Five truths about SEO
Written by Anthony Karassavov on Tue, Apr 20th 2010, 13:28 in SEO and Marketing
I was recently given the not-so-easy task to optimize an internet shop for kids clothing and apparel, so it can appear on the top of Google searches. After spending lots of hours reading about search engine optimization and the various techniques that are modern and contemporary I came to several conclusions.
Truth #1 - Most of the stuff about SEO out there is crap.
Yep, most of the articles you can find on search engine optimisation are completely a waste of time to read and their one and only purpose is to generate traffic and turn it to cash. SEO blogs and specialty sites would talk about keyword research and/or notions such as keyword optimisation, link submission black-hat, long-tail SEO. Seriously, what the fuck do you mean by long-tail or link-bait SEO? Is this some kinda zoo we're talking about?
Truth #2 - Competition analysis, keyword analysis, put-a-noun-here analysis
Let's say that I own a football fan website for my local footbal club. My portal gets a thousand hits a day, but I don't really care because my goal is to post news and keep the fans informed about my favourite football team. Another person out there owns a "for-profit" wedsite about football news, but whenever someone queries Google with "Botev football club news" (this is the name of my local football club) my website gets the first several positions on the results page. This guy has thrown bags full of Benjamins, so he can analyse why my website always gets the first position in Google, and yet still he can't figure it out.
Thruth #3 - Keyword density and content optimization
They will most probably tell you to write medium sized articles, about 200 to 350 words with a good 15% keyword occurence in each article. They are most probably right, but the truth is, once you start writing, you forget that you should be writing for the people, not for the search engines. You will end up with articles with useless information, filled with generic keywords which simply sound stupid. Here's a good example:
Our natural products are helping millions of people live healthy every day. Try out our new natural product - Biolunch today! It will help you sustain your natural way of life and bring happiness to your life.
- gotta love those nature products websites...
Truth #4 - Link popularity.
It is true that websites linking to you are important. But how do you get them to link to you? You've probaly heard of link exchange programs, directory submission and various other link services. I don't know how much they work, but I'm certain that if you write pices that will actually help someone or be interesting to someone else, those people will link to your website because they will express their own will to share this information with others.
Truth #5 - Social media.
Tweeting, blogging and "facebooking" will increase your traffic with more than 243 percent. That's bullshit. Why the fuck should I care when someone spams my wall with stuff that I don't wanna know about? What kind of a nerd do you have to be to read every single tweet, like "Omg check this link for brand name balley shoes NOW fazt!" and get interested in. Get the fuck real, nobody reads your stupid shares on facebook, unless you have something really interesting to show us and in 99.99% of the cases we already know about it.
Conclusion
Don't aim to appear on the top positions of a google search. Instead, write stuff that will actually be interesting to the people YOU want it to be. Post information that is unavailable elsewhere, or at least try to add value to your visitor if you cannot come up with something new and unique. Give up the incredible look of your page. Make it simple and comply with W3C. Google will take care of the rest.
Be the purple cow
Feel free to bitch about everything I said in this post and argue to the point where you loose all your sanity and start breaking the shit out of your keyboard, etc... 
I love this SEO article, it is really support my own beliefs about SEO. I was wonder by looking at such spam on facebook, youtube and many social sites. It is interesting and hilarious too for those who are doing this. lolz.. Keep it up dude. Thanks for beautiful article. ;)
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i am anthony - an all-around web developer with a degree in business. I like to code functional websites with beautiful interfaces. PHP, javascript and espresso is a powerful combination.
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