SEO 2.0

Findability is a seemingly new term that has become a buzzword recently due to a book called Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter (not to mix up with Aaron Wall, author of SEO Book). Now as a true SEO 2.0 I’m always on the lookout for new concepts and innovation. So I took a little time to find out more about findability, it’s meaning, roots, who coined the term and when.

The first thing I found out was that neither Aaron Walter nor renown usability expert Jakob Nielsen used the term findability first. It appears that the term findability and most notably ambient findability was coined in 2002 by Peter Morville who even published a book of the same title. First things first though, so let me explain what findability is about.

Website findability is the new and better SEO so to say or, on-site SEO without the bad rep of the SEO industry if you adopt the definition from Building Findable Websites.

Basically Aarron Walter says that building websites for findability encompasses not only SEO but a holistic approach with usability and web standards etc. in mind, a position I can fully support. One thing that Mr. Walter attempts to tell us though is:

SEO is bad, findability is good.

This is a good move from a marketing perspective as nobody likes SEO of course, the term is a stain in itself or at least is perceived by the majority as such.

When we go back to what Peter Morville wrote in 2002 we discover that findability and SEO are not contradictory but basically twin brothers. He acknowledges how

SEO contributes to a websites findability along with usability and other important aspects of information architecture.

Now that might be the problem of it not generating enough hype so that Aarron Walter took a more aggressive approach.

Also Walter reduced findability to websites build with web standards while Morville’s definition extends to the real world. Morville uses examples like looking for long term parking or restrooms on an airport which strike home very convincingly. Jakob Nielsen used the term in 2006 for the first time as far as I can see. Nielsen also limited it to website findability without denouncing SEO though.

Now am I angry at Aarron Walter for being explicit about SEO? No, I’m glad, glad someone makes a strong point on renaming the “whole problem”. In this sense I took the wrong approach with attempting to redefine SEO and having to deal with it’s reputation problem. Using another, better term is the by far more effective way of redefining something. Sadly it’s mostly used by political think tanks to manipulate the public usually. In this case the outcome of the manipulation is a positive one. People will acknowledge best practices and put them in use.

I don’t care how do you call it, SEO, findability or like myself probably SEO 2.0 as long as we have the same goals. Our goals match while the methods do just partly as findability refers in web development only to the on-site or on-page factors of SEO which is not enough to be found, especially in the Web 2.0 environment, but they match.

The single most positive aspect of website findability the teaching aspect:

Findability teaches designers, web developers and information architects what they condescendingly ignored for years, making websites findable.

Now as I am the garbage man of all these lazy designers, web developers and information architects and had to fix crap websites for years, I’m sick and tired of it. I want to do the real thing, the content, the SEO 2.0 the fun stuff.

So clean up your websites yourself guys and don’t rely on the poor Mexican migrant worker wit a sombrero to do it.

That said, I still prefer the approach of Peter Norville. So do not only read Aaron Walter book but also, or at first Norvilles “Ambient Findability”.

Btw.: Building Findable Websites only covers the on-site SEO basics, adding some microfomats and the likes, if you really want to do web design for findability you need to read the Web Design for ROI, a book that will change your professional life forever.


Findablity resources:

• The Age of Findability - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
• Ambient Findability
• Digital Web Magazine - Ambient Findability
• O’Reilly Media | Ambient Findability
• findability.org - by Peter Morville
• DonnaM » Blog Archive » Usability testing for findability
• A List Apart: Articles: Ambient Findability: Findability Hacks
• Use Old Words When Writing for Findability (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• A List Apart: Articles: Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
• Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond
• Findability Bliss Through Web Standards | An Event Apart New Orleans April 2008
• SEO and Findability blog: LJ Banks — findability expert

From now on please refer to me as findability expert, maybe this way I can outsmart the SEO haters

This post has been sponsored by Nstein*

[Update May 15th, 2008: New image added]

Image by Kevin Rosseel

You think on-page SEO is dead? It hasn’t even begun! To be clear, your website is a goldmine and you haven’t even started to dig for the gold.

In my SEO 2.0 blog I have covered blogging, social media and the likes to the point of excess. At the same time I have dismissed most of on-page SEO as obsolete or as built in basics of even the simplest CMS software.

Do you think on-page SEO is just about h1 tags, meta descriptions or enhancing website copy with keywords? Now think again.

