that writing quality articles will lead to good SEO results, but all independent evidence suggests otherwise.
Christian Boyce explains why the “writing new, great content all the time” method doesn’t work for certain kinds of websites:
Interesting article. For a writer trying to reach a wide audience, what you said (be genuinely relevant) makes sense. I completely agree. For someone for whom a website is a brochure, or an introduction to the company, advising “keep writing” is not relevant advice. Take my friend the general contractor. He has a website showing pictures of his best projects and describing how he works and how much experience etc. That’s his whole site. He’s not doing a “remodeling blog” because the point of his website is not to get a lot of eyeballs. The point of his website is to show potential customers what he does. He’d like to be found when someone googles “best general contractors in los angeles.” “Keep writing” isn’t the answer for him.
Your site, and the general contractor’s site, are completely different animals. Yours is a work in progress, continually growing. His is done. He might add more pictures someday but to his way of thinking, he has a website and the stuff that is on it is as relevant today as it was last year. Your website is never done, and it can’t be, because the business you’re in changes all the time. The contractor’s business is the same this year as last year as ten years ago.
People like the general contractor want to be found, and they are probably even more likely to be in the dark when it comes to black hat/white hat methods. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess that this sort of person would pay for improved search engine results and not know that it’s wrong.
None of this changes the fact that I agree with you. SEO should be unnecessary– do good work and let Nature run its course. You’ll be found that way, eventually. Cheating the system is bad. But, the advice to “Keep writing” only works for some people. It works for you and your blog, it works for me and my blog (christianboyce.blogspot.com). But it doesn’t work for people for whom the website is more of a brochure.