Greedy Superficial Bloggers Obsess Over SEO
April 7th, 2007 by Mark(Note: This post’s title has hurt some feelings. It was not intended to refer to any specific blogger. In particular, Lonnie at OMB is actually a very generous person in his charity work. This post is an argument against an idea, not an individual.)
Recently, it seems there’s been a sort of obsession spreading through the expat blogging communities. It’s about search engine optimization, i.e., trying to get one’s site to come up as high as possible in search engine results. The idea is to bring in traffic by figuring out how the search engines rank sites and then exploiting that system, or at least making sure of not being ranked artificially low. It’s not really a topic I’m interested in, but I’ve been dragged into this debate. Now that I have, I’ll let let my feelings be known.
Rather than spending my time trying to game the search engines, I’d rather spend my time making my writing more interesting or more useful to other people. I don’t want to change a post title just to grasp for a few more readers from a search engine. I don’t want to write based on what “keywords” search engines might notice. I want to write both as a way to organize my thoughts, and as a way to express myself. I’ve been writing a journal for a long time, even when it was offline and nobody read it but me.
Is the idea of personal expression really that alien to most bloggers? Am I the only blogger out there who isn’t obsessed with trying to get as many readers as possible? I’d rather focus on improving the actual quality of my writing rather than a search engine’s perception of its quality.Of course, it’s nice to get attention. I enjoy being listened to online or off. But just as making attention-seeking a primary goal in face to face meetings has its drawbacks, so too does writing primarily for the purpose of gaining a large readership. Has anybody ever considered that Stephen King’s writing isn’t necessarily better than that of any of the Bronte sisters, even though his books sell so many more copies? He himself, would admit that readership and quality writing don’t have a 100% correlation.
Unfortunately for readers, though, self-promotion is a lot more exciting than self-improvement:
Naturally, optimize your page title, your headings and keyword density in pages (5-8%), same as Google.
Onemanbandwidth.com: post#254
I detest this sort of talk. I’ll chose my own page titles and headings, thank you very much. I’m not interested at all in gunning for various “keywords”, either. The quotation above is an excerpt from Lonnie B. Hodge’s onemanbadwidth.com, in which he wrote at length about one of Fili’s many articles on SEO on filination.com. I’m not sure where he found out about me, but he linked to me and said he was interested in getting into a “running discussion” with myself, Fili and a couple of other bloggers about SEO, particularly as it relates to Baidu. Why, oh, why would somebody who reads Fili’s blog, where I’ve already stated my opinion on SEO obsession, want to be in this “running discussion” with me?
In all fairness, I’m pretty interested in Baidu, and I’ve written before about the poem Baidu’s name came and their financials. On the other hand, I’m not really interested in changing my site to make it rank higher on Baidu searches, or discussing the topic with a bunch of bloggers dreaming of ways to get more readers and more profits from the ads on their sites. I politely explained this to Lonnie, and he fired back with an assessment of how my site is “doomed”:
Umm, just checked Mark and your server is blocked by our server here…Not sure why…
I searched your site in other way: Google only has one page indexed for you and submit express shows your title tag is too long and you have no description tag, no author tag, and no keywords tag. You have no incoming links from Google or MSN and your Google page rank is a 0/10. You had better be the next Hemmingway if you want the writing alone to bring in more readers….OMBW
It’s hard for me to figure out how to even respond to this. Everything he said was flat out wrong. Toshuo certainly isn’t any sort of mega-site, but it does have thousands of incoming links, and Google indexes it well. Back when I was using Hostgator, and they accidentally deleted all my hosted content, I was able to restore a full and current backup from Google’s cache. My site is the first google hit on various topics I’ve written about, such as my former school Modawei, terms such as “Taiwan geek”, “pinyin tone tool”, “buxiban curriculum“, and“Chinese textbook reviews”, as well as a number of others.
Toshuo.com achieved a pagerank of 5 within seven months of me starting it, whereas onemanbandwidth.com, has a pagerank of 3 [1]. In other words, I’m not going to spend the next 6 hours reading his advice on SEO.