Consider using the term on-site SEO referring to the whole site not just each page for itself. Now add the adjective “semantic“.

The semantic web (often called Web 3.0) and its search are about meaning.

Google matches phrases without knowing what they mean. Semantic search is based on understanding what the search query is about. What if you could use software to determine the meaning of your own content and categorize it in topical clusters?

You could:

• Make users stick with your website as a reader would always find related articles to the current one he just read
• Serve contextual advertising like Google does
• Automatically improve indexation with “internal links” cross-linking related content
  

Doesn’t sound revolutionary? Well, what does it mean then? Nowadays you will typically structure news by location and topics. For instance Europe or business are used as categories. So a story about fuel shortage in Great Britain could be found in Europe and business categories. Now what about other relations? What if the story is related to another one from outside Europe or one that is not about business directly? A reader keen on reading the latest energy and fuel news would not find anything of interest anymore amidst bizarre stories from Europe about a father hiding his daughter in a cellar for over 20 years or singer Amy Whinehouse and her legal problems.
Yes, these stories have been been put together in Europe on CNN (April 28th, 2008). The reader will leave.

With semantic SEO implemented on your website you can make the reader find several stories related to this one, automatically.

Using this example: There are a few related stories out there right now: In Brazil president Lula speaks out about bio fuel , in Singapore the oil price reaches a new height, Venezuela and Iran plan to work more closely together (thus limiting western access to oil). Also there is another story about pirates freeing hostages near Somalia. Now the first three are obvious. The fourth one is related too but how? Pirates and other militants are also increasingly a problem in Nigeria where they attack oil tankers.

How did I find out? I used a news aggregator that uses semantic web and search methodology to determine which articles and news are related.

• So instead of reading just one article or page I read 5 increasing page views per visit or stickiness
• The website could show contextual ads about alternative energy or energy saving
• Older news about the same topic could have been directly linked to the latest news automatically. Google could spider them and rank them up as relevant again.
  

Now this means

• an increase of 500% in page views per visit for this example
  
• serving highly relevant ads with most probably high click-thrus
• new crawling and better ranking for several articles resulting in more targeted search traffic
  

All this just with semantic SEO implemented on-site. Nowadays most of your content gets wasted. You can let machines dig for the hidden gold in your archives instead. So how do I do that or rather which solution can do it for me?

I do not know myself yet. I was aproached by Nstein, a company that is “powering online publishing” for large publishers across the globe to help them spread the word about their latest webinar. This free webinar is about “Semantic Tagging & Automated Discovery Strategies: For SEO, Editorial, Contextual Advertising and more“.

Now as even I needed some explanation what this really means I decided to write a sponsored post* for them. It does not make sense to advertise for something that nobody understands.

I was approached by potential advertisers in the past but never conceded to run the ads due to the lack of credibility of their products or companies as well as lack of focus at my audience or value for my readers.

Now the Nstein representative could convince me on the phone that this latest webinar can really be of use for my readers. Especially he cited the above mentioned news aggregator as one example where Nstein has already successfully implemented semantic methods for on-site SEO I just call semantic SEO.

Anyways, you can be sure that any method that looks like SEO 2.0 to me and that allows to potentially double, triple or even increase the number of page views by 500% in my case will make me want to cover it.

Now as I feel a little uneasy about this first sponsored post* and wonder if it’s too sneaky to write for an advertiser about something I want some feedback from you if this post was useful or not and if it’s acceptable to write posts I was asked for on my own blog and getting paid for them. Until now I only got paid for guest blogging on other blogs.



*This is a sponsored post. It’s not an ad. Also it’s not a sponsored review. It just introdocuces a topic I was asked to write about by the sponsor. The text is written by myself and only reflects my opinion so it’s not even an advertorial. It’s not automatically an endorsement of the above mentioned offer.

Google baby by skoop.

As most of us know it is often really difficult to build websites for both the user and Google.

Google still needs to be assisted in finding and assessing a website’s worth to such an extent that it can break the user experience altogether.

Of course there are plenty of CSS solutions for Google’s weaknesses. Although I do not like the term tricks I have to refer to them as CSS tricks as in fact these are workarounds to suit Google. Google spiders are still unable to recognize most advanced web technologies like Flash or AJAX.

