No Need For Anything But ‘Basic’ SEO For Web 2.0 – Jack Humphrey Challenges ‘Pocket-Protector’ SEOs
Just the basics. So says, Jack Humphrey expert author at Web Pro News. Just take advantage of Web 2.0 marketing.
No longer do we have to trick engines. We simply give them what they want and they actually reward us for it.
The critics (always people who make money from SEO services) say that it takes months to take a content site to the top of a niche.
That is complete spin to keep us sucking on the teat of SEO firms who have everything to loose in Web 2.0.
He doesn’t stop there, but challenges SEOs with;
The way I build sites gets me into the top ten just as fast or faster than the SEO of yesterday. And I stay there as long as I want. And the geeks cannot push me out (Give it a shot pocket protector man!)
It seems that every other week, someone is proclaiming that SEO is dead. It’s usually self-proclaimed experts that think SEOs are still stuck back in 1998.
What Jack seems not to know is that SEOs are adopting social media, blogs, content development, and all the other stuff he’s yammering about. In fact, SEOs were early adopters . Now SEOs are helping companies use social optimization to their advantage.
A lot of what he has to say is the truth, but they’re not new truths. I’ve been hearing them from SEO experts for years, and I’ve been preaching many of them for years. I’ve never owned a pocket protector, but I may invest in an “I’m right, you guys are all wrong’ bullshit/hype/linkbait” detector.
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January 14, 2007 at 4:25 am
“Now SEOs are helping companies use social optimization to their advantage.”
For a pretty penny which is mostly writing and data entry. Not too glamorous for the SEO anymore when someone at the home office could do the same thing on salary.
“It’s usually self-proclaimed experts that think SEOs are still stuck back in 1998.”
Since far more than one person has proclaimed me an expert, other than me, I am no longer going by the heading “self proclaimed expert.”
Lastly, if you are opposed to linkbait, would you mind if I didn’t link to you from my blog?
I am sure there are other ways other than good content to get links – but you’d know more about that than me.
January 14, 2007 at 12:34 pm
>>which is mostly writing and data entry.
Jack, you’d be surprised how many companies know next to nothing about the social web,what Digg is, or even what a tag is. Yes, they need help. How many corporate blogs have you seen that should have just been deleted because they added absolutely no value?
>>self proclaimed expert
Do you or do you not have ‘expert author’ after your name at WPN? Which by the way, is a little ambiguous as no mention is made about what your area of expertise is. Are people to assume your area of expertise is ‘authoring’?
My opposition to sensationalist headlines is pretty well known, I think I’ll live without a link from ya. I’m just really tired of the whole SEO is dead argument. You may as well say that ‘marketing’ is dead. If people insist on painting an industry with their displeasure I’d prefer it if they didn’t use such a wide brush.
What you and I may consider ‘basic’ SEO has no real definition. I consider intuitive navigation, clear information architecture, concise content, static urls, descriptive titles , etc ‘basic’ SEO. What about taxonomies for large directories or shopping carts? Is that basic too? It is for me, but I’ve seen a large number of totally arsed taxonomies. I can’t begin to tell you the number of shopping carts I’ve seen that could benefit from a little ‘basic’ SEO.
What we’re seeing is the continued convergence of SEO and SEM. This was occurring long before ‘Web 2.0’ came along.
I’ve been called an ‘expert’ in this industry more than once myself. Just isn’t so. I’ll alway be a student. Experts seem to think they know it all.
January 15, 2007 at 12:31 am
“For instance, the fact that SEO is easier than it ever has been in the past should be the Number 1 topic of discussion and jubilation on the web.”
Since when? I don’t seem to remember a time when there was an elusive minus 30 penalty, discounted link values, domain trust issues, or even cloaking issues. Back in the day we had meta tag issues and that’s about it. Ironically, a high percentage of very prominent companies still use the same title tag on every page…and sure, that’s easy, but they still don’t know the basics.
