Comments on: Ignorant Do-It-Yourselfers & Their SEO Fiascoes: The Real Trouble With Search Engine Optimization

By: Chrisile from Search Engine Optimisation

Chrisile from Search Engine Optimisation — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:53:43 +0000

I wonder where lies the difference between what an SEO Company and SEO freelance do…

By: Alysson

Alysson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:49:49 +0000

Oh. My. God. I got a little bit sick to my stomach just thinking of the times I’ve gotten that inquiry. And I, of course, asked, “Whomever developed the site took care of the 301 redirects from old urls to the new ones, right?” Response…crickets. NICE!
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By: g1smd

g1smd — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:40:16 +0000

Good analysis and write-up.

My least favourite job is one like: “We just got our new site online last week, can you do the SEO stuff on it?”

The time to start SEO was *before* the new site went live; and one of the first jobs would have been to analyse the URL structure for both the old and new site, and set up the redirects – as well as ensure that you have analytics in place so you can see the effects on traffic before and after the change.

By: Alysson

Alysson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:05:53 +0000

It’s important to note that Google has since eliminated the necessity of including date stamps within URLs in order to be included within Google News searches.
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By: Richard Vanderhurst

Richard Vanderhurst — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:56:45 +0000

I agree… every business owners should learn even a little bit of SEO so they won’t get ripped off.

By: Alysson

Alysson — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:57:24 +0000

You’re right, Malcolm…there wouldn’t be much of an industry if we all agreed. I’m glad we can respectfully disagree.

I’ve read that SEOmoz article, too – and wasn’t completely convinced when they said it either.

By: malcolmcoles

malcolmcoles — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:30:14 +0000

Have to confess I’ve never gone so far as to test it by flipping URLs from friendly to non-friendly and watching the results (mainly as they’d be too minor to observe realiably). But the main source I was relying on is SEOmoz:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f2
where the consensus seems to be that they affect click through rates but not ranking.

I would still 100% definitely use ‘SEO friendly URLs’ – but for CTR not ranking.

Anyway, let’s disagree – there wouldn’t be an SEO indistry if everyone agreed AND knew everyting!

By: Alysson

Alysson — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:37:27 +0000

I must respectfully disagree with you, Malcolm. Even if the impact of using keywords in a URL is minuscule, based on my experience it exists.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide seems to confirm my position. While you state in your post that “it doesn’t at any point say that keywords in your URLs will help you rank better for those keywords…”, it is Google’s “SEO guide” – not a guide to improved usability, improving the user’s experience or increasing click through rates. That, in and of itself, leads me to believe that keyword usage in a URL is indeed factored into Google’s algorithm somehow.

I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

By: malcolmcoles

malcolmcoles — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 23:04:47 +0000

My first paragraph is a quote from higher up, sorry if that’s not clear. I’m not just having an argument with myself as it might appear …!

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:57:34 +0000

Creating URLs that contain keywords … DOES – in fact – have an impact on the ranking of the post in the search results. In much the same way that having a keyword in the domain itself helps to improve ranking, so does having the post’s main keywords in the URL string of the individual page or post. This is a fact and it is undisputed, as illustrated by the aforementioned posts at Google’s official webmaster blog.

I have to disagree, I’m afraid, so it’s not undisputed

I think if you read Google’s official webmaster blog, you should reach the opposite conclusion. I explain more here: http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/seo-friendly-urls-myth-and-fact/

You should use keyword-rick URLs, but to help humans. They won’t affect your search engine rankings one little bit (except through secondary factors like people using the full URL as a link, and the linktext then containing relevant keywords).

By: Alysson

Alysson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:25:04 +0000

I completely agree, but it’s a tough lesson to learn the hard way – and losing visibility in the search engines can bankrupt a small business in a fairly short period of time.

By: wilhb81

wilhb81 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:51:35 +0000

Alysson, most people learned the lesson, due to the ignorance of didn’t believe to the professional SEO practitioners! At least, it’s still a best lesson for them, where it will awake them up that “Don’t even tried to mess with SEO, or you might get burned with it!”

In my opinion, it’s always a safe play to hire the SEO specialists to get the deal with SEO stuffs!