Google spiders are like little children, you really have to assist them to find stuff and understand it.

There are other search engines of course but they struggle even more so to keep it simple I will concentrate on Google, which is the by far dominant search engine in most of the western markets.

On a side note: “Trick” sounds like “black hat SEO” or cheating search engines. Well, take a look at them yourself and tell me whether I’m cheating or whether Google is making web development a pain in the back.

OK, then. Let me present to the top 7 CSS tricks for better SEO in no particular order:


CSS Pagination
Google has a serious problem with ranking long articles which are divided into several parts. Also long one page articles will outrank short ones usually. Apart from that the usability is key in making your visitors read the whole article so you don’t want users neither to scroll for ages nor to click a link and send a request each time they want to get to the next page of your article.
The solution is CSS pagination. Isn’t it hidden text though? Hidden text is one of the oldest “tricks” to cheat search engines, webmasters still employ it and my potential clients sometimes wonder why they don’t rank while using hidden text. So hands off hidden text! Well, if Digg, your number one anti-SEO site, uses it can it be “black hat SEO”?
Anyways this way you can divide the content into easily digestible parts while still having it on one page. Take heed to another limitation of Google: The crawler might not crawl a very large page in its entirety.

Absolute Positioning
The higher your content is on a given page the more it counts for Google. Google does not see a page like a human being, it crawls the code. Thus the higher your content is in the code the better. So if you have a complex site with lots of menus, scripts and other gimmicks you should consider absolute positioning otherwise Google might even stop crawling your page before it reaches the main content. You can place the actual content high up in the code, at the top, while the users will see it in the middle of the page below the menus.

Styling h1, h2, h* Headlines
In HTML the h1 headline appears huge by default, the h2 is still much larger than the rest of the page copy etc. Many web designers thus used divs and spans for headlines for years to style them the way needed. Now Google won’t know what the headline is unless you tell Google by using h* tags. It’s like in 1999: You really need to use h1, h2 etc.
Of course you don’t have to make huge h1 headlines like in pre CSS times. Just style the h1 the size you want, also you can get rid off the line-height etc. which h1 headline force upon you by using the display: inline; attribute.

Sponsored Message
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sIfr/Image Replacement for Headlines
Many people will argue that styling headlines with CSS is not enough for web designers. They are in fact right. I think it’s by now grotesque that we’re in 2008 and we still are limited to less than a dozen basic standard “web safe” fonts for web design. We were meant to have flying cars by 2000 and now we do not even have real typography on the web. Many people have tackled this problem with image replacement techniques for headlines, which in short will hide the original headline and insert an image in it’s place. Some of them are fairlydavnaced , others are very simple. No isn’t it hidden text again? Yes, it is! Also some of these methods will hamper your SEO efforts moredfirectly as the crawlers won’t recognize the headline anymore.
There is one popular image replace technique called sIfr which is by now officially approved by Google. It uses Flash to display the headline in any font you wish but in code the h* tags are still recognizable.

Using Lists (ul/ol)
Most SEO experts agree by now that so called keyword density is not a major positive ranking factor. It means that mentioning your keywords 20 times instead of 5 will not make you rank better in Google. You may get penalized for so called keyword stuffing though. Now what to do in case where you really need to use the same words over and over? Use an unordered or ordered list. Google allows repetition in lists without penalizing you.
With CSS you can style lists in any way you desire so that if you do not want a list to be clearly visible list style it accordingly. Some people do even a whole site design without tables and layers (divs) or even spans.

Nofollow Attribute
Contrary to what some people believe the nofollow attribute like in a href=”page.html” rel=”nofollow” does not prevent a page from being crawled by Google. As nofollow does not help against Spam whatsoever, as it was its original purpose at which it failed completely, what then is nofollow good for from the webmaster perspective?

Matt Cutts of Google recommends the so called pagerank sculpting. It means assigning PageRank to the important pages while not wasting it on a contact page for instance.

Yes, Google assumes that the page with the most internal links is the most important one so if you link from all your pages to the contact page it will be the most important page for Google. So you really have to tell Google: Do not mistake this page for the most important one by using the nofollow attribute (not tag!) on the links leading to the contact page.

Pure CSS Menus
While pure CSS menues are not really a trick most people still assume that you need JavaScript or other enhancements to make dynamic menus. Well it’s not true, many advanced CSS only menus offer slick interactivity while being the best choice for Google and other search engine spiders.


