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| https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlbauman/ |
Hey The Verge is back with another article about SEO.
Sorry, but for the explanation of the importance of Alt-Text and Image optimization ALONE this post is worth a read.
I know I am in the minority in the industry, but I actually really like (and largely agree with) most of the SEO-focused content The Verge is publishing and I think it's important
https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization
Advice for web developers:
If you think you found a "Clever" way to work around an established web standard so you decide you don't have to follow it...
Statistically... No you didn't.
And what's worse: The time you spent creating your workaround is order of magnitudes more time consuming than just following best practices.. PARTICULARLY if those best practices are built into your CMS.
Signed ,
A very tired Technical SEO consultant
The new previews of Bard are previewing how I think the next step of search will be. It won't be websites you go to (for a lot of search) but instead a custom UI designed for the user where your data is pulled into their experience.
Schema is likely going to play a KEY part in this.
This next version of search won't kill SEO, but it will change it. If you're not thinking about the technical side of things, best start.
Is it possible that they paid for rankings? sure. But if they did they got wildly ripped off.
This all looks like bot crawling and spinning. It's not even subtle!
This is by "Syndication Bot" as author and is clearly just an RSS feed from a ton of different Tech sites.
I don't have an AHREFS account anymore, so looking at backlinks of the best phone article from Verge because backlinks were mentioned:
Most "sus" anchor is "Best Phone To Buy Right Now"
most of the links for this are from sites that have bad tagging (so Google won't follow them) from sites literally using AI to scrape content (/ai/ is in the url slug) and a lot of very obviously auto-generated SEO Spam sites (amply.store, ambitionly.click, etc)
I get the knee jerk to be defensive, but I firmly believe that if you haven't asked yourself "are we the baddies" and you work in this industry, you're either new or are, infact, one of the baddies.
I try and make stuff better, most people I know in this industry do the same. But I also use the internet and see a lot of evidence for people who don't. And like that article, I don't blame the people following the patterns, I blame the incentives
Again, when most people think SEO, they don't think me, they don't think Lily Ray, and most don't think of people like Matt Cutts.
When people think of SEO, if they have a picture in their head at all, they think of people like Neil Patel, Brian Dean, or the countless "Gurus" promising surefire strategies.
THAT is the audience the original article was writing to. Why the alligator story was used as a frame
Like, I get the argument they're trying to make, but it's ... basically the same exact one that The Verge has been making, but pointed as some kinda alternative to it.
The entire point of that SEO article was to show that the people in the industry (yes, including the alligator party) are doing what they're doing because they want to make money and this is the system Google set up that allows it.
I read the new Search Engine Land piece about The Verge article and so much of it comes off as this:
Pointing out that The Verge does SEO or takes out ads is ... making the argument The Verge is making in all of these pieces.
The fact that Open AI fired Sam Altman, Microsoft hired him, and now Open AI is being lead by the former CEO of Twitch is not really doing a lot to convince me I don't live in a simulation.
Also the fact that so many of these people are named Sam
