Well, Google has finally come out with its SEO Starter Guide. You can find it here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html What will this mean for the SEO industry?
It probably won't make much of a difference. Some people want to do SEO themselves because they don't have the money. While others don't have the time so they'll spend the money instead. All the Google info was out there in various guides before so I don't think you'll see much change.
People practicing their SEO tactics and ways wont stop,despite this. People are going to do what they feel is right. besides,some of the SEO practices are fairly basic like changing Metatags,title tages,not including meta fresh,make a 404 redirect and stuff like that.
I don't think it will change much. All this information is currently well known on the Web, in forums and in books (including my own) and there is still an SEO industry. Why? A lot of businesses don't seem to be able to do this stuff for themselves. I'm currently working for one of American's biggest technology firms. They've had one of the best known SEO firms in the business working with them for years. I talk to the managers and everyone is very clued up on SEO, how to do it, what's important etc, they've read the books, been to the training, drunk the KoolAid ...and yet, and yet the site I'm working on - dozens of templates, hundreds of thousands of pages of content, PR8 etc has had absolutely no SEO work done on it and ranks nowhere for the firm's target keywords, well they don't even have a list of target keywords so lets say it ranks nowhere for the firm's thousands of product lines. In big companies there often such a separation of responsibilities and it is often so hard to get change implemented internally that they need outsiders, consultants etc to do the work for them. After all, if I make a mistake I can have my contract terminated.
There will always be a market available in the "pay others to do something I could do myself" category. I can change the oil in my car, but I'd rather pay someone else $30 to do it. Why? Because it's easier on me. People are lazy. Add in the "I'mnotentirelysurewhatI'mdoinghere" factor with something as vague as SEO, and it's even more likely to get farmed out by most people.
Yeah, that's for absolute newbies. There's nothing in there we don't already know. People are lazy like Alpha said, and I don't think the average person knows the amount of work involved to properly SEO a website. The average person wouldn't even know where to start to rewrite their urls for example. Most people give up after a few months and their site goes stale. I know from experience to wait it out and keep on plugging
Yeah. I didn't find any new information in that guide... What did you expect: NEWS FLASH: THE SECRET TO A PR 10!!! . . . . . . more backlinks.
hi buddy i think the guide is for people new into this and it is not meant for people who even have basic knowledge about SEO but still it is good for newbies and i dont think it would effect SEO industry and professional much because it doesn't contain as such any secrets or complicated SEO techniques ankur
Years of experience beats any old SEO guide, any day. Anyone starting out with that guide is probably starting from square one, and will have a long road of failing and learning ahead of them.
The knowledge has been always out there, but actual implementation and managing is what really matters. Enjoying a initial google spike isn't difficult but maintaining it is. So yeah, don't think it'll affect too much...
Nothing. And remember that what is "no evil" today, it's going to be "evil" tomorrow. So no need to be happy/sad about this. Google changes guidelines more quickly than a rabbit doing it...
I think you guys should go through it again. They do actually mention one new thing (which you probably didn't knew about), which is against what Matt Cutts previously has said. A hint would be to look at the pictures. Rabbits change guidelines? And they do it quickly?
I think it's great Google is doing this because they are kind of acknowledging some of the skepticism that is out there. Such as links from bad neighborhoods. I found the best way to get a good ranking is time and good content. I also like doing what is called A/B Testing (alpha/beta testing), where you change up the content on the page, and even try different keywords. Google has seemed to like fresh content on the page for me
A year on and has the guide made much difference to the SEO industry? No! Although this is a great guide I would recommend to every client / employor to read/scan it and then get a professional to impliment it. What are your thoughts almost 1 year on? Cheers, Joe