I really don't think Dave has any Axe to grind, they are after all just true facts he has stated,perhaps he may have gone a bit OTT in calling SEO experts "snake oil salesmen" though. Every field has its experts, so an SEO expert is really no different than a CSS expert or a user interface expert, that is simply their trade. But like any trade there are cowboys who profess to be experts when they are not. If you are one of those that doesn't know much about SEO then it may seem like some kind of MOJO, but really it isn't. I doubt it would take more than 1 hours research to pickup the basics.But to be fair to learn all the tricks of all the search engines would take some time, but I doubt that many people care about anything beyond yahoo, Google and Bing these days,
As Dave said, a bit of common sense goes a long way with this stuff, and like him I have several sites in the top 10 with very little effort. Russ On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 12:29 AM, Michael Grant <[email protected]> wrote: > > So you're reacting to the word mojo? > You seem to have a personal axe to grind here. Did you get taken by an SEO > guy selling snake oil? > > On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Dave Watts <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > Know it to be true? Nobody "knows" it except the people at Google. Why > > risk > > > someone's hunch that's it isn't true? At best what do you gain if > you're > > > right? Save a few hours dev time? And at worst? You lose search engine > > rank > > > which can have disastrous effects on a company. To me it's not worth > the > > > risk just to "prove the SEO guys wrong." > > > > Well, this is kind of silly. If you're worried about losing search > > engine rank, you have to continue doing whatever you've been doing - > > existing URLs have rank that new URLs won't. Even if you were doing > > URLs badly, you wouldn't want to simply switch to a better way of > > doing them as you'd lose the rank you've already achieved unless > > you're willing to support the old URLs as well. > > > > But in any case, you might want to subscribe to Matt Cutts' RSS feed - > > he covers a lot of this stuff pretty well, and he's at Google. He's > > discussed URL parameters' safety in searches before, although I didn't > > bother to Google it today. > > > > > And if you think there's no such thing as SEO mojo I think you're been > > > sipping one too many chi teas. > > > > "SEO mojo" is a way for charlatans to make money. There are some > > well-known, documented facts for SEO (not in any specific order): > > - content, > > - logical structure, > > - unique, readable titles, > > - readable URLs, > > - page rank from quality links to your content, > > - anything that might cause duplicated content (failure to use > > redirects or canonical URLs with multiple domains, etc) > > > > But whenever anybody starts talking about "mojo", without being able > > to point to clearly definable factors ... well, I call that something > > else. > > > > And I'm exposed to SEO stuff fairly frequently. My company relies on > > SEO for its training business. When you search for: > > > > coldfusion training > > flash training > > google search appliance training > > sencha training > > html 5 training (although not for html5 training - not sure how we'll > > deal with that yet!) > > > > you'll notice we're in the top 10 results. > > > > > Even if you take SEO right out of it, easy to read url's are nicer to > > look at, easier to > > > remember and just plain make sense. > > > > Sure, I recommend that to clients all the time. > > > > "Cool URIs don't change" > > http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI > > > > But that's a different discussion. If you're going to say that people > > should use good URLs for unrelated reasons, you don't have to back > > that up with "true facts about SEO" that aren't actually true. > > > > Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software > > http://www.figleaf.com/ > > http://training.figleaf.com/ > > > > Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on > > GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized > > instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite. > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:340552 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