The sad thing is that I’m not really interested in writing just for the purpose of building up traffic. I guess it’s likely my traffic won’t grow that much more since I’m not making it a goal. I also suspect that if guys like Lonnie work hard at getting traffic, they’ll get it… but so what? Is being heard by more people so important to you that the whole matter of having something worthwhile to say is irrelevant? I’d much rather be “the next Hemmingway”, as he put it, and be unread by anybody than become so obsessed with self-promotion.
The title of this post was completely unfair, but it caught your attention. And that’s what promotion is all about.
Update: Lonnie has edited some of the comments in his post, particularly comment #666. Some things referred to here no longer appear on his blog.
[1]: I later discovered that while http://onemanbandwidth.com/ only has a page rank of 3, the wordpress directory of the site has a page rank of 5. :
April 7th, 2007 at 2:53 am
I’m with you. I still see blogging as a personal expression, not an obsession for popularity and generating ad revenue. I also don’t use Google to find a new blog to read. I stick with “word of mouth” and “blogrolls”. I try out a blog for a while and if it isn’t worth reading I simply unsubscribe. No sweat.
April 7th, 2007 at 6:16 am
I am sorry to hear you feel that way. We seem to disagree on a wide variety of issues, and this is obviously one of them. It seems that you do spend a lot of energy on showing how much you despise SEO and those pursuing it and you write your opinion repeatedly in a very clear and blunt way.
I think that between SEO and writing for one self there is a measure of fairness that a blogger should exercise. OMB was only trying to help the blogosphere and those sites that are interested in SEO, sharing his experiences in some of what he does for a living, and then - promotion title/content or not - you respond this way. I wish you the best of luck with the path that you have chosen.
April 7th, 2007 at 6:32 am
It seems as if, so long as you have a decently search-engine friendly design going, and so long as you’re not trying to make millions of your blog, the weight and depth of your content will get you where you need to be.
I’m surprised that OMB uses Wordpress’ “ugly permalinks” (the ?p=## variety). I don’t know much about SEO, but decent permalinks seem to be an important thing, particularly to someone trying to make a name for themselves talking about SEO. Oh well, maybe I’m wrong.
I got rid of the ads on my website. They made me feel icky. I’m happy to “pay” a couple hundred bucks a month to write somewhere that’s totally mine, and not rented out by the highest bidder.
April 7th, 2007 at 6:46 am
I really don’t care about SEO either. When I was writing under a domain that I let go when I re-branded myself my page rank was 7, and now it’s a 5. but it’s not really important. I have readers and I blog about what I blog about. For me blogging is about self-reflection on my teaching and what I can do in my classroom to improve things for my students.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Fili, this is the first time I’ve seen anything about SEO on this site. I’ve seen *you* write dozens of posts on it in your Fili’s Tech section. I don’t really see where you’re getting off on this bit about “helping the blogosphere” bit, either. You run Chinalyst, which aggregates other people’s blog posts and puts your google ads in them, you’re trying to get people to build a community site for your profit with Taiwanderful, and now you’re writing constantly about SEO.
From what I can tell, you’re the one who’s blunt. Blunt about trying to make money off of other people’s creativity while contributing little yourself.
April 7th, 2007 at 9:29 am
i feel a little retarded about asking- but is writing a blog really that superior to writing a journal (if you don’t care about making money)? mark, do you also have a private journal? i don’t see you blogging about relationship stuff, and i HAVE been waiting (just jokin witja). i haven’t started a blog because the whole world can see into your mind, and that creeps me out. posting is more anonymous, so i don’t mind that. maybe the best thing about a non-profit blog would be meeting interesting people through it, but you could do that in a much more meaningful way with face to face interaction working together on some kind of project or something.
April 7th, 2007 at 10:02 am
OMBW had a policy of no ads for two years. It suspended that policy to generate revenue for The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women: Six wonderful souls without the money to pay for their cancer treatment. I blocked Google ads for their stand on censorship in China for the same period.I am looking at reasonable alternatives.
