Content SEO vs. Link Mongers

Garrett · #1 (**permalink**) 01-29-2004, 12:40 PM

In an fiery post over at SEOroundtable, John Scott stated his opinions regarding what he calls the two styles of search engine optimization: Content SEO and Link Mongers.

He's of the opinion that Content SEO is dead, and that anyone interested in raising their search engine rankings should focus only on link generation.

He italicized this section of his post, making plain his position:

"You cannot keyword density your client into a #1 spot for highly competitive keywords. You cannot page title your client into a #1 spot for highly competitive keywords. The only way you're going to get there is by way of PageRank and anchor text of inbound links."

Now, I'm no SEO expert, but I'm having trouble believing that it's worthwhile to stop optimizing your web pages for the bots. I think John's point is a good one - that link building is vital in your quest for top ranking on competitive keywords, but to cut out on-page optimization seems a bit drastic.

Here's a useful bit of advice from a later post of his: "I think the best strategy is to focus on topical links as much as possible. If you are targeting "web hosting", then do a search for "web hosting" and do whatever is needed to get links from as many sites as possible in that SERP set."

Here's his complete post, and I'd love to hear what you think.

janeth · #2 (**permalink**) 01-29-2004, 12:53 PM

I agree with John Scott 100% links are king not text.

It has been that way for a long time.

I, Brian · #3 (**permalink**) 01-29-2004, 01:41 PM

Content SEO is a great way to trawl low traffic terms - but John's beef seems to be that some people stop there, call it SEO, and then mislead clients into believing that they can be ranked for anything even remotely competitive.

janeth · #4 (**permalink**) 01-29-2004, 04:41 PM

Yes your right I, Brian

He is not saying to Stop optimizing pages, but that you should not stop there if your trying for more competitive keywords your going to have to get links also.

I, Brian · #5 (**permalink**) 01-29-2004, 05:22 PM

Good links at that - the days of plain PR linkage seems to be fast fading. It seems only a matter of time before Florida has infected all Google results.

Mel · #6 (**permalink**) 01-30-2004, 08:30 AM

Well IMO John is right that the tough rankings will need some anchor text linking to get the rankings, but John tends to seperate the various parts of what I like to call holistic SEO into the SEO side and the marketing side whereas I think the two should never be seperated.

Web pages are built for viewers and for the forseeable future you will have to have on-page content for those viewers and to convert them into customers. That being the case why not optimize the page content and get the extra ranking that's going to give you? Might just be enough to put you on top of another power linker.

John and others have proved the worth and power of anchor text links in getting rankings, but you need more than rankings to have a successful website.

ldyguique · #7 (**permalink**) 01-31-2004, 06:13 PM

Unfortunately, from many of the searches that people are commenting on and how rapidly very valid sites that are exactly what a person would be seeking are falling off the radar and the number of invalid or irrelevant sites that show up, I'd have to agree that this seems to be the up and coming factor -- and will kill Google. I know that I've switched at least 20 people over to Vivisimo during the past month and will continue to push it.

The public isn't terribly well-educated on searching practices; however, even the most novice know when they aren't reaching what they want to. They will tend to discount ANYone who comes up in a group of irrelevant sites as being equally irrelevant. They may not know about link mongering, but they do know about scams and shams. It's a pity.

So many web businesses have worked hard to create very valid sites, very valid product lines, and have played all the SEO games -- and now, through no fault of their own, they are nearly down and out and only crap is floating in the cesspool of the commercial internet.

I understand the basic premise - that a major player will by its nature accrue a fair amount of wannabes who will ride its coattails and proclaim through links, "See, we play with the BigGuys." It's a valid POV. Who is orbiting who? The Sun in the middle must be the "most relevant."

However, it's not the only perspective. And, if link mongering goes to its own natural bloated exteme edge of the continuum, it'll dilute the value of this POV to inconsequential. Cus, there is no way that "Aluminum siding" should be linked to "fluffy bunnies."

Looks like just another event in the life and times of "how people behave." It's not always a pretty picture and it frequently hurts those who are really trying to conduct themselves with ethics. Money has made a mockery out of ethics many times before, this is just more of the same.

I think the thing that is the most disturbing about this is that Google WAS "the little guy." Now, I'm rooting for MS to make its play.

minstrel · #8 (**permalink**) 01-31-2004, 06:45 PM

We are certainly hearing a lot from people who are seeing odd and not very relevant results using certain search phrases, mostly those who have websites that target those words. On the other hand, there are also reports of people seeing Google search results which are MORE relevant and less spammy, especially as time went on following the Florida update. Unsatisfied customers are always noisier than satisfied customers, and understandably so...