Now can you use this methods for cheating Google? Well, I guess you can, but these techniques are so low level that Google won’t count it anyway. For all those who mistake SEO with spam: Spam works on a whole different level nowadays so using stuff like hidden text is ridiculous by now. These CSS tricks can help you with legitimate SEO efforts. I do not like the term white hat SEO as it acknowledges that there is another kind of SEO (I don’t agree with that premise, I rather divide: Either it’s SEO or it’s spam). Nonetheless: It’s all white hat SEO if you ask me.

Now you might argue this is not SEO 2.0, these are SEO basics known for years but it’s not really the case, the web developer community is rather keen on web standards to the point of dogma where for instance absolute positioning is frowned upon. So most people won’t use it. Also if you want to learn more about advanced SEO 2.0 methods you might want to read more in this blog. It’s full of SEO 2.0.

Free rice.

In recent days I read news about the exploding global food crisis all over. It seems the whole world is starving besides us rich westerners.

Even worse: Much of it is our fault, not only IMF, WTO or World Bank policies that favor the industrialized nations but even more directly: Our green cars and alternative fuels are one of the most acute reasons why the food prices skyrocketed recently so that people in the “majority of the world”, the Americas, Africa, Asia who usually get by with almost nothing, now really starve.

Much of this mess is also due to us rich people messing up the climate via consuming way too many resources and producing far more co2 than hundreds of poor in the developing world. The ensuing climate change leads directly to poor crops due to draughts or floods depending where you are.

So now that we created this mess, what we’re gonna do about it?

• Whine about the slow economy at home?
• Go on buying cool stuff?
• Ignore it altogether?

I can’t: Writing for a global audience made me even more aware of global problems and my advantageus position in one of the countries where people do not starve.


Also I’m not powerless, far from it, as a blogger with readers all over the world, a social media power user on several platforms and SEO expert I can make a huge impact on the way the people think, what they know and how they react to it. I’m an influencer. It’s time to use this influence for more than petty financial benefits.

Let’s fix the world. One link at a time.

So I want to join me and tell how we, the bloggers, social media users, SEO experts can help the world during the current crisis. Add your ideas in the comments below:

• Drop in links to charities that fight the hunger outbreak
• If you’re from India or China add information how we can help local people without the interference of governments or organizations based in the west
• Ways of limiting our wasteful lifestyle

To start out helping to spread the world I added this NYT article to breaking news at Mixx so that people finally realize that these news of hunger, riots and desperation are really breaking people’s lives.

Also the first thing that comes to mind is the Free Rice project a wonderfully playful way of to support the United Nations World Food Program.

As a philosopher once said: You can’t be happy if everybody around you is miserable.

If you represent a charity tackling the current global food crisis contact me via email, mail to onreact at onreact.com - I will consider supporting your campaign for free (free of charge). Also take note that there are several SEO companies offering discounts for non-profit SEO projects.

If you’re from the countries that are affected tell us how bad the situation is. If you’re like me a well-fed westerner whose problem is rather obesity than hunger, act now, support us.

Nowadays we use terms and expressions daily which not only bury the real meaning of the phenomenon they try to describe, they also misguide yourself and others.

Some words simply change your intentions to the negative by adding the wrong meaning or meaninglessness to some things.

I used most of them myself mistakenly without really thinking about the ramifications. These terms infuse hidden negativity into your approach. You have to purge them to change your mindset.

Check out these 7 examples of words or expressions that you should abandon:

1. Traffic: I wrote a whole article about that. In German you never say “traffic” you always say visitors. Your visitors are not cars or numbers. If you view them like an amorph mass you will never meet their expectations. Treat your visitors like guests. Offer them some tea and crackers. Also traffic reminds me of drug trafficking and such.
   
2. Link bait, Internet users are not fish and link baiting sounds like tricking people to swallow the bait. Why not speak about link incentives? I have come up with 3 different terms naming all aspects of what you call link baiting nowadays
3. Web 2.0 SEO: What could this be? SEO for AJAX apps? Social Media Optimization? It’s confusing. Use SEO 2.0 instead: Here it’s clear that this means a new phase of SEO and web 2.0 is implicit in it.
4. Blog monetization: To be honest, this sounds like “sell out”. It reminds me of going to the flea market or pawn shop. Why not “earn a living blogging” instead which sounds 10 times as decent? Or just blog advertising?
   
