Does anyone else not care about SEO, or is completely passive about it?

Brogan said:
I read all these posts about SEO and note how some people get themselves all worked up about it; worrying about their google ranking, where they appear in searches, how to improve it, even paying for advice, etc.

I can quite honestly say I've never given it a second thought.
Yes it might be pleasing if my site appears at or near the top of a search, but I couldn't care less if it doesn't.

I did a few experiments when we switched to XenForo earlier this year, to see just how good the built in SEO is, and just by adding a single word to a Page title, it pushed us from page 8 to the top of page 1.
Great!

Other than that I have done nothing.

For the 3 years prior when I was using phpBB software, again I did nothing at all to do with SEO, and really wasn't bothered at all about it.

In fact, our most valuable content is hidden from guests, so it doesn't even appear in search engine listings.

My opinion is if there is content on your site which is useful to others, they will find it.
Mostly this will be from members posting links elsewhere, which others will then click on and likewise, if they find the content useful they will also pass it on.

I used to be the same about my AV/Home Cinema equipment; constantly tweaking, adjusting, testing, reading articles on how to improve it, tweaking again, retesting, etc.
Then it dawned on me that I wasn't actually using it for what it was intended.

Now I just use it and enjoy it.

(This is of course my personal opinion and not a reflection on XenForo or its built in SEO capability.)
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Exactly the same thing with me as well. I have never bothered with it too.
 
Forsaken said:
Where exactly does SEO end and the hype begin however?

At the end of the day, if you've followed the best practices, and made sure you have quality content exactly what else can you do?
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Build good relations with other websites on your niche...create contests and competition to for have more incoming links.

Seo is not only "internal factors"...
 
I try not to get carried away but its difficult to not consider SEO.. I purchased vBSEO back in the day but that was more for a few good coded features, the supposed SEO improvement was an after thought.. Actually my traffic and or Rank never changed one way or the other after installing the plugin.. I just try to pay attention to those key words.. And if some advice comes my way that makes sense or i understand.. Im not opposed to giving it a shot.
 
For me SEO is snake oil, lots of self-declared experts selling you solutions you don't need in the first place.

Are some things more search engine friendly than others? Sure.
But, to me a successful project does not launch or operate in the same space as approximately 489,853,589 other web sites. If one is in a highly competitive field then an extra keyword here or one less comma there may make a difference, for the majority of niche projects (where I want to be) it makes no difference at all and isn't worth the time, effort, or cash.

Content is king and even if content is hidden from search engines it is still king because the fact that your site provides that content will makes its way to the web via blogs, articles, and networking no matter what.

For me Aaron whats-his-name is one of the great scam artists of modern times and I can't help but feel a little envy how easy it was for him to sucker so many folks into throwing money at him.
 
Content is king - but you have to be popular, have a good user base....It's not automatic. I see great sites followed but a very little fan bases and ignored by google...and mediocre websites but very popular with great seo.
 
User said:
For me SEO is snake oil, lots of self-declared experts selling you solutions you don't need in the first place.

Are some things more search engine friendly than others? Sure.
But, to me a successful project does not launch or operate in the same space as approximately 489,853,589 other web sites. If one is in a highly competitive field then an extra keyword here or one less comma there may make a difference, for the majority of niche projects (where I want to be) it makes no difference at all and isn't worth the time, effort, or cash.

Content is king and even if content is hidden from search engines it is still king because the fact that your site provides that content will makes its way to the web via blogs, articles, and networking no matter what.

For me Aaron whats-his-name is one of the great scam artists of modern times and I can't help but feel a little envy how easy it was for him to sucker so many folks into throwing money at him.
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You talk crap. First you say "But, to me a successful project does not launch or operate in the same space as approximately 489,853,589 other web sites." Then you say " an extra keyword here or one less comma there may make a difference". SEO can and does make a difference on your search rankings in Google.
 
Deebs said:
You talk crap. First you say "But, to me a successful project does not launch or operate in the same space as approximately 489,853,589 other web sites." Then you say " an extra keyword here or one less comma there may make a difference". SEO can and does make a difference on your search rankings in Google.
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I will go ahead and assume that you just hastily skimmed my post. If you go back and re-read what I wrote you will find that what I did actually write is that if you are in a highly competitive field then an extra keyword may make a difference. If you are not in a highly competitive field, thus a niche by my definition, then that difference is for practical purposes irrelevant. What really does make a difference in rankings is content, no amount of SEO magic is going to make up for lack of substance.

SER are only meaningful if the person performing the search is not aware of your resource. Here's what I mean by that: Let's say you are looking for <insert search phrase here>. You type that into Google and Google returns a bunch of results including those from online forums. You will notice that Google bunches forum posts from the same forums together giving you a few threads as hits and then having a link that says "show more results from..."

Now a site that is 100% perfect from a SEO standpoint will still not be in the top results unless they have content that matches the search phrase and unless they have a lot of that content. Search no longer looks at static pages on their own, search now considers the aggregate weight of content that matches the search and essentially ranks pages by volume of relevant content. No amount of SEO will make up for having that content, and that content will trump SEO magic time and again.

IMHO way too much weight is placed on SER because people think that the first link in Google is the one that gets clicked. That may be true if the searcher is completely oblivious about the topic, it is far more likely that the searcher will click a link to a site that (s)he has at the very least heard of before. You can be the 5th link down but if the searcher recognizes the name of your site and associates you with being a known resource then (s)he will click your link instead of the first link.

SEO doesn't result in what you really need which is brand recognition. The name of your site has to be out there visible to potential clients. IMHO one gets a significantly higher value for one's dollar if one spends the cash on marketing rather than SEO.

At the end of the day though there's a very simple way to measure how important search engines really are. One can easily track down from where visitors arrive before they sign up to become members.
 
SEO is a huge money making scam for a lot of people to get rich selling SEO-related services that in many cases are entirely unnecessary.

I shoved vBSEO's free sitemap tool on my vB4 site. I think it helps a bit, but probably not that much. People still find us, we come up well in Google searches for a lot of stuff, though we only have a PR2 most of the time (in fact it's down to 1 at the moment, it jumps up and down).

Quite honestly, I couldn't give two hoots about SEO.

I hate going to sites that have SEO plugins at the top of threads that say, in huge ugly letters, something like this:

THIS IS A DISCUSSION ABOUT "Hey dudes whatcha all doing 2nite eh?" ON THE "TEENCHAT.COM FORUMS"

Do people *really* think that does any good whatsoever?
.
 
Brogan said:
I read all these posts about SEO and note how some people get themselves all worked up about it; worrying about their google ranking, where they appear in searches, how to improve it, even paying for advice, etc.
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Yep... drives me nutty at times. If they put as much effort in trying to fool search engines and trickery and all the other nonsense, as they did into just contributing and building the best website possible within its niche... they wouldn't need to worry about such irrelevant issues to begin with. People attract to likeable, honest, websites... buzz comes and goes.
 
I have never thought about it. Most of my forums life was on SMF and I really still don't know what SEO is.

I just got a forum and the people came. Funny thing is growth slowed down after I moved to vB4 from an earlier obsolete version of SMF.

I really don't know if SEO works nor do I know how to use it.

I just figured people will come or they wont.
 
Anthony Parsons said:
Yep... drives me nutty at times. If they put as much effort in trying to fool search engines and trickery and all the other nonsense, as they did into just contributing and building the best website possible within its niche... they wouldn't need to worry about such irrelevant issues to begin with. People attract to likeable, honest, websites... buzz comes and goes.
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Very well said Anthony. No matter how high one''s forum will rank in the search engines, if there is no good content, it is worthless.
 
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