I started OMBW to journal my experiences in China and to experiment with blog related SEO for a class I teach on Global Internet Marketing. My obsession is partly my job. I have learned a lot in the process and contributed several hundred dollars to the LOECW.
As for the permalinks: I thought about changing them and decided it would do more harm than good at this stage of the game: OMBW has over 80,000 backlinks from Google, Yahoo and MSN.
If I can help a student learn about Western Markering methods and secure a job,hand money over to a deserving cancer survivor, teach someone how to get good writing seen by a wider audience or anything close to the same I will do it.
What would be the purpose of writing a blog if we did not want to potentially up our readership? Marketing is about catching someone’s eye in hopes they will see something they like. I cannot SEO someone into staying on my site once they are they arrive, but I can hope to retain them because they see something they want to read.
It is also my policy not to attack fellow bloggers via a post. I am sorry if you saw my critique of your site as vitrol. It is not.
April 7th, 2007 at 11:34 am
A blog is not superior to an online journal. It’s different. for some people it is equivalent to a journal and for others it’s a way to disseminate ideas and for others still it’s a way to collaborate with people they would never meet. There are many ways to define a blog and I don’t think it is really possible to nail it down as one all encompassing concept of “online journal”.
April 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Fili, I didn’t intend the title of this post to be a direct jab at either you or OMBW. I hoped you would appreciate the irony in the fact that when I finally used a title designed to “hook” readers, it was one disparaging of just that practice. I should also point out that I don’t “despise” people who pursue SEO. Disliking marketing and disliking marketers are two very different things.
I really haven’t put that much energy into writing about SEO. Other than a comment on your post that linked to me, a comment on Range’s blog linking to the same post, and a comment on this post of Lonnie’s that also linked to me, this one entry is all I’ve written on the subject that I can recall. You’ve written more about SEO in this week alone than I have in my life.
Do we really disagree on such a wide variety of issues? From what I can see, you’re far interested in making money online than I am; and I value substance far more than presentation, whereas you might value them both more equally. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m extreme in terms of the latter. Even at my school, I put far more effort into improving my curriculum and the educational value of my classes than I am in promoting them.
But on the whole, we’re both interested in languages, both interested in Taiwan, and both interested in programming. That’s quite a bit of common ground.
April 7th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
V, I haven’t written about relationships for a couple of reasons. The first is that it might not be fair to the other person in the relationship to be exposed to the entire internet like that. The second reason is that I’ve seen other blogs, including my very favorite one, the one that inspired me to start blogging myself, shut down due to having shared too much information on relationships.
There is one thing I really like about blogging, as opposed to writing in my own journal. Having someone read it, whether that be a few good friends, or hundreds of readers, forces one to think a bit more clearly. If I know that nobody at all will read something I write in my journal, I might write sloppily. Worse still, I might think sloppily. Here, on the other hand, I know somebody like Martin will read it, poke it, and test for weaknesses. That alone, is worth putting it online.
As for people knowing more about me, it could be good or bad. If I make it easier for people to understand me, they can use that information either to help me or to hurt me. Since I believe people are basically good, I expect the former will outnumber the latter. There are limits, obviously, but so far the people I’ve met through blogging have been wonderful.
April 7th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Lonnie, it sounds like you do very admirable work. While I found your critique of my site amusing, and shocking, even, I wasn’t offended. I think I know the source of confusion, now, though. I actually followed a piece of Fili’s advice and standardized my blog to include trailing slashes on everything (as opposed to having “duplicated” content with and without them). Most people link to my front page, but those that don’t often link to /index, and I’ll bet you looked at /index/.
