"How To SEO Is Not Important Because Content Is King, Says Google Employee"

I Read through this entire thing. First off all this is talking about is onpage SEO. Anyone who is any good at SEO knows how important LSI is to your on-page optimization. Of course related words and themes will rank you higher. Of course the more keywords you rank for the more traffic you get. Finally you don't need his software to write quality articles. If it's only down to related themes to create a quality article I might as well put up some ridiculous gibberish and watch it rank...

Google was originally called Backrub (Seriosuly, just Google it ...) and was designed around websites linking to others and counting as votes. This is part of why Google became so popular and successful.

So by anyone saying that backlinking and off-page SEO is not important you are pretty much saying that Google does not work the way it is designed.

Case in point when a bunch of marketers wanted to make it so when you typed in Google "most despicable person" George Bush showed up they went and did crazy off -page SEO so that Whitehouse.gov showed up at position #1 - This is the only instance I know of where Google actually manually affected a webpage's ranking.

Another case that shows that even if you on-page is terrible you can rank based solely on your backlinks is Adobe ranking for "click here" even to this day. They have hardly any information on that page and if you search you will find that click here is not anywhere on this page.

So how can anyone say that "content is king"? and ignore all other SEO factors? The problem isn't SEO it's the implementation of it. Content is just one important factor of good SEO.

Also the more people believe SEO is dead the better it is for those of us who understand it and make a lot of money utilizing it effectively on our websites and for our clients.

It seems that this is what it's really all about. How can Google determine the best content for someone searching for information between two well-written pieces of content? One may show up and the other may not. However, both could be as equally relevant to the users query. /shrug

Ok, lets delve a little deeper. I work at a hyper-local level and offsite SEO is "rarely" required to rank a site on the first page of Google.

If you are competing in a niche nationally the story is quite different obviously, However, great content is a major factor in my opinion.

now, that's laughable. How many sites do you know about have no internal or external links?


come on!

How is ethical white hat search engine optimisation, cheating??????

Here, have a look at this site. This is a local painter in my area, he sells his work at the weekend markets here in Sydney. Hes a great bloke, and I quite like his paintings.

http://www.borettoart.com/

Anyone who knows anything about SEO, will know within just a few moments of looking at his site, that it isnt optimised, and because of the sites poor performance in terms of sales, he's given up on it.

He said to me last weekend..."I spent so much time and money on that website - it was a mistake - in one year, I sold 1 painting". He was really upset about it.

I know this isnt the best example in terms of "content" but still, to suggest that SEO in itself isn't important, is madness, and to be honest, Id say that theres about 1,000,000,000 SEO firms out there that would agree with me.

Not to mention easier, more fun, and much, much more profitable.

SEO is like naming your business "1234 AAA Locksmith" to try to be listed first in the Yellow Pages. And the "traffic" you get is about the same quality, too.


Yep, social signals will be the next attempt, but the spammers and cheaters have already begun strangling the golden goose with that one. Even if the geniuses at Google (or the next search engine leader) come up with the perfect system, that perfect system would have to be maintained by imperfect humans.

And, you bring up a great point. I have some sites and forums with some of the highest quality content on the planet, and yet they will never be found in Google... I don't even know (or care) if they have been indexed or not.




When it comes to getting ranked, perhaps... But not necessarily to making money. A few of my forums, I'm almost certain that they are not indexed (by any well-behaved bots, anyway...) because they are 100% private. But I make a great deal of money from them.



It's true, the "cheaters" tend to be ranked higher. What amuses me is that anyone would put so much effort into cheating for such low quality traffic? Every IM site has people raving about how great SEO is... Sure, it is slightly targeted, and great if you're a local brick & mortar, but in most niches the leads are hardly "quality" at all. Seriously, when you have to "work your numbers" and consider your percentage for every aspect of your business... Why not just go out and connect with real people and have a positive impact on their lives? It's easier, takes less time, and makes a lot more money in both the short term and long term.





Bananas aren't beer? You lie!

Banana Beer


But yeah, you could give Google what they want. Personally, I just refuse to jump through that many hoops for what little they offer in return.

There are a few things about "Content is King" that bother me.

First, I started out thinking that way and built a couple very high quality sites. One site had content that catered to the layman's perspective on up to a graduate level research perspective. NO other site had that level of content or research. None of the content was outsourced. I wrote it all to make sure it was extremely good. So, my site ended up at #1 over time. I was happy. Then along came this dude that basically took all my content, rewrote it, even took my web design and tweaked that, then spammed the hell out of his site with backlinks and now guess who's #1? He didn't add any new content. In fact, as an individual, he doesn't even know anything about the niche itself. He's #1 because he knew how to manipulate the search engines and, at the time, I didn't. Nor did I think it was ethical. Not to mention stealing somebody else's content etc. What exactly did content have to do with his ranking?

I've learned my lesson over the last few years. Fantastic content is great. Until a hundred other people steal it, rewrite it, and SEO the heck out of it. Then your content isn't so good anymore.