Is increasing competition somehow making SEO easier? That makes sense…
“Finally people with more ideas for great sites, products, and services than technical experience can simply publish great content and do extremely basic SEO and rank high in the engines.”
Or they can publish great content, screw up a minor detail with “basic SEO” and not rank anywhere.
“Go long tail for keywords and leave the one and two word phrases to people who want to be #1 for the most generic term in their niche.”
Um hello…have we ever heard of branding? Or how about the way most users search, normally starting with a generic term and moving towards the longer terms. The more you show up, the more trust you build with the user. All of this seems basic to me, but apparently has floated away from the “expert author”.
“Get into social bookmarking, link sharing, sticky content development, and link bait…Get into custom RSS feeds and autodiscovery.”
Yea, everything just mentioned is above the realm of most organizations. SEO’s were the first to adopt marketing in these areas, have the most experience doing it and are the best at it.
January 15, 2007 at 12:40 pm
You guys are right.
The fact that most people don’t know the basics does indeed provide the SEO industry with a lot of clients.
It is also the regulating factor which determines who gets search engine rankings and who doesn’t.
I am not against that, nor do I want everyone on the web on equal footing.
You have both done an excellent job of de-contexting my article and considering my reader, so yeah, my article looks awful dumb in that light.
I didn’t declare SEO dead with a wide brush. I did it in a context. And all the SEOs came out of the woodwork to debunk something that wasn’t said.
I didn’t use this article or other SEO posts as bait. I use content to inform readers.
The closest thing to bait I have on the blog now is the list of video sharing sites, which, if I were working with an SEO firm, they would have instructed me to put up.
Really, the only reason I put up titles like this one is to get people to read.
One title from one of the blogs you two frequent in front of my readers would have them clicking off to something more interesting and understandable in an instant.
You really need to consider the market and understand that there is no enemy here except for the one you create.
There’s more than one way to get people ranking better in the engines.
And there are different audiences at different levels of experience looking for different information.
The geeks no longer have a corner on the market, nor do you need to hire someone to decipher basic search engine optimization and get you rankings.
No one in my market lives or dies by “elusive minus 30 penalty, discounted link values, domain trust issues, or even cloaking issues.”
If you are doingthe basics right, none of that matters or will become an issue. It’s all high-end geek. Geek sheek.
Is it threatening, just maybe, that people can somehow survive without a high paid SEO in their pocket?
Companies with a lot of money can certainly afford not to learn anything at all and hire you guys. That’s not my market – they ain’t reading my blog!
As far as “Expert Author” status, I’d be an idiot to assign myself such a moniker.
Picking out things that are built into someone’s CMS system which are beyond my control is stretching a bit.
If that were true, I’d best stick to “authoring” subjects and keep my nose out of the SEO stuff huh?
Lastely, I am not pissing on your turf. I don’t want to be considered an SEO and you guys DO know more about it than I do by a huge margin.
My point is you know FAR FAR more than a person must in order to get ranked well in the engines.
My job is to calm people down who are freaked out about “minus 30 penalties” who will never experience one, or any other problem with SEO if they first don’t simply do the basics.
Was it my job to list the basics in the article you attacked? No. I can do what I want, when I want.
Just as you can lable me a hypey link baiter all day long in your blog.
The proponents of the traditional news industry hate both of us because we can be wrong and not have to back up our facts, and yet, be seen as experts and authority figures by significant audiences.
I posit that we have totally different audiences, and, taken in context of my overall message from post to post over time, this post made total sense to that audience.
Wasn’t written for you – and I didn’t actually think anyone who obviously knows SO MUCH about the subject would read such a newbie oriented post in the first place.
January 15, 2007 at 11:54 pm
You make some good points, well said.
“I didn’t actually think anyone who obviously knows SO MUCH about the subject would read such a newbie oriented post in the first place.”
We read a lot…gotta keep up with everything.
January 16, 2007 at 12:24 am
>>de-contexting
Are you saying I take things too literally? ; )