Comments on: If you say SEO and Dedicated IP one more time…

By: DrakNet

DrakNet — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:38:41 +0000

It’s hard to ignore them when they’ve all said the same thing and bought into the same bull.

A friend of mine came back from the Wordpress conference and someone speaking up on the dais said the same thing to the people there. I was stunned.

However, it did give me the chance to write a blog post in which I came up with the line “a Dedicated IP on a shared hosting server is not the web hosting world’s equivalent of a DisneyWorld FastPass.”.

I really like that line - it even makes me giggle.

By: DrakNet

DrakNet — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:36:03 +0000

It’s not a waste of time for the people supporting themselves on suppositions. I have to hand it to these people, though, that’s a heck of a game. I mean, start a business where:

1) You claim to be an expert in something that
2) No one can prove you are doing right or wrong because the info you claim you have is proprietary and supposition and
3) if you use the tricks you came up with to work the system you think you know there’s a possibility that instead of helping your client you’ll hurt him worse than if he never came to you
4) and charge outrageously for it.

I mean, that really is brilliance. Ridiculous and maybe even unethical, but brilliant.

By: Trae Dorn

Trae Dorn — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:10:19 +0000

I once had to do a bunch of SEO BS for a client I was hired to work on (not hosted at Drak). I kept saying that it was a total waste of time… but they insisted, and I happily took their money.

Just give a page a good title, make sure that menu and navigation links are descriptive… and that’s all you really have to do. All the other stuff does… pretty much nothing.

By: Janice Schwarz

Janice Schwarz — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:12:55 +0000

The hilarious thing is that written content IS the trick to Google! Good written content, relevant content, descriptive content.

Heck, I have people that can find me locally (above locals that have been around longer than me) because I have the sense to write out every description of the local area on my site (county, city, area nicknames, surrounding towns, etc.).

Google mostly just cares about what’s on your site and how many (relevant) sites are linking to you. And you have to have decent content to get those links.

Yeah. That’s pretty much the bulk of the “trick”. And just what I’m constantly yammering at clients about too.

Heck, how many people can put in something like “Skippy” and show up in the top 15 on Google? (He used to be top 5 and beat the peanut butter and kangaroo…I think they learned the Google “trick” too!).

By: DrakNet

DrakNet — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:54:32 +0000

“There’s only room for 1 at the top.”

And everyone seems to be trying to trick their way up there. If these folks spent half the time that they spend on these “tricks” actually writing original site content no one has ever seen before….

Naaaaaa. That’s not as fun as trying to figger out The Google.

By: Vicki Mieth

Vicki Mieth — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:29:34 +0000

Now, if folks just want to throw an extra fiver at Jen each month, the karma would be worth it As one of the folks who has to have a dedicated IP (yay for secure transactions)… it really doesn’t do squat for search engine ratings & the like.
Sometimes, I wish folk would quit listening to the internet version of Snake Oil salesmen.

By: Janice Schwarz

Janice Schwarz — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:51:44 +0000

I’m glad you shared this one. I deal with a lot of SEO myths in web design too. There are a lot of con artists out there that put out some crazy information. While there is some decent information out there, SEO on the whole, is not an exact science nor does anyone know exactly how all search engines rank sites because they typically don’t release that information to the public. And the average person is not aware of this.

What’s sad is how many people take money from folks that just don’t know better and make these crazy promises about their future site traffic. On my own SEO FAQ, I point out that if an SEO business is telling everyone that they can be #1 in Google, common sense tells us that isn’t going to happen. There’s only room for 1 at the top.