Why SEO Can’t Be Your