Second, what the heck is considered "good" content? How many posts do I have to read about people filling their sites with "quality" content and in another post they're hiring outsourcer's to write their weight loss content? I'm sorry but that is not quality content. An article telling me how to lose weight by eating less carbs or whatever is not quality content. It is ridiculously redundant content. I would guess that 99% of outsourced content is just redundant, repetitive, filler no matter how well it's written. There are plenty of PhD exercise physiologists out there writing good content that is on the leading edge of current research. Is your outsourcer at that level. No? Then your content is not "quality" relative to what else I can find on the net. Sure, there is a place for content below the academic research level but that place has probably been full for quite some time now.

Third, I can't truly look at Google's search results and honestly say that the top of the search rankings are filled with high quality content. It's just not true. So, how do you reconcile the "content is king" or "quality is king" mantra when the evidence just doesn't support it. Sure, Google is probably trying to eliminate some of the spam that is out there but is that really improving their ranking algorithm? I haven't seen much change in Google's rankings in quite some time, if ever. Is Wikipedia's content really so good that it tends to rank 1,2 or 3 for nearly every search term they have a page for? If so, then why not just cut the net down to Wikipedia pages and save us the clutter of the rest of the sites on the net?

Fourth, a few posters mentioned bounce rate. Bounce rate could be a good indicator of useful content that the user is interested in but it's not always true. The other day I wanted to convert one measure into another - like ounces in a cup. So, I type my idea of a good search term in to the search box. At the top of the search results is a quote that says 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces. Ok. The rest of the sites in the search rankings must suck because I didn't even try to visit them. In fact, the results page must really suck as well because I was only on it for about 2 seconds. That is one bad bounce rate. Sometimes a very efficient site would inherently have what would be considered a "bad" bounce rate. As a user I like efficiency. If I have to scour a site for some simple information then I get irritated. Is that a quality site?

Fifth, I'm tired of the "ethical" arguments against SEO. This is a predominantly capitalist system, like it or not, and nearly every endeavor is in some way related to money. Any commercial enterprise of whatever size that ignores marketing will not be a commercial enterprise for long. As another poster mentioned, should books have blank covers? Usually the covers or packaging of products is designed to be very appealing to the eye and grab your attention so you'll buy the product. Is that unethical? Some distributors buy favorable shelf space in grocery stores or make trade offs so they can get end caps on aisles. SEO and SEM really aren't much different.

It reminds me a little of those that rail against stock day traders and currency traders. Their argument is that those people aren't truly investing but rather are just scavengers trying to make a buck off of a quick trade. That may be true but they add efficiency and liquidity to the market. Without them it might be far more difficult to sell your stock when you want to. There are negatives and positives to day traders. There are negatives and positives to SEO. Google has always been reactionary in regards to SEO. They would never make a move unless they were forced to by the power of the SEO movement. If there were only a few SEO guys around they would be billionaires. But, since every IM'er on the planet wants to make money the SEO movement becomes a very forceful player and Google is compelled to take notice. When they do they make changes that sometimes improve their system. It adds some transparency to the system as well. Without people exploiting Google's algorithm we would probably know absolutely nothing about it. Google's certainly not going to tell us. They just say "Content is King".

In the end everyone engaged with the internet will find out what does and doesn't work one way or another. Their results will give them the answer. Unfortunately, the results will change over time as will the answers. Ideas and beliefs regarding SEO and content will need to change over time in order to compete. If you're stuck to one idea then you're probably not going to be as successful as you could be. Relying solely on Content is King may work for some but in the end there are far more variables involved that you can ignore at your own risk.

Sorry, you can only +1.

Any more than that is considered unethical seo

I agree with that. It's never a good idea to rely on any one Company or business model out of your control, no doubt. What I am trying to point out that not relying on Google doesn't mean that people should not be actively trying to get great rankings on Google because if they don't, they are most likely costing themselves money directly and/or indirectly.

Amen to that. Five years ago Google was 80% of my traffic. Today it's less than 4% and I haven't even gotten into creating apps for each of my websites yet, nor have I gotten a handle yet on mobile advertising, but I'm getting there.

Get your product listed on one or two decent CPA networks and your head will spin by the amount of traffic you'll be getting. Become a guest on a radio program for 15 minutes, get to plug your domain name a few times, and you'll be getting some serious boost in sales. Build some JV relationships with some power affiliates in your niche and WHAM BAM!!!! you can set up traffic streams that will last for years.

Someone posted that "content is king" and "SEO is king" are too broad as statements on their own and I totally agree with that. I guarantee if you ask 100 SEO "experts" what they thing SEO is, you'll get 100 very different answers. Ask 100 marketers what they think quality content is, you'll get different answers as well because it depends on the context, something that this thread is missing in some people's post (but that happens a lot in forum yes?).

In any event, I get mixed information from Google's own people at IT conferences. Matt Cutts will say one thing, then one of their own algo engineers will say to me, "No, I don't think he would say that because this is how we look at content...". WHAAAATTT??? Are you kidding me? Where's my shot glass?

So I just go back continuing what I do, which is testing all this sh*t out myself. <Pops bottle of Merlot wide open>.

RoD

Anytime Mike, thanks for the kind words

Im beginning to favour both sides of the argument. I think Caliban has raised some good points, and while I am "pro SEO" I can understand and appreciate the other points of view raised here as well.