5. Make money online, yeah, make money online or blogging is the new “get rich quick”. It sounds like make money talking or sleeping. It’s one of the reasons people hate this. It’s bling, bling all over. Again “earn a living blogging” or “earn an income online” sounds 100 times more decent.
6. Black hat SEO - Let’s face it, what is black hat SEO? It’s search engine spam also called spamdexing. SEO stands for optimization, you do not optimize, you fool search engines, circumvent filters, you find loop holes in “black hat SEO”. It’s in no way an “optimum” afterwards, only for your pocket probably. Get real.
   
7. White hat SEO - By using this term, you acknowledge that all other SEO is not white hat, as well as acknowledging black hat SEO. It’s like saying there is good optimization (to make sth. better) and bad optimization (to make sth. worse), if it’s bad it’s not optimization at all, that’s an oxymoron. It’s either fixing or breaking things. SEO is fixing, spam breaking things.
   

Did I already tell you that I was a poet and linguist once? Language transforms reality. Master the language, do not use words that skew reality in the wrong direction and misrepresent things.

I think there are more terms like these that misguide you and others daily. Do you know some? Add them in the comments.

While I enjoyed my short vacation on Easter I couldn’t resist to think about SEO 2.0 with all its major parts Web 2.0, social media and blogging. I want to share with you a saying that kept popping up on my mind:

Do not put all your eggs into one basket.

This is an idiom that is used very often on the Net in the realm of SEO or marketing at large. Why? All of them may break at the same time. It can be applied on many different levels:

a) Social media participation
Users who have been banned on Digg for no reason after participating for years can tell you a whole lot about that. Do not contribute solely to one social site because you can lose all your authority any day. A site can even go bankrupt. It can break down, ban you or become otherwise useless. Thus I am actively participating at 3 sites and from time to time at 3 more.

In short it means:

Do not put all your time and effort into just one social medium or UGC site.

Rather use the triangle strategy by combining 3 to 5 social media.


b) Traffic sources
While in Germany most webmasters and worse business owners are often highly dependent on Google traffic in the blogosphere by now lots of people rely on StumbleUpon as the main source of traffic. I quickly found out how this might backfire and from then on concentrated on providing value for regular visitors or those who subscribed to SEO 2.0. If they already know something I won’t write another post about it just to suit the lowest common denominator of StumbleUpon. My posts get nevertheless submitted to SU each and every time but on many days the direct visitors outnumber the casual stumblers. SEO 2.0 has at least 3 to 5 major traffic sources:

1. Core audience coming via type in traffic, Google Reader, Netvibes, Bloglines and the likes
2. Community and niche sites I contribute to like Sphinn, CSS Globe or Mixx.
3. Also I get more and more traffic via blogs and sites that link to me, where I guest posted or even commented. Thus the success of others is also my success.
4. StumbleUpon, where I get submitted by my readers, I rarely review myself (only if I think I have been misrepresented)
5. Oh, yes, Google long tail search queries but I don’t care for these enough.
   

In short it means:

Do not rely on one major traffic source, be it Google search or StumbleUpon.

Diversify your traffic sources and concentrate on a core audience of fans, subscribers and returning visitors.


c) Revenue or income streams
I already mentioned this very important aspect of freelancing or doing business. You need to have several income sources. If you are just working for one client you can end up broke very quickly. I had to learn this the hard way. Also being dependent on client work itself is a mistake. You need to find ways to earn money while you are asleep via selling products, ads or affiliations. If you get sick and you can’t work for clients… The same applies to small businesses and companies. They don’t get sick but they might lose their clients. If the have no profitable side projects that yieldsubstantial revenue they will fail.

In short it means:

Do not depend on one client or client work at all.

Diversify your income. Try to establish your won scalable projects which will run on autopilot if necessary.


All in all, do not let any medium monopolize you. SEO 2.0 is about using Web 2.0, social media and blogging without being enslaved by them. It’s the declaration of independece online.

First off: The introduction of real links in comments via the dofollow plugin has been a huge success, especially as I am ranking high for both “dofollow” and “dofollow plugin” in Google by now because my article about the end of conventional SEO was so popular and has been reprinted or translated numerous times including my “dofollow” link.

