SEO Woe: Cows in the Commons

March 6, 2011

I have another gosling writing about this but I wanted to weigh in on this fine rainy Sunday in Harrod’s Creek. Point your browser at “SEO Is No Longer a Viable Marketing Strategy for Startups.” The basic idea is that certain search engine optimization methods of building traffic have lost their efficacy. The key point in my opinion is:’

I talk to lots of startups and almost none that I know of post-2008 have gained significant traction through SEO (the rare exceptions tend to be focused on content areas that were previously un-monetizable). Google keeps its ranking algorithms secret, but it is widely believed that inbound links are the preeminent ranking factor.  This ends up rewarding sites that are 1) older and have built up years of inbound links 2) willing to engage in aggressive link building, or what is known as black-hat SEO. (It is also very likely that Google rewards sites for the simple fact that they are older. For educated guesses on which factors matter most for SEO, see SEOMoz’s excellent search engine ranking factors survey).

I added boldface to the phrase that struck me as particularly interesting; namely, the one with the word “content”.

Now there are some outfits who have figured out that the lousy economy makes it easy to get people to write articles for a modest amount of money. If a company generates quite a few articles and tosses in the basics of page indexing, the various search engines usually index the content. The more links and buzz that an article generates makes the write up show up in a Tweetmeme.com list or high in the Google search results or even a top spot on Bing.com.

Wonderful. We have a popularity context much like the one that puts such effective professionals into the various US, state, county, and municipal elected offices.

What I find interesting about the voting approach is that our friend Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that the majority approach delivers quite a number of outputs. Excellence may not be assumed. Popularity is one yardstick. The measurement of quality in a written document may not lend itself to popularity. One chestnut is the plight of Al Einstein. Nothing he wrote resonated with more than a baker’s dozen of folks. Even the Nobel committee struggled to recognize him. That’s the problem with excellence. Voting does not work particularly well in many situations.

image

Too many cows in the commons.

What’s this mean for search engine optimization, content factories, and a results list in a free Web search engine? Three points in my opinion:

  1. Gaming the system (no matter what system) is great fun and extremely lucrative for those who can exploit what I call the “something for nothing” approach to information. A short cut is worth a lot of money, particularly at conferences that explain how to send lots of cows into the common fields of content.
  2. Smart search engines are just not that smart and probably will not be. That is the reason that commercial content producers generally offer information that follows a different path. I know that most people are not interested in provenance, fact checking, and accuracy, but most of the commercial database producers do a better job than a Web master looking for a way to boost traffic and either keep a job or get a raise. Content is not job one for these people.
  3. Search engine optimization is pretty much whatever the experts, pundits, and carpet baggers want it to be. There are tricks to exploit stupid Web indexing methods. I just ignore that sector of what some journalists view as “real search” because search is darned easy for any one with a net connection and a browser.

Bottom line: SEO won’t go away. In my view, one can’t kill it. After a nuclear blast, certain creatures will survive. Publicly accessible, ad supported indexes will not be as objective as I would like. Nor will the indexes do a particularly good job of delivering precision and recall. The advanced features are little more than efforts to get more advertisers.

In short, Web search, SEO, and much of the content on the Web is like a common grazing area with too many cows, too many footballers, and too many gullible walkers. (These are metaphors for marketing for me.)

SEO is not dead. How do you kill looking for a deal, finding a short cut, getting something for nothing? Tough to do. And those cows in the commons. Lots of output. Lots.

Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2011

Freebie

Comments

13 Responses to “SEO Woe: Cows in the Commons”

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    SEO is alive an well. I’m a startup but have been working for a month on my SEO. It is working well, but takes work every day.

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