I think this is really just a matter of asking the wrong guy about the wrong thing. I’d be more than happy to talk with you about Baidu’s business, language learning, aspects of living abroad, Chinese culture, investing, or a dozen other things. Marketing just isn’t my thing.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I really liked Lonnie’s post. It is possibly to have the absolutely best intentions and to want to make money and do what you can to optimize your core work and your money-making potential. these don’t have to be mutually exclusive concepts, as they would at first seem to be. mark, i think you have a prejudice/assumption that they are mutually exclusive. i say this because of my post to you about collapsing classes. your response was that you would never sacrifice the student’s education for making money, assuming that is what i had done with my school. you didn’t realize that my goal in collapsing classes was not purely money-based- it was done to keep students in the school and give them as good an education as possible. and nobody put a gun to their parents’ head, either. in an extreme example, if all your classes were down to three students, your school would not be viable- you would have to collapse classes. also, those of us with bigger responsibilities than yours- ie families- have to think about money in a way you don’t have to. you’re just responsible for yourself. my greater responsibilities don’t mean i turn into a person only concerned with money or lying to get money, however.
you assume bloggers that care about optimizing seo care about money more than content, which is a possibility, but you don’t take into account that there may be bloggers who care about money and content equally, or who care about content more, but want to be more widely read, use some of their money for a good cause (vis a vis lonnie) etc. there are many different kinds of people in the world with varying degrees of ‘greediness’. your ‘greediness’ is perhaps lower on the scale of things, but your school isn’t a charity is it? nor should it be. i’m all for having a moral code. i just don’t jump to conclusions as quickly as i did when i was younger. and i revise my preconceptions when need be.
April 7th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Whatever the guy’s arguments may be, he strikes me a jerk. Look what he posted on his site. (http://onemanbandwidth.com/wordpress/?p=254#comment-666)
“As for substance over SEO: your blog is a bunch of poorly rehashed posts gleaned from others and inane narcissistic rantings. And FYI: You will never be more than a tick in the beard of a Hemmingway.”
Talk about a guy who can’t take a difference in opinion!
April 7th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Jim, that is from lonnie? the guy who helps cancer victims? doesn’t sound that charitable. also i read 3 posts from the ombw site. it’s not my style. for asian sites i prefer this one, poagao.org, michaelturton.blogspot.com and sometimes scottsommer’s blog. for writing poagao is #1. I haven’t found one that’s really funny yet. any suggestions?
April 7th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
I agree with Jim. That comment is uncalled for. Mark’s topics may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they certainly are not ‘inane narcissistic rantings’, which after having skimmed it, I think more accurately describe the critic’s site.
April 8th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I’ve had Google adsense on my blog for a few years. Recently I checked what’s I’d made over that period of time.
$9.18
So I think I can say with confidence not only that my blog isn’t very popular (and I apologize to both of my readers that I don’t update as often as I should), but also that I really should just dump the adsense nonsense.
Oh, and IMHO you can automatically disregard any comment beginning with “Folks,” “People,” “Umm,” or “Well, actually.”
April 8th, 2007 at 3:14 am
V, I don’t have a problem with trying to make money. I think you’re assuming I take a much more extreme position than I do. Of course I want to make money with the school. I just want to make sure that I’m offering something worthwhile to my customers as opposed to merely convincing that I am.
Lonnie’s “comment #666” actually helped make my point. If my writing were that terrible, wouldn’t it be unethical for me to aggressively pursue SEO? If I did, then all those poor google users might see my “inane narcissistic rantings” at the top of their search results, and quality content would be harder for them to find.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:20 am
Poagao, I like your blog, and so do a lot of people. It’s been holding steady as the top Taiwan blog on the TBF. Your blog may be the rare example of one with good content that really has been crippled by its presentation. The whole “black on black” comments thing couldn’t have helped its popularity.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Well, we’ll have to get together some time and give it a makeover.
April 8th, 2007 at 6:09 am
Which is better, substance or style? Which is nobler, function or form? This is a war that’s been raging as long as civilization itself. With the Hemmingways and Nietzsches of the world lined up on one side, and the Chopras and Kournikovas on the other. In the end, the only relevant question in this debate is, “Who do you want to be?”
April 8th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Greedy Superficial Bloggers Obsess Over SEO…
Have all the China bloggers become obsessed with search engine optimization? Not this one….
April 8th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I don’t blog about things that are too personal, because I am acutely aware that I don’t want to share everything with everyone; this might land you into trouble with prospective employers or other people.
I blog rarely about details at my workplace and my relationship with my wife.
