Hacker News Reader

Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

If you were running a SEO shop, how would you try and get to the front page of Google? "I’d write lengthy fluffy articles that, even though they didn't say anything interesting, they used the word SEO a lot and made SEO people feel special somehow so that it got linked from other sites that SEO people visit. Maybe I would even semi-attack a popular site like Hacker News in order to link-bait the site into linking to the articles."

View on HN

OP here -- ahh the infamous top comment on HN; always good for a great mood killer to an article that was, simply put, really fun to write

You wouldn't believe the flaming I got for writing an easily digested (pun intended) article on password encryption. Apparently that is for Bruce Schneier only.

You have to agree the comment was funny though.

Absolutely -- and trust me, the SEO industry is full of so much bullshit I have come to expect a lot of hate by association alone. Someone even made an aggregation site for it!

http://shitbound.org/

> the SEO industry is full of so much bullshit I have come to expect a lot of hate by association alone

So you don't think HN's view on SEO is unduly negative then, after all?

I think HN's view of "bad" SEO is spot on, but there are plenty of agencies who present legitimate strategies that have long term and lasting effects on rankings as opposed to going for the quick loopholes that Google will just inevitably punish in the next algo update.

Which of those legitimate strategies are not just common sense? Honest question.

There is so much SEO information and misinformation out there, I don't think "common sense" isn't a useful way to look at the industry.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but I've seen this type of question many times and the subtext often suggests that a need alone isn't enough to justify an industry. It's a service, and one many people would rather pay for than spend their time learning and doing.

All of them _are_ "common sense" - in the same way that most invocations of the term "common sense" usually mean "things that people know or ought to know but are apparently ignoring.

Most web site owners are not applying "common sense" SEO strategies to their sites. Many "web designers" don't either.

It's common sense the way UX and PR is common sense.

There are many people with different interests on HN. Startup people, web developers, and even some hardcore cryptographers. While the former will find you article interesting and probably don't already know too much about encryption, the latter will find the article boring and too simple. They probably will complain (maybe even thinking they could have written it better), while the startup people and web devs don't write anything, since HN discourages comments that only state "Good article" or similar.

That's how you end up with an article with lots of upvotes (from the people who liked your artcile) and some rude comments (from the people who didn't like your article).

I remember pg posting something along the lines of: if I wanted to write a bullet proof article it would be so long and involved that no one would want to read it and I wouldn't want to write it. I agree, and hence we'll always be nitpicked, especially if we write for a relatively broad, naive audience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com