By: Alysson

Alysson — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:37:48 +0000

I’m glad you liked the post, Justin. You’re right…approaching SEO without a concrete plan and just jumping in head first without an understanding of the big picture can be worse than not optimizing at all.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Alyssons last blog post..Ignorant Do-It-Yourselfers & Their SEO Fiascoes: The Real Trouble With Search Engine Optimization

By: Justin Brooke

Justin Brooke — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:34:33 +0000

I admire your post. This is really very interesting! But I think that SEO should be done from the creation of your site to getting traffic and making money from it. I agree with Alysson, SEO should be well planned to reap its rewards.

Thanks for this post.

By: Alysson

Alysson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:09:49 +0000

I completely agree, Alex. SEO certainly does need to be approached with a well thought out plan initially, so sites are launched initially with that strategy in mind. WordPress continues to improve with each release and I believe more and more basic SEO issues will continue to be taken into account as they develop future releases. Alyssons last blog post..Ignorant Do-It-Yourselfers & Their SEO Fiascoes: The Real Trouble With Search Engine Optimization

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:42:44 +0000

This was a good post Alysson. It really points out that SEO needs to have a plan. Its not as simple as throwing darts at a wall. It also goes to show that if a site is built with SEO in mind, it should do relatively well for a while to come. None of this SEO friendly stuff in wordpress is new and it really should be the default on new installations just to keep people from whining about it when they move to it.

By: Alysson

Alysson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:51:39 +0000

Thanks, Eric. I’m glad you enjoyed the post and thanks for taking the time to comment.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:58:34 +0000

I am pretty new to the SEO game (2 years) and even I can tell the article was way off base, pretty sad.

Great blog post Alysson

By: Alysson

Alysson — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:30:37 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to comment. And I totally agree with you! While there are certainly some on-site SEO tasks that site owners can undertake on their own with out too much technical knowledge, for the most part they have no business trying to optimize their own sites.

And thanks for the link to the setup instructions for Redirection. I’m sure some people will find that very useful.

By: Suthnautr

Suthnautr — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:12:34 +0000

I thought I might add in a link here to a tutorial on how to correctly set up the WordPress Redirect Plug-in you mentioned in your post: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/ for anyone who wants to use it. It seems that just a few have set it up incorrectly and run into some problems. Hope it helps.

By: Suthnautr

Suthnautr — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:04:52 +0000

Hey, SEO Aly, I caught the link to this from Twitter – Good stuff! Unfortunately people like Mr. Dvorak are in the majority out there. They boldly go where no man has gone before (no man in his right mind, anyway). Combine “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing” with “to err is human, but if you really want to screw things up use a computer” and combine them with SEO and boy have you got a wing-ding of a nightmare brewing.

Clients sometimes get the idea they can do it all better (usually the ones I have to fight tooth and nail, the same ones who say “I don’t want to hear anything technical, I don’t understand any of that stuff”) and when they do I just smile slyly and say “Suuuuure – hand them the keys to the Web site and watch them fly it off into a wild blue crash and burn total flaming disaster.

Why is it that these PC Magazine A+ certified hardware types think do-it-yourself One Minute SEO Training Courses are going to work? This is grown up stuff, not 1990’s keyword stuffing in it’s infancy.

SEO today REQUIRES years of serious study, trial and error, TALENT, a scientific mind, plus the right mix of paid and unpaid tools and services.

Without every single one of those ingredients people like Mr. Dvorak aren’t even qualified to comment, let alone write articles to influence the rest of the seriously challenged masses. What I have written may not be nice, but putting it more diplomatically than that doesn’t work. When it comes to SEO, Mr. Dvorak is a “user” and a limited one at that – AKA L-User.

By: Alysson

Alysson — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:47:10 +0000

All of my sites and blogs are niche, which is why I wasn’t aware of the requirements for Google News. I’m certainly glad I know now, as that’s clearly very valuable information to have moving forward – particularly for a not-for-profit charity site that I’m in the process of launching as we speak.

By: Frank Carr

Frank Carr — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:43:20 +0000

It's like the old story about the electrician, he doesn't charge for jiggling the wire but for the knowledge of the right wire to jiggle. I did setup my blog using the date in the URL since the objective was to follow news trends. For newer niche blogs I only use /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/ Frank Carrs last blog post..Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77 Review

By: Alysson

Alysson — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:49:46 +0000

Yeah, I didn’t take Google News into account when I suggested not including the date. I’ve since been educated on that.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:47:25 +0000

Great post. Although he does need the date structure in his URL for Google news. He sounded like a 5 year old child in the language he used throughout the article, "This is stupid", "That is stupid" blah blah Kierans last blog post..Online Marketing Round - 14.02.09