I have posted a total of 1 post on PageRank, which is probably equivalent to a post on SEO. Naturally, this type of talk is linked to people running websites making more money with their blogs.
April 8th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Wow, this has quickly gone from SEO how-to into cross-strait tension!
In my various hats in the China blogsphere I’ve had contact with all mentioned here (Lonnie, Mark, fiLi, Gemme and Alex), and each of you have always come across as really level-headed and nice people… sooo… before this becomes a “he said, ta shuo guo” moment, lets take a step back and realize a few of things:
1) Writing is why we all have blogs. Writing about teaching, writing about China, writing about finance, writing about SEO… it’s all writing.
2) Writing online is for reading.
3) Reading is done by people.
4) People use search engines.
5) Making sure your writing/site is optimized for that indexing is just smart.
6) Having a discussion about it with people who know about it is valuable for everyone - intensive use, or casual use.
I just want you two (Lonnie/Mark) to understand you’re both talking about the same thing and maybe put some cold water on things.
I’ve seen site stats used in various ways, but this is the first time I’ve seen them used as a way to fling insult. Kudos.
(cross-commented at onemanbandwidth and tushuo)
April 8th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Mark… just also wanted to ask… what’s with the hover link being set to the background colour? You being funky with design? Maybe I’m simple, but it confuses me when I go to click on links and they disappear.
April 8th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Yeah, I have to second The Humanaught on the link hover color. I’ve been meaning to ask Mark about that for a while.
As for SEO, it’s something I might do if I have some extra time. I put a bit of effort into it at one point, got some decent results, but then did the math and realized it’s not a good way to make money. I don’t plan to ever become a “full-time blogger.” It can get you some decent pocket change if you have enough traffic, but it’s not worth compromising your message or style for.
I also don’t like to harass regular readers with ads. So if you find my posts through Google you see ads, but if you read regularly through the main page or a feed reader you don’t.
April 8th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Ryan, I don’t really think we are talking about the same thing. He’s obviously very interested in SEO, as you also seem to be to some extent, and I’m not. Not the end of the world obviously, but everyone has their own priorities. If it makes you feel any better, Ryan, I commented on Lonnie’s site yesterday morning telling him I respected his volunteer work. He hasn’t published my comment, though.
As for the hover color, it’s not the same as the background! The background is #EEC, and the hover has always been #FFF. I can read them very clearly, but since others are having difficulty, I’ll change the hover color. As a nod to all of John’s help, it’s now #363, AKA “sinosplice green”, until I have the time to choose a more suitable color.
April 8th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
John, I don’t like aggressive ads, either. I try hard to keep them out of my readers’ way. As a regular reader of your site, there is one thing I should point out, though. When you just show an excerpt of a post on your main page, and we have to click the “more” tag to get to the whole entry, the entire navigation sidebar becomes replaced with ads.
I like the idea of keeping the ads on the individual posts, instead of the main site, and I’ve actually modeled this site after yours in that regard. Is there a reason you get rid of the navigation bar entirely, rather than just replacing it with ads?
April 8th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Well, call me a greedy, money-hungry blogger.
I’m not so much referencing Mark’s actual post. Of the things I understood in the post (I’m not familiar with the sites he mentioned), I agree with him. I want people to read both of my sites, and I have advertising on both of them for one reason: to make money.
Like Paogao, I don’t make much. I don’t think I’ve broken $3 yet. I’m constantly thinking of ways that I can get more people to see my site.
And, that doesn’t make me feel “icky” or like a sell-out. I’m doing what I love (writing, studying, and traveling), and if I can find an alternative way of making money, so that I can keep on doing it with the most autonomy imaginable, then I will.
Hell, I’d be happy as a fly on poo if I could quit teaching and devote all of my time to studying Chinese and writing about the things I’ve learned.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
mark, i am right and you are wrong that’s it NEXT- all replies to this particular post are closed so that i may have the last word. if you violate this policy, i shall reply to your succeeding posts with an endless stream of annoyance- PS happy dan4 day =:
April 8th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Was the use of the tonal numbers, when there’s all these wonderful quicktag buttons to use the first of the stream v?