The updates aren't finished - and as long as they continue, as long as Google continues to test and refine their algorithms and filters, we will see results for certain searches which are less than ideal - I don't think this will continue for very much longer and I think the end result will be improved and more relevant results for the most part.

I'm happy to see stronger competition for Google emerging, if indeed that happens - I think that always keeps things more honest. But, to paraphrase the famous quote, in my opinion "the reports of Google's death are premature".

mocheng · #9 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 09:02 AM

Link Building is a lot more important than the content after google's rule changed in November so now I think a lot of SEO companys are going down because of that

Maxlamenace · #10 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 10:27 AM

Hi I am Max and I would like to know more about the subject, tips are welcome.

Thanks

Don Lee · #11 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 10:39 AM

I agree totally that Link building is becoming more important than content optimizing. With everything being equal, properly optimized pages will rank higher than your competitiors and I believe that. However, things are not equal. Some pages with less relevant content will still rank higher because of their higher rank, and I hate to see that happen. As a search engine optimizer, I am spending more of my time and resources link building campaigns than anything else.

Christian_SEO · #12 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 10:40 AM

Our "link building" is limted to getting a client listed on as many search engines and directories as possible.

The question, "Is Organic SEO Dead?", sounds like something Overture might come up with. Those of us that focus on content and SEO know that it's absurd.

Sure, links have their place, for now. But with all the frenzy and hype going on over linking, I do not expect the advantages to last, UNLESS the links are in a valid structure, and this means NOT link farms, or links from exact or completely un-related sites.

Look for the results from Google's context/content matching technology to be applied to link-ranking technology sometime in the near future. When that happens, those sites without good SEO and content may be hurting, even with linkage.

OneMoreBite · #13 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 10:53 AM

I never cared much for writing my text to suit the search engines with ackward phrasing and overuse of keywords, and I'm not talking spamming either. There was always a percent keyword optimization scale (depending on which expert you followed of course), so if you needed a higher percentage you found a way to add that keyword one more time. I'm getting a bit testy with people suggesting everyone that lost rank must have been spamming the engines. I know that was not true in my case, at least not according to the "old school" rules.

I took such pains to avoid spamming that it used to kill me to check my rank and never find my pages yet what I did find was chock full of spam techniques. I still never faltered from my plan of good content will rule the day, and I don't intend to now either.

I want to write my text for the human beings reading it, not search engine indexing bots. Perhaps taking more of the emphasis away from the optimization of content for the engines will ultimately lead to better content?

It may be awhile before we see how this shakes out and it's always a good idea to read the views of the experts in the SEO field. They'll know first which way the winds blow.

P.S. I found it amusing how many supposed SEO experts would simply use a company's own name as a keyword and then happily show them how they had a No. 1 listing. That's still pretty easy to achieve but who's going to search on your name unless they already know you? No one, that's who. I figured that was how the SEO firms could guarantee top 10 placement for all.

Kathryn

jimmack · #14 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 10:55 AM

I do not think for a minute that SEO is dead if you ever had the chance to optimize websites for anyone would would see real quick that no matter how many links a page would have they would never stand a chance.

Also it depends on what search engine you are optimizing your site for because as most everyone knows already they are not all the same.

I have a newsletter and most of my subscribers know I will do experiments to my main site just to see the affects it has in the search engines.

I can tell you it does matter how the site is put together dont get me wrong inbound links are very important as well.

I rate links at 33% how your site or sites are built 33% and the most often overlooked the keywords on all your sites how do they relate 33%

SEO is more than just keyword density it is a lot of different things combined much more than I could go into here.

If anyone thinks that SEO is just getting lots of links leading to your website and that in itself will get you to the top of the search engines think again.

There are examples PROOF of this all over the internet I have seen sites with over 50.000 links leading to them and they have a page rank of just 2.

I picked some of these sites apart to try to find them in the top 10 of any major search engines and could not find them anywhere.

Yes links are important but unless the sites are related and built right but when it comes to the search engines your sites need to be optimized.

And going further page rank for that matter really don't matter as much as it used to in the past which I think Google did the right thing to make this change because in the past you could monopolize the search engines because of this.

Is SEO dead? HELL NO if you believe that I have some ocean front property for sale in Kansas.

James Mackinlay
JRM Website Marketing And Internet Promotion

jcowan · #15 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 11:01 AM

When I started on 1/19 our site was 87 on Google for the selected search terms for our product. I modified Title, Description and added a content paragraph. In 7 days we went to #1 for the search terms. No links, no gimmicks, no linked extra pages. That's it. Content is all you really need. The issue is do you have anyone that can write good content? If you can't you use tricks, if you can, organic works. What Google showed in September with the change in algorithm is that tricks will be canceled out as Search Engines "learn" how to bypass them. But content will always work, because that's how humans work. Agood book sells, a bad book does not. What is the difference? Content. All the gimmicks an author tries to use in a book to mimic a best seller won't do a thing if the book has bad content. Same for a web site.

