SEO Sites Suck

I have been doing a bit of investigation of basic SEO for my wife’s e-commerce site: Every Little Girl. In the process I have discovered that SEO Sites Suck. As far as I can tell, they all have the same basic advice rehashed in slightly different ways. Most sites seem so ‘dense’ with content that it is hard to figure out where to start. ‘Quality content’ is one of the golden rules repeated over and over again… yet the content on most SEO sites is of questionable quality. Oh sure – there are lots of words there, and if you read them they do make some sense…. but there are so many of them (words that is) compared the the concepts that they are trying to communicate.

Now given that people who run SEO sites are presumably pretty good at SEO, and given that most of the sites I find are through Google it is fairly safe to assume that the sites I have seen represent the ‘state of the art’ when it comes to web sites built for SEO. Undoubtedly SEO is a very complex topic – but it seems as though SEO tactics is actually increasing the complexity of the topic. Rather than focus on the concise expositions of key concepts, SEO seems to demand voluminous rehashing of SEO nuances. For example, the top result when searching Google for ‘search engine optimization beginner’ gives me one ‘Beginners Guide’ that is 10 chapters long. Even Google’s own guide – that appears on page of the the results – is a 32 page pdf – and yet many sites do not even have the basics covered.

It seems that the number one rule of SEO is ‘quality content’. But really what is meant is ‘quantity of perceived quality content’ – more copies of what looks like quality content all linking to each other is what seems to score well. This struck me in particular when looking at a couple of the leading ‘SEO’ sites. There structures are all very similar. In particular an ‘SEO Tools’ page seems mandatory for a good ranking SEO site. And on that page there is between 10 and 40 different ‘tools’. It is hard to escape the impression that these pages are written for the benefit of the Googlebot – and not for the benefit of the user.

Of course, it appears that many others have made the same realisation way before me, including Michael Arrington, Peter Yared and Peter again.