@Mark: I thought I noticed a bit of change when I hovered over the link, but couldn’t be bothered to squint my eyes and check various angles of my LCD. The green, temporary or not, is much better.
As for SEO, it would seem that most of the resistance to the term here is more to prove a point than really any valid argument. There are aspects of this blog that have obviously been created for good SEO formating, and rightfully so - as the method in which search engines index is an intelligent methodology, and sites should adhere to some form or standard of that.
As for loading your content with keywords or joining link farms just to get a few more readers… I think that’s garbage - and so does Google.
There is a balance, is what my winded meandering is attempting to express.
April 8th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I think most of you are taking yourselves way too seriously, especially Ryan. Putting time into SEO on a personal blog is kind of like putting on a suit and tie to go to the shopping mall. Maybe it nets you some sort of benefit, but it’s also kind of sad.
Just my 2 cents.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Yeah, nobody uses my nifty quicktags.
She was talking about Easter, though.
Wow, Humanaught . So nobody who disagrees with you has a valid point? That seems a little bit closed minded to me. Not everybody is bent on getting the largest audience possible, and optimizing the search rankings of a given site isn’t necessarily a good thing for search users.
Can you elaborate? Whatever it is, it must have been an unintentional side-effect.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Am I the only one who writes because there really is nothing else to do in Qingdao on a weekday night? I’d much rather write some second-rate crap than play dice with a waiter in an empty bar on a Tuesday night.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:13 am
humanknot, that wasn’t part of the aforementioned special stream, that was just the mundane annoyance that goes with reading my posts.. try brushing your hair while still wet, or you could do some yogic breathing techniques to get some relief (xianzaishizhenzhendekaishi : )
April 9th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Oh yeah. Robert, you’re a greedy, money-hungry blogger!
April 9th, 2007 at 2:32 am
[...] better or worse, there is an interesting discussion happening on a few China-related blogs these days. A discussion turned into an argument turned into [...]
April 9th, 2007 at 3:32 am
According to Panda Passport, the Ultimate Tag Warrior is useful for SEO. Maybe that’s what the Humanaught was talking about. And here I thought it was just just for the pretty Tag Archive.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Ultimate Tag Warrior allows the tags that you choose for each post to function as meta keywords for that post. Meta tags are becoming less and less impt, but I still throw them in there.
It also gives the options of putting the tags in the url structure. But of course that can be done using the permalinks option in wordpress.
You can also put display the tags at the end of each post, but I choose not to do
that. I choose instead to display them in my feed, so that the feed has a “related posts” option.
There are a ton of other options as well. But those are the main ones related to SEO. Really, I only use a small percentage of the tool’s functions, but I think it’s still worth using.
There’s a lot that can be said about SEO. But I think if you follow the basics, it’s really not necessary to pain yourself obsessing about it. Pagerank and all those metrics are all well and good, but in the end it comes down to the end product.
Don’t waste time try to market a site, if you haven’t first invested the time to make sure it’s a good site. As I said in my post, I think your pinyin tool is awesome. And even though I didn’t bookmark your site in the past, google could always direct me back. That’s a quality tool that markets itself, and your google rankings reflect that.
This pinyin tool for the comments is nót tōō shăbby ĕīthér.
Keep up the good work!
(I’m gonna cross-comment as well)
April 9th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I’m cross-commenting.
And again.
Creating good content is key.
That is how I started blogging.
A lot of bloggers would like to do nothing but blogging.
Using SEO and the tools for monetizing a blog is necessary.
Some bloggers do very well, others try to find their niche market.
There was a point where I was really trying hard to monetize my blog. But since I moved to Taiwan, I am taking another approach.
Part of it is moving my blog to a hosted service, which I did in February.
Seriously, everybody should take a step back and relax a bit.
There is no need for getting all upset about the matter.
We all have our own opinions, and most of the time they are different.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:12 am
[...] lively discussion is going on over at toshuo.com about SEO, or Search Engine [...]
April 10th, 2007 at 8:38 am
[...] couple days ago, Ryan and John pointed out to me that they had some usability issues with the color of the links on my site when you hover over [...]