The issue is that SEO can be taught and learned in less than a day. This is a big threat to people who make their living selling products that "do" SEO or ranking for you by submiting to multiple SE. At the moment, if you at\re in DMOZ and Google, you will wind up almost everywhere in a few weeks. I have watched this happen by tracing a new site created for a friend. It's in all of the "pay for inclusion" sites like Inktomi and Overture, MSN etc and not a penny was paid.

janeth · #16 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 11:43 AM

John never said it was hard to do and he never said to Stop optimizing pages, but that you should not stop there if your trying for more competitive keywords you will need links.

Anyone can get ranked for
"Johns custom pool stick in colombia"

But if all that matters is on site changes then get ranked #1 for computers

This should be an easy one because the #1 ranked site did not even use it on there page.

So according to you a couple on site changes and your be #1 by the end week

eightfifteen · #17 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 11:45 AM

I am a relative newbie when it comes to search engine optimization, but I have started to catch on to what works…at least I thought so.

This whole link mess has got me in a quandry. I assume that is you are going to get sites to link to you, you have to link to them in exchange. How does one get links to their site without having a links page that ends up looking amateurish? If related links are the best, does that mean I have to get involved with a link exchange with our competitors?

I'm so confused. Head…ready…to …explode.

Lando · #18 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 11:56 AM

Another new means of achieving a Number 1 ranking...
I'm biting my lower lip here! LOL

Below is an example of one day for Inktomi. Granted, there are not hundreds of requests, but I do cater to a niche market AND this is the slowest time of year (unfortunately!) for my product. Happens every year, though it does get better every year during this time (winter). Soon my numbers will easily quadruple and more in a month or so.

Also, according to my site admin page, I have approx. 4-5 times more referrals from Google than from MSN and Yahoo, in that order.
My Inktomi results for one day are:

cat urine and pet odor eliminator (5)
"cat spray"odor home (8)
"dog urine" carpeting (11)
dog odor elimination (2)
eliminating skunk odors (1)
pet odor (6)
pet odors (2)
CAT ODORS (3)
eliminate cigarette smoke odor (11)
pet odor control (3)
pet odors (2)
diesel odor (4)

Again keep in mind this is my slowest time of year.
The words are what the user types in, and the number in paranthesis is the RANK of that SE result.
In other words, someone types in the search words "eliminating skunk odors" and my website came up first.
I did not all the sudden add a couple dozen links... I did actually...nothing. The last link I added was about 3-4 months ago, and only because it was a good site, AND did not have hundreds of links on its site, what I call a 'link farm'.

I have graciously declined a few link requests because of the (in my opinion) excessive number of links on the site.
ALso, do not think that because I have a niche market, I have a 'lock' on certain words due to the lack of competition. Not at all! I have a lot of competition for odor elimination believe it or not. For example typing in "odors" in Google gets 628,000 results back.

ANY way, my point? (finally!) Content and keywords ARE very much still king, at least at this time and my experience. Yes, I may eat my words later, and I will be the first to admit it, but until I drop off the radar, why mess with a pretty good thang!?

apisdesign · #19 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 12:11 PM

Holding all other aspects equal, content optimization should work to put you ahead of your competitors. But it's definitely not the way to get to the number 1 ranking for any significant term.

In-bound links are number 1.

How can this be proved? Simply look at the top sites for a quasi-popular search term. Check out the META tags and heading structure. Chances are that the content on these sites is not even close to optimized.

But, in my opinion, every little bit helps, so I'm still in favour of content optimization.

jcowan · #20 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 12:12 PM

I was attempting to point out that:
Content alone can get you listed
Content and Links can get you listed
Links alone cannot assure you being listed

Any company wants to do a good job of providing the service they offer.

Google is a company providing a service, finding the sites that actually provide the content for which you are searching.

They do this by constantly refining their algorithm to dump sites that gimmick their pages in favor of sites that provide actual content.

I have done SEO for 4 sites in the recent year, it's not my regular job, all four remained in high ranking after the Google change in algorithm. All that was done to the sites was adjust content in Title, Meta Description and 1st paragraph. The only submission was to Google and to the ODP at www.dmoz.org

janeth · #21 (**permalink**) 02-03-2004, 12:40 PM

Take two sites put the text in the page of one and the other just get links do not submit the one to anything and do not submit either to Google.

links alone can you you ranked for a key word but text alone can not.

if you have no links going to your site but have a lot of text Google will never find your site.

If you take the search for the key word computers you will see that the search shows no where on that page where the key word computers is used in the #1 site returned for that key word.