Is the key to web success getting your site at the top of Google’s results?
Or is the real key making content people actually care about?
From the Slashdot comments on “What if Google Had to Design For Google?”:
Should read: What if Google was a useless site…
…and had to design for Google?
Lets see… counter examples… how about searching Google for the word “shipping”. What do you know, UPS and Fedex are #1 and #2, and their front pages aren’t a mess of useless, Google-pleasing crap. Maybe because they are real businesses and aren’t pandering some direct ship junk or get rich quick scheme.
(by skiingyac)
/. has an excellent discussion about PageRank and SEO, and anyone interested in making and distributing media would do well to check it out.
Update:
Such timing… I just noticed this article on Digg: Top bloggers reveal how to build traffic off-blog without spending a dime
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Comments
The problem with that whole “Google designing for Google” thing is that they assume Google would need (well, not need - but you know) search engine optimisation.
Seeing as how Google is the search engine, who does Google need to optimise for again?
Re-read comment. It made no sense. Sorry! I’m also too lazy to log in and edit it. Oops.
FWIW though, I looked at that Digg link - in all seriousness, how many of those “top bloggers” on that list are you familiar with? I recognized two.
Readers - don’t fall into the SEO trap. It’s largely urban legend and a group of snake oil salesman (Jason Calacanis said it first) trying to guess how the Google algorithms work so they can get the most out of their AdSense inventory. Harsh, yes - but true*.
* = I say true, but I lied. It isn’t always true. There are some legit techniques with SEO, but the majority is just basic stuff any decent designer does. There are great companies like SEOMoz who really understand some legit, above the belt techniques for SEO that do work. Most of the time though… be careful.
They certainly aren’t what I’d consider “top blogs” but I’ve not doubt they get their fair share of traffic. Remember, there’s that extra layer of the Internet that most of us aren’t familiar with. The one that “regular people” use. Hell, I was like the last person to hear about MySpace. I think I heard about it when it was announced that it was the most popular site on the web.
I’m sure these blogs are quite popular, but you and I and other people who don’t get sucked into whitepaper blogs just don’t notice them.
As well, the “Google designing for Google” was what Google supposedly expects sites to do to be ranked well. I think it was just illustrating how you can wreck a nice design by optimizing for robots. That’s why I posted that /. comment, though. It’s pretty clear that if you have a site that people actually use, like, say, Google, then you really don’t need all that SEO.
Using Google as the example wasn’t meant to be practical, it just helped illustrate his point.
“Hell, I was like the last person to hear about MySpace.”
Consider yourself lucky.
I truly do.
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