SEO Apartheid

It’s always been the whites vs. the blacks. Only now it’s the hats…

And personally I think ShoeMoney is giving WAY too much credit to the White Hats. On-page optimisation IS piss easy.

I mean, I’ve been at this internet game for about a year, and I’m started to read the same stuff over and over and over again (and some of my blogs rank a little higher than others, though nowhere near worth bragging about)…

Ever since the whole Jason Calacanis “SEO is bullshit!” thing started, I’ve been wondering what all the fuss was. Well, here’s my $0.02 worth:

…if you generate a web page with good content Google will rank the page properly…:

True. In part. Good content means it contains what people will be searching for. Namely, keywords. If you write good, full-bodied articles, you’re sure to do well jumping off the diving board. But can you swim?

On-page SEO:

In my opinion, you will only really “swim” if your site has a few basic things done right, like titles and headings and alt tags and easily navigable content and…. etc. etc. etc. This is starting to get easier and easier thanks to CMSes such as WordPress which tends to format everything ever so nicely. In my mind, that’s why there are a LOT more blogs ranking higher for terms than normal websites. (Read a HILARIOUS example of that here: “Bizzare Google Request“)

So, personally, I think this section counts for about 50% of your “ranking ability”.

Finishing the race:

This is where you add a few extra finishing touches like good URLs, good page-rank/page-trust, aged domains (if possible), cloaking and as many high-quality links as you can get… I think this might be bordering on the gray edge of your hat, but it’s still not difficult.

Winning the race:

And this is where Jason Calacanis has it all wrong, and ShoeMoney hints at it:

I also explained that I thought that 95% of SEO was super simple but the remaining 5% is where the real secret sauce is that guys like Greg Boser and Todd Friesen know because they have been pushing limits and experimenting in the dark arts for a long time they can apply what they learned to the corporate area.

I think there are a lot of things that can still be done to improve the chances of your site ranking well, and there are not THAT many people who know how to do them. And, Google might not appreciate exactly what else is being done, hence the term “black hat”. It might not be illegal, but it’s taking advantage of maybe 1 or 10 variables in the Google Algorithm, and, as Quadzilla puts it, maxes them out.

Conclusion:

I think the “white hat” SEO weighting should be about 80%, because if you’re up against a page that doesn’t have really good content, on-page SEO and back links, it isn’t that hard to rank higher than them. But go on, I dare you, try rank higher than Dave Naylor for the term “daven“. He’s worked at it, and he knows what he’s doing.

I would give almost anything to sit down with somebody like Quadzilla or DaveN for a few lessons in their art. I find it incredibly interesting, and think that they have their skills honed down to a fine art, even though they are learning all the time. (And apparently DaveN does not dabble in the dark arts any more).

And then there’s ShoeMoney… Any chance you could send me your playbook? Even if it IS outdated (according to your podcast from a couple of months ago). You have a LOT to teach, and I’m willing to learn, though the Elite Retreat is a little out of my price range right now.