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I have a top ranking blackhat SEO as an acquaintance who is adamant that SEO is on its way out. What do you reckon? And what will be the effect on this for us affiliates? Sounds scary to me – or would it be a good opportunity?
Does he mean blackhat SEO is on its way out (which can only be a good thing) or ALL SEO? If ALL, what does he think is going to replace it?
@Fortune Palace 163192 wrote:
If ALL, what does he think is going to replace it?
Qualitative content is all that matters and modern search engines are starting to pick up ton that. I can not wait for the day when all the poor Playtech casinos are gone from the top positions in various SEs! :drink:
I suggest you keep it just that an acquaintance, those guys are sneaky.
One of the websites I’ve bought in the past had some shout box feature. Had to remove it after 1 day because some idiots like that kept spamming it with links after it was posted on a blackhat SEO website. People like that are the bane of the intarweb
As far as title tags etc to describe what a page is about, I think these are still useful and google will still be looking at these for a long time to come. Things like keyword density seem to be less and less important as time goes by, though
However, I think the algorithms will get better and better at picking up on spam and many of the other techniques that the blackhatters use. I’ve noticed far fewer utter spam pages getting to the top of the rankings, although there are still many poor quality banner pages out there getting to the top, with very little content. That may be changing too.
I was reading one of the google patents on ‘scoring traffic associated with a document’ and it seems they certainly go to great lengths to detect spam. Now, that was written in November 2006, so it will be very interesting to compare it to any more patents they produce on the subject.
Tribun’s right.
SEO has always been on the way out since it started. The search engines are (well, should be) constantly working towards a solution that delivers what the user wants, and that’s quality content that satisfies their query. As discussed in another recent thread, it’s only a matter of time, but “time” could be years.
I disagree completely.
If you have two sites that are identical then the site that is optimized the best for a search engine to view/spider it will be on top. How can this ever not be true?
The only way for SEO to go away is to have massive teams of humans.
As long as its math calculating the results, SEO will be here to stay.
@Tarzan 163207 wrote:
As long as its math calculating the results, SEO will be here to stay.
I agree, I think onpage seo will always help, its the link buying and other things that will eventually not be part of the equation when ranking sites. Even if we get to the point where search engines are relying on quality content to rank websites, I think optimizing those pages with good title tags and what not will still be part of the game.
@Tarzan 163207 wrote:
I disagree completely.
If you have two sites that are identical then the site that is optimized the best for a search engine to view/spider it will be on top.
At the moment.
But it’s only a matter of time before the SE’s work out how to credit the original content owner. In fact there are many ways they could decide the order of presentation – country hosted, target audience, the order they are found, how users react to a site…many, many ways. At the moment, algos are in their infancy so they choose to factor in optimisation heavily. In years to come, they will change that as the algos improve and get closer to “human” capability.
Logically, SEO does not guarantee the best results are presented to the user. It guarantees the best optimised results are presented to the user. It can be gamed. That’s why you can buy your way to the top and that’s why the top SERPS often have so many crappy sites in them.
Quote:But it’s only a matter of time before the SE’s work out how to credit the original content owner. In fact there are many ways they could decide the order of presentation – country hosted, target audience, the order they are found, how users react to a site…many, many ways. At the moment, algos are in their infancy so they choose to factor in optimisation heavily. In years to come, they will change that as the algos improve and get closer to “human” capability.My main point is that even when/if you narrow the audience down to the geo and the niche you will be left with a handful of pages…. those pages will be ordered by optimization standards (most links, best keyword usage, domain name, etc) For instance: assume five sites about baseball legend “Babe Ruth” – then let’s assume that the content on all the sites is ORGINAL and good articles, the sites are all hosted in the U.S. and all the searchers are from New York…. who gets the top listing?
Content – original content is sometimes licensed by something like Associated Press…. so on articles like this – what site will out rank what site? What about original articles with massive duplicates on the same subject … Reuters vs A.P. articles? surely if the engines are still algorithmic the best optimized site wins (best being keywords, most links, domain, trustrank, age, etc, etc) ? How could this NOT be unless a human got involved? How would they do it? It would be curious, for sure, when CNN can’t get top ratings because all the local news stations were out ranking them on national stories….
Country Hosting – this seems like a mistake when you consider world new sites (BBC, etc) – for instance will FoxNews outrank BBC because it is hosted in the USA and I am in the USA? What about global websites? For instance a site in France reviewing in english a casino in Macau?
Geo-IP – doesn’t currently work very well because of dynamic IP addresses.. being a satellite user I know that first hand.
Reaction to a site – this is definitely already being used, and I do agree the engines are getting smarter. Hopefullly that will mean less black-hat tricks that will hopefully be more limited.
Just my thoughts….. :tongue: ….. fire away !!Going back to the original post – which quoted the opinion of a blackhat seo – I believe it was meant to express that blackhat seo will disappear.
IMO, this is true, blackhat seo in it’s former and current forms will disappear.
However, on-page seo will always be there in some form.
Also, regardless of what the search engine’s rules and methods will be in the future, there will always be people looking to find loopholes and game the engines.
Consequently, search engine positions will always be in a flux, and sites would do well to gain as much independence as they can.
@Tarzan 163270 wrote:
My main point is that even when/if you narrow the audience down to the geo and the niche you will be left with a handful of pages…. those pages will be ordered by optimization standards (most links, best keyword usage, domain name, etc)
Brings up an interesting point – how does one define “optimisation” I guess. I agree on the domain name remaining an important element, and I agree with you and Dom about on page “SEO” playing a role for a long time to come.
Tarzan wrote:It would be curious, for sure, when CNN can’t get top ratings because all the local news stations were out ranking them on national stories….Country Hosting – this seems like a mistakeTotally agree on country hosting – not a fan of this at all…it’s Google telling us who we can and cant target. Wrong. Regards the CNN point, and this one…
Tarzan wrote:Reaction to a site – this is definitely already being used, and I do agree the engines are getting smarter.…I firmly believe this is the future. How they get there, I have no idea, but the bounce rate, click rate, page views – ie: the general behaviour of a user to a site or sites found through a search term – will become the main factor in SERPS placement.
Hence why I think content will be King one day, and SEO as we know it today (links, keywords, titles, semantics, layout and design etc) will not be a major ranking factor.
The bottom line is, if you ran a search engine it is not sensible to allow outside forces (ie: webmasters) to manipulate your search results because while they can, your users can be served with crap. Simple as that. I believe that’s their ultimate goal.
@Simmo! 163298 wrote:
…I firmly believe this is the future. How they get there, I have no idea, but the bounce rate, click rate, page views – ie: the general behaviour of a user to a site or sites found through a search term – will become the main factor in SERPS placement
Maybe, but I don’t see how new sites would get a fair shake with this. If all of these things will contribute to rankings, then how does a new site with no traffic, no rankings ever get there? Maybe google is doing something like this now, hence why sometimes new sites instantly rank strong for a few days after getting indexed, then fall off the map. Something like a test run to see how users react to the site.
@Bonusgeek 163304 wrote:
Maybe, but I don’t see how new sites would get a fair shake with this. If all of these things will contribute to rankings, then how does a new site with no traffic, no rankings ever get there? Maybe google is doing something like this now, hence why sometimes new sites instantly rank strong for a few days after getting indexed, then fall off the map. Something like a test run to see how users react to the site.
Yes I’ve spotted that. I suspect through the fact of sheer volume, they can afford to play with the longtail and build up a site’s profile gradually, perhaps using one of the many data centers every now and again to artificially increase sites briefly to judge response. They can probably afford to have one or two sites in the Top 10 that aren’t great for short periods.