April 11th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I agree with Mark for the most part. However, the things a person does in life are irrelevant unless they have some sort of impact on history. You can’t have an impact without some kind of exposure to the outside world. Marketing is the science of acquiring exposure. When I was younger and an idealist, I used to think that quality was the most important thing a person could strive for. But now that I’m older (and wiser?), I think that exposure and marketing are probably more important than quality. Obviously, the best thing is to strive for both quality and exposure, and it helps that they usually go hand-in-hand: the best ideas generally get more exposure than the worst ideas, and the ideas that get the most exposure generally improve in quality faster than those that get the least exposure. But why do I now prefer marketing over quality? Because the more people that get exposed to your ideas and product, the better chance there is of your ideas and products being improved upon and used for something even greater. You could be the most brilliant and talented person to ever live, with ideas that could solve all of the worlds problems, but if nobody even knew you existed, all of your genius and potential would go to waste. On the other hand, if you were the most famous person to ever live, you’d have a lasting impact with everything you ever did. The sad fact is that people like Anna Nicole Smith have a greater impact on the world than genius’ that keep to themselves writing in private journals that no one will ever read.
Is it more selfish to seek exposure for your ideas or to keep your ideas to yourself?
April 13th, 2007 at 8:09 am
[...] has recently stirred a hornet’s nest by daring to express his preference for content quality over deliberately massaging a site’s code [...]
April 15th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Mark,
Completely out of the SEO controversy, you would be surprised to know that the tags that you add at the end of your posts are … SEO techniques
As i wrote on fillnation’s comments, refusing the idea of SEO, is a bit like hearing a girl telling you that she is beautiful from the inside, and that people need to see this, not her ‘public-ranking’ poor aspect, and that no, she will not get dressed nicely, she will not makeup…
April 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Ed, I think that’s a flawed analogy. Getting dressed nicely would be analogous to designing a site to look nice (to human readers). SEO is more like a girl who may or not wear make up, telling everyone that she’s beautiful, hiring promoters, etc…
Would you be surprised to know that I added tags for the benefit of my human readers, and not the search engines? I can’t think of anyone who would want to see a list of entries I wrote in April of last year, but it is reasonable that someone would want to see a list of entries written about a specific topic, such as “Japanese”.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:21 am
Here’s an interesting slashdot post. The comments section talks about SEO a lot, and the main gist is that Google actually punishes websites for trying to “game” the system, ie focusing on improving pagerank as opposed to focusing on content. It seems like Google has gone to great lengths to discourage SEO.
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/05/01/1229242.shtml
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:09 am
Oh, it gets better and better! Now, Lonnie has edited out the entire part of his comment that I linked to in comment #13. Not only is he a guy who can’t take a difference in opinion, but he’s a revisionist too! If I were Mark, I’d make a whole new post just about this.
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:35 am
I think this slashdot article gets confused over a few different things.
Suplemental hell is indeed a sub-par place to be in google. It’s not the worst though. It is caused by either duplicate contents, or by google degrading a site. This ban has probably happened as the “marketing consultant” has used what is called black hat SEO and has been so aggressive with his techniques (keyword stuffing…) that google has taken the piss.
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:48 am
Condemned To Google Hell
Don’t anger the Google gods.
That’s the lesson Paul Sanar learned–too late–last year. Up until last fall, the 21-year-old New Yorker depended solely on the search engine to keep traffic flowing to Skyfacet.com, his online diamond business; Sanar says he sold $3 million dollars worth of jewelry a year. Then, he says, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) turned its back on Skyfacet.com, condemning the site to Internet obscurity.
Slide show: Grading Google
Beginning in September 2006, Skyfacet no longer showed up on the first few pages of Google’s results when users typed in search terms like “diamonds” and “engagement ring.” The site’s traffic vanished, and Sanar says his sales dropped $500,000 in three months.
What happened? Sanar isn’t completely sure. But he does know that his site has been condemned to the supplemental index, a dreaded backwater region of Google search results that goes by another name in online marketing circles: Google Hell.
Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site’s pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible–because site operators often don’t know what they did to get placed there.
More at: http://www.forbes.com/…googhell.html
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:27 am
No thanks, Jim. It seems he takes this subject pretty seriously. Barring any surprises, I don’t plan to write about any more of Lonnie’s posts until I see one on a topic where my comments would be welcome.
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:53 am
Ed, I agree. There’s definitely a big difference between white hat and black hat SEO. Google probably doesn’t care that much about the former. They probably still want to minimize its effects, since their goal is to rank information based on relevance. However, I’d bet that 99% of the sites that get condemned to “Google Hell” are doing something deceptive. It’s Google’s job to make sure that link farms and that sort of thing don’t work too well. Now, if only all the random bloggers emailing me offers to do 3-way link trades would just realize this…
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:15 am
MArk,
Your comments are always welcome.
J, like anyone, have my “China moments.” But it is not usual for me to get angry at anyone save the censors, history revisionists and their ilk in the PRC and Japan.
I have been a bit hyper-vigilant of late: You are not a regular reader of OMBW so you don’t know that my wife has stage 3A cancer nor that I have a rare auto-immune condition that has already cost me a gall bladder and will soon finish its work on my liver. It is the reason that I and another colleague are taking a charity trip across China to blog on all provinces to raise money for the other 5 women in my wife’s chemotherapy group who cannot afford care and will surely die soon without aid.
Long before tragedy struck my family I gave my services to groups like The Reading Tub (a literacy group in the US), other charities and newcomer blogs via SEO. a, I THAT that part of it seriously. But, if you were to peruse OMBW you’d find that I really do take all but human rights issues with a grain of salt. And no, I don’t need any cheese with the whine: I am teacher who ELECTED to teach rural Chinese kids, stuck in a third-tier school, English and marketing skills for 700 USD a month and someone who gives away the revenue on his site to women and students who need it. My school of primarily farm kids had 5 students diagnosed with cancer this year. One of my students, one of my favorites, lost a leg to bone cancer and I have been giving her money for a new leg from the site and from my pocket.
A, I took issue with being labeled as Greedy. I am sure it would have pissed you off too.
I am no model of pedagogy, charity, SEO prowess or humanitarian action, but greedy and superficial don’t fit. They were fighting words and I opted out of the fight so I could concentrate on the trip and less inflammatory issues.
LON
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:10 pm
My gosh. That does sound like a stressful situation that I can’t even begin to understand. I assure you again that the title of this wasn’t meant to be about you specifically. Heck, you don’t even keep adsense on your blog consistently!
As I said, the title was meant to be ironic in the fact that when I finally used a title designed to “hook” readers, it was one disparaging of just that practice. I had been getting pretty sick of the link trade offers, though. Not one of them was a site with any relevance to mine at all, and they were going on and on about increasing Google rankings.
I’ve actually started reading your blog more often, to be honest. I found out through that tool you linked to last time that this site actually has become blocked by the Great Firewall, ever since I put up a back-up of Poagao’s material. I may make a post about that.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Lonnie,
I have no idea of who you actually are but i can only congratulate you for fighting back at life when it starts throwing you sh*t in the face.
Good Job, i am sure you are giving your existence a true meaning.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
[...] has recently stirred a hornet’s nest by daring to express his preference for content quality over deliberately massaging a site’s [...]
July 19th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
[...] were emailed questions….And then there was the uproar created by the ass-hat at Toshio. [...]
July 20th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Lonnie, I thought everything was straightened out in comments 52 and 53. Are you having another “China day”?
July 21st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Did you read his post, it isn’t nice… But what can you do?
July 24th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
New to this blog stuff, but it is cool to get crap off my chest, or just to share opinions..aint that what this thing i have stumbbled upon is for? (dont know where i am or what yall are talkin bout)its cool though.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:48 am
[...] 4 minutes later, a 5.2 shook us, again. This time it felt like fun, we were laughing! Alike the owner of the OneManBandWith’ blog, if life was throwing shit at us, we would kick it in the face. [...]