Anyone else want a BS in SEO?

[skitzzo]

I would argue that you tell people to do on-page stuff "design", etc etc etc. The targeted traffic is a bit of marketing but if you are working for a client they will be the ones deciding in the end which terms to target etc. If you are doing your own site you are filling that roll as well but that doesn't mean it is SEO. IMHO "strict" SEO is someone telling me rank my site for "widgets" and then I do exactly that. To me SEO is almost more of a supervisory roll. I mean if you are directing a team of web designer and a copywriter you are still doing SEO but you aren't doing any of the grunt work.

[rmccarley]

Skitz, I'm not disagreeing with you. Except for the last two sentences my previous post still stands. The last two sentences only apply if you are independent. But it doesn't matter who picks the KW, how you get there still takes the same skill set.

[Too Bad]

Anything else then making 'on-page' changes should be under SEM (se manipulation) or SES (Se spam). SEO is just another 'buzzword' to sell your services.

[rmccarley]

Interesting point...

Except, getting indexed usually requires some offpage factors. And you can't really do anything else until that happens.

[Too Bad]

Well, actually it depends on what you're optimizing. Are you optimizing a website or are you optimizing a website's Search Engine rankings?

If you are optimizing a website then you shouldn't be involved in off-page factors but if you're optimizing rankings then you could do whatever is necessary.

I'd like to look at SEO as just 'on-page'. I think we could agree that this is also the only way that you could claim to be purely white-hat (for whatever that's worth). I know for a fact that Matt Cutts would agree with me here.

[skitzzo]

Originally Posted by Jammer

I'd like to look at SEO as just 'on-page'. I think we could agree that this is also the only way that you could claim to be purely white-hat (for whatever that's worth). I know for a fact that Matt Cutts would agree with me here.

I could go for the SEO only applies to on-page stuff and the off-page things we do are more marketing than anything else. I would not agree though that if you do off-page things like press releases or article submission that those tactics are anything but white hat.

[Too Bad]

Originally Posted by skitzzo

I would not agree though that if you do off-page things like press releases or article submission that those tactics are anything but white hat.

Why are you sending out press releases? I think that we can all agree that buying links isn't natural link growth (thus not 100% whitehat). Then what's the difference with press releases?

It's all about where you draw the border. I guess that you could even go far enough to assign certain legit onpage factors (calls to action) as not natural link growth. One could agree (from a search engine perspective) that this is BH.

I could agree to the following:

SEO = Using search engine ranking factors to obtain the highest possible rankings for a specific website.

[toddieg]

i see both sides of your arguments gentleman

here's what i have to ask myself though.

would i still do press releases if no search engine value was given for the link(s) to my site? YES. (it would obviously still bring traffic)

would i still submit articles if no search engine value was given for the link(s)? YES. (it brings traffic)

point being : who cares if it's white or black - it still helps visibility and ultimately traffic... my opinion is 'it's all black' and 'once you go black, you never go back'

[rmccarley]

WH SEO is more than onpage...

Originally Posted by Google Guidelines

When your site is ready:

* Have other relevant sites link to yours.
* Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
* Submit a sitemap as part of our Google Sitemaps (Beta) project. Google Sitemaps uses your sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
* Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
* Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Looks like an endorsement of link-building to me!

Of course it's the intent of the links that is important...

[rmccarley]

Originally Posted by toddieg

would i still do press releases if no search engine value was given for the link(s) to my site? YES. (it would obviously still bring traffic)

would i still submit articles if no search engine value was given for the link(s)? YES. (it brings traffic)

That's good because Cutts has stated you don't get credit for PR links, such as from PRWeb. If the story is picked up by a news site, you will get credit for any links picked up through that, though.