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vangogh
07-14-2011, 11:10 PM
I read this interview earlier today and thought it something worth reading if you want ot better understand what search engines are looking for.

The interview is with Vanessa Fox (http://www.stonetemple.com/blog/?p=706) who used to work for Google and knows an awful lot about search engines.

For those of you not plugged into the seo industry they refer to Panda a number of times. Panda is the name given to the most recent Google algorithm update. It was a major change in how Google ranks web pages.

The interview is a long one and probably contains some information that won't mean much if you don't follow search engines and seo, but there's more information that's easily accessible to anyone and it's good advice for how to go about building and growing a business and website.

Before the interview some of the key points in it are summarized so you can read those without a big investment in time.

One quote from the interview


You have to look holistically at everything that’s going on in your site. This is what you should be doing, as if search engines didn’t exist.

It really is a worthwhile interview.

lav
07-15-2011, 09:29 AM
I just watched this guy explain it in his words today... interesting

some dude explains panda on a whiteboard (http://www.florenceroad.com/2011/07/google-updates-seo-algorithm/)

vangogh
07-15-2011, 10:47 AM
I watched that a few weeks ago on its original site SEOmoz (tenax). Same video as above.

Rand (or one of the SEomozzers) does a Whiteboard Friday every Friday. They're usually all well done and filled with good info.

Dan Furman
07-15-2011, 11:01 PM
I've always resisted SEO "tricks" and continually told my clients "just be the very best site you can be for your industry". It looks like that type of attitude is slowly winning out. I know my site has benefitted from recent changes. Because there's no BS there. If you are looking for copywriting, I have a nice, informative website that encourages reading.

vangogh
07-15-2011, 11:31 PM
Google has always wanted to rank sites based on how valuable they are to real people. They've been moving their algorithm in that direction since the start. The hard part is how does a machine determine what humans find most valuable, especially when you consider that you and I can be looking for the same thing and each think a different page or site most valuable.

Still Google gets closer to the goal all the time. They look at so many different signals for what might make one page better than another that very few specific signals have a major impact. There seem to be less and less holes to exploit.

Good seo is essentially building a site with the content people want in response to something they're looking for. Build a site that real people want to visit, come back to, and interact with. Build a site that gets the technical details right to help search engines find your content and understand what your content is all about.

There will always be tricks that work today, but don't work tomorrow. If you approach seo more holistically and stop worrying about what the latest trick or magic formula is you can usually do well over time. The problem is most people don't want to invest the time it takes so they focus in on tricks that don't work and waste the time they didn't want to invest. I've always followed the holistic approach and my search traffic has grown year over year. I also picked up more traffic after the Panda update.

Tukings
07-16-2011, 04:46 PM
I just read the whole interview ... WOW. I'm seeing blackhat SEO "experts" sweating up a storm.

vangogh
07-16-2011, 06:48 PM
Blackhats will always look for and find a way. There will always be one hole or another in the algorithm and as long as there have been systems there have been people gaming the systems.

But yeah, the recent changes are certainly making it harder for the blackhat side of the industry to do what they do. Many of their tried and true techniques have gone away in the last couple of years. Of course that just means they'll look for and find new techniques and the cat and mouse game will continue.

ThirdSEO
02-09-2012, 02:17 PM
Thanks for the post vangogh, the article was definitely worth reading. It's going to be interesting to see how much the Panda platform relies on user experience to rank various websites on Google. Search engine algorithms are in a constant state of evolution, I find it hard to doubt that they'll continue to add so much to their algorithms that it will become hard for even the Google engineers to wrap their minds around.


Added value is key. Search engines are looking more and more for the best possible answer to user’s questions.

vangogh
02-10-2012, 01:04 AM
Yeah, I thought it was a good interview. I'm not sure if it's user experience or if code on the page sets a flag so the page is sent to a quality reviewer or if it's something else. Hopefully it does lead to better search results, though that is subjective.


it will become hard for even the Google engineers to wrap their minds around.

I don't think anyone at Google knows everything in the algorithm at this point.

merlot105
04-04-2012, 04:28 PM
I think basically was vanessa fox is trying to say in this interview has been repeated time and time again. The way forward is to provide valuable and interesting content for users and everything else will take care of themselves from the SEO perspective. It's a simple thing - but people don't tend to pay it much attention. Content is king and will always be king - pre or post Panda.

vangogh
04-05-2012, 11:02 AM
The way forward is to provide valuable and interesting content for users and everything else will take care of themselves from the SEO perspective.

Google has definitely been moving in that direction for years. There will always be more you should do than just create the content. The content is the start and it's a necessity, but, at the very least, you have to promote your content in some way to let people know it exists. Even Google isn't going to find it unless other other pages are pointing to it.

I think it's also important to get some of the basics right while developing. It's possible to code a site in a way that puts up roadblocks to search engines ever finding your content and if they can't find it they can't show it in results. Much of this coding is the same code you would use to build a site that meets usability and accessibility standards.

And there will always be people looking for and finding ways to get an extra edge with the search algorithms.

Still the way forward is to create the best content you can and then promote it in some way. If you do both much of seo will take care of itself. In time you'll build an audience around your content that will also do most of your promotion for you.

HikeMySite
04-09-2012, 10:27 AM
I think its great that Google continues to refine its Algorithm to penalize black hat SEO. For SEO experts, this is great news! I was thrilled to see that artificial sites will no longer rank higher than sites with good content!

Thanks for the links, and I hope Google continues to reward organic SEO.

vangogh
04-09-2012, 10:36 AM
It's definitely their goal. Google would ideally like it if we all created the best content we could and only linked to web pages that we genuinely liked and thought valuable. That's never going to happen 100% though so Google will need to keep working on the algorithm so that those who attempt to manipulate it aren't rewarded. That'll never happen 100% either of course.

Just a few weeks ago Matt Cutts mentioned that Google will be penalizing sites that over optimize. It's another potential change in this same direction.