Dofollow encouraged participation substantially, moreover what most people do not mention in this context: It made this blog a really friendly place.

Commenters who also want a link rarely will offend you. So by far most coments are friendly, helpful and adding some new perspective, update or information. In short: People commenting on SEO 2.0 are truly contributing. In many cases I even rank for long tail queries that are found only in my comments.

Blogging is like inviting people to your barbecue party: They get invited and receive free food while you enjoy a nice get together.

I use Akismet for spam protection and thus have rarely problems with real spammers who let robots comment automatically on thousands of blogs. There are sometimes problems with false positives in case of people Akismet markes accidentally as spam. Aaron Wall of SEO book was flagged as spam by Akismet and one of my eager contributors david deangelo has been filtered time and again even after I made him a “member” of this blog. This is a bug that sucks but I will de-spam your comments if you contact me by email, my adress is onreact at onreact.com

Many people complain about so called “manual spam” which is an oxymoron in a way. Spam is an unsolicited message and if you allow comments (by people) you can’t call it spam in this case. Thus comments made by humans not robots are not spam in 99% of cases. Nonetheless some things annoy me too:

1. People commenting with a name like “SEO Company” or “Real Estate California” because I want people to comment not companies or services, especially if the keywords have nothing to do with SEO or other topics of this blog.

2. One liners saying something like “thanks, great article” because I don’t know if they are made by robots or not if they do not refer to the post.

3. People who do not read the article but comment based on the title and it’s keywords because it’s just ridiculous to state “I also like three-way links” if I just wrote that I hate them.

4. People using German or other non-English keywords as their “name” because it is impolite to exclude the majority of my readers who do not understand.

5. Commenters linking to specific subpages like domain.com/my-new-product because I’m not your catalogue.

6. People adding a signature in their comment because you already got a link, you don’t need a signature, that’s greedy.

7. Commenters who disagree with me, because I never err you damn naysayers!

On good days I will just approve your comments, on normal days I will change your “name” to something which sounds actually like a name or remove your URL but on bad days I will spam your comment or delete it.

Spamming your comment means that you get flagged on other Wordpress blogs too so you probably do not want to risk that.

There are easy solutions or exceptions for most of these cases where both you and I can live with them or they even add some additional value. Tim Nash, a SEO consultant from the UK has a nice technical solution implemented: He added an extra text box for your favorite anchor text. This is really neat but I’m too lazy to hack my WordPress comment form and thus I prefer the easiest solution, introduced in part by my favorite blog consultant, Michael Martine. He just combines two things, his name and his job description.

So check out these simple rules of blog commenting netiquette, they might not apply everywhere but they will help you not be thrown out at SEO 2.0 and in other places probably too.

1. You can write: Michael Martine, Blog Consultant. You can also link to to an about page covering you. Also if you do not want to disclose your name or job position, you can even write something like Bob of Miller Real Estate or at least leave your initials to enable me to address you: AJ of Miller Real Estate but don’t write Miller Real Estate, AJ. Imagine being on a party again: You say your name first when you introduce yourself and then you tell people what you do for a living.
2. I appreciate people being thankful for a post but unless your refer to the specific post or I know your blog URL I have no way of determining whether you are a bot or not. So write something like “thank your for the post, it helped me with …”
3. If you want a piece of meat at a barbecue you don’t just drop in, take it and leave the party instantly. Stay for a minute to read the post, say “hi” and then leave.
4. Do you speak German addressing people on a party where nobody understands it? Try to translate at least. So do not write Web design Köln, but Mark of Dom Web Webdesign in Cologne
5. Imagine yourself on a party when asked about what you do for a living telling people, “Dirt Devil M110002!” So, as I said above, a page about you is OK, your homepage vacuumcleaners.com also but not a specific product page. Akismet will spam you in most cases you use subpages anyways.
6. A barbecue party is not a trade fair, you do not wear your name plate on your lapel. You just introduce yourself, that’s enough. So skip the additional signature.
7. Now imagine someone entering a barbecue party shouting: This place sucks, meat is murder, you dirty bastards stink! I guess such a person gets thrown out immediately. If you disagree, do it politely, with style after at least reading what this site is about. Of course I will delete trolls who offend me for all “SEOs being spammers“.
   

Did I forget something? Probably, feel free to add your take on the subject of blog commenting netiquette an barbecue parties in the comments below Introduce yourself and be nice to the other guest.

Zen master Seo-ong Sangsun is the closest to my dream appearance

Tonight I had a dream. In the dream Zen master Seo-ing Singsun spoke to me. I could even ask him some questions. I was also able to memorize some of them and his replies. I decided to write down what I remember.

Zen master Seo-ing Singsun, there is CSS Zen, there is a Zen habits blog, Zen is everywhere on the Web, why is there there no SEO zen?

Seo-ing: There is SEO zen. SEO Zen always has been and always will be.

Tad: How is that? SEO without the Internet or search engines?

Seo-ing: 3 thousand years ago a young disciple asked his master: Where is the way to enlightenment?

Tad: What did the master reply?

Seo-ing: He replied there are about 894,000 results for where is the way to enlightenment.

Tad: Oh well, then it’s not as easy.

Seo-ing: There are many ways to enlightenment but you have only one master.

Tad: You mean, you?

Seo-ing: You are your own Zen master, I’m just part of your dream.

Tad: Interesting but confusing. Maybe you can tell me the difference between SEO and SEO 2.0?

Seo-ing: Look at the two stones, which one is faster?

Tad: Well, they are both lying on the floor.

Seo-ing: Right, now pick one of them up and throw it away.

[I throw the stone as far as I can]

Tad: So what now?

Seo-ing: This is the difference between SEO and SEO 2.0

Tad: I have to think about that.

Seo-ing: Do not think. Sing.

Tad: Sing?

Seo-ing: Does the bird think?

Tad: Probably not.

Seo-ing: Does the flower think?

Tad: ….

Seo-ing: Does the river think?

Tad: ….

Seo-ing: So what do you think?

Tad: Sing?

Seo-ing: You think again.

Tad: Last question for today. What do you think about authority links. Do we have to focus on them?

Seo-ing: What do you do if you want to cross a river?

Tad: Use a bridge?

Seo-ing: There are two bridges, which bridge do you take, the big one by the famous architect or the small one made of wood by inhabitants of the nearby village.

Tad: The famous architect’s?

Seo-ing: I take the wooden bridge.

Tad: Thank you Zen master Seo-ing Singsun.

Of course this dream was not as clear as these words might suggest. I tried to reconstruct it. So it might contain some mistakes. Some wisdom got probably lost in the process.

Confused by the title? Well, I thought I might venture deeper into the SEO myth realm and I uncovered some other SEO myths lists which I mostly liked.

What’s most interesting about these is that most of them do not feature the same myths. So it seems search engine optimization is full of myths. Some lists even contradict each other.

What surprise indeed.

What else did I uncover? A detail that sheds new light on our “Top 10 SEO Myths” discussion at Sphinn. You’ll have to read the whole post or scroll down until I tell you what it is.

At first check my meta-list of the top 7 top SEO myths lists! Ouch, my tongue hurts and my brain is dizzy! The newest first:

1. Top Ten Organic SEO Myths by Jill Whalen at Search Engine Land
2. 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked by DISC
3. 5 Myths about SEO by Top Rank Blogger Lee Odden himself in 2006
4. 5 Myths in SEO by Modern Life (is Rubbish) from 2006
5. The Top SEO Myths, All Of It Hearsay at WebProNews in 2005
6. Top 7 SEO Myths at Rank for Sales from 2005
7. Top Five Search Engine Optimization Myths by ClickZ from 2003!

I told you! 2008 will be the year of the meta-list. I love self-fulfilling prophecies!

So what was the detail that sheds new light on the original list which sparked so much unrest? It was originally published in 2005 at an article directory by Big Oak SEO!

Which one is the most accurate? What do you think? #1 is in my opinion the most debateable while most of the others are common sense. According to Jill Whalen:

• you can drop xml-sitemaps,
• fresh content,
• h1-hX titles,
• the long tail
• Google’s webmaster guidelines are read only “just for fun”
• while buying links is OK.

Do you really agree?

When I posted the article “Top Search Engine Optimization Myths” by United Worx to Sphinn I was greeted with an incredible amount of criticism, mainly due to some details from the article which just show that it has been written a while ago.

The overtly negative backlash was more due to overzealous elitism than to real issues in my opinion. Thus I decided to update, “remix” the article and republish my version of the top 10 SEO myths. Yes, Tad strikes back!

While I think that there are bigger myths out there like “SEO is spam” or “you can’t optimize for highly competitive terms without paid links” I nonetheless will follow the more down to earth points made by the original article.

1. “Your top ten search engine ranking can be guaranteed.”
Some SEO firms will advertise a “guarantee” to have you listed in the top ten rankings. No one other than the search engines themselves can guarantee any ranking. Don’t believe it. Trust their results for other clients and make your decision from actual client successes, not empty promises and guarantees.
Google states in it’s Webmaster Help Center: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
What can be guaranteed though is that when a top 10 or #1 ranking is achieved the payment or rather bonus payment is due. Then it’s so called “performance based payment“. PBP based on rankings is not recommended though, as rankings themselves do not guarantee sales or overall profits.

2. “My in-house webmaster/web designer/programmer can do the SEO cheaper.”
Most SEO professionals can get higher rankings faster because search engine optimization and Marketing is complex, technical and has a steep learning curve. SEO companies also place a team at your disposal, including copywriters, web developers and link builders and unless you have a room full of marketing staff dedicated to SEO it is hard to keep up.

3. “Search engine traffic is worthless or not as good as other kinds of targeted traffic”
Search engine traffic is probably the most qualified traffic, because it comes from people searching for the exact products and services which the search engines have you indexed. They are looking for you, not the other way around. Keep in mind you must be targeting the right keywords, but that is the job of your SEO firm, to help you choose the right keywords.

4. “Websites are optimized for search engines out of the box”
A minority of designers and developers actually optimize pages for the search engines while they are building them. Most search engine optimization is done afterwards, if at all. You can lower the cost of SEO substantially if you include SEO from the start, even before the design part.

5. “Simply inserting keywords in the keyword meta tag will help list your site for that keyword”
Most major search engines do not use the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor and those that do, if the keyword is not also in the copy of the same page, it’s considered a factor which could lower your rankings, not raise it. At best the keyword tag is used by directories or social bookmarking sites when submitting your site. The only really important meta tag is the description as it is displayed in the search results by Google.

6. “The more times you repeat the keyword in the page, the higher it will rank”
So called “keyword density” does not matter as a major ranking factor outside the requirement that the actual keyword is present on the page in the way of natural language. Depending on where on the page and how the keyword is displayed the ranking can be positively or negatively affected. A keyword density that is too high will get you listed lower or penalized.

7. “Hidden links or text in a page can get your page ranked higher”
Keyword stuffing and hidden links in the page can get your site penalized or banned if detected. It is considered spamming by search engines. Most people think it’s not worth the risk. Google states in it’s Webmaster Guidelines: “Avoid hidden text or hidden links.”

8. “You don’t need to update your site to keep your rankings”
By routine maintenance (removing outdated material, fixing broken links, queries, etc.) and updating your pages regularly, you are signaling the bots and crawlers to come back and re-crawl your site for changes to their listings. To maintain high rankings, you need to keep at it and tweak the pages for better results if necessary. Also content freshness is one of the more important ranking factors. If neglected, your pages could easily slip out of the top rankings as new competing sites get indexed and optimized.

9. “You can achieve higher rankings on a keyword without changing the code or content of the pages in your site”
After Google introduced the Google bombing filter getting a higher ranking solely based on links pointing to your site does not work anymore as already mentioned at 6). If you want to steadily improve your rankings, you must make changes to your site that help the search engines spider it. Steady results are dependent on your willingness to optimize and tweak the code and content of your pages. A simple thing like fixing broken links can contribute to elevating your listings. It’s one of the most overlooked search engine tweaks.

10. “Google PageRank is the single most important ranking factor for your site in Google”
While PageRank was never the only factor in ranking sites, it was in the early days of Google the most important one. Google added more and more ranking factors to their overall algorithm while devaluing PagRank more and more. Nowadays ranking is based on more than 200 so called “signals” among others.

So what’s wrong now you naysayers? Get real and stop nagging. Negative people concentrate on the 2 or 20% which is bad while they ignore the 98 or 80% which is great. I’m positive, I concentrate on the positive aspects.

If you think the glass is half empty why tip away the other half?

Do you know other frequently encountered SEO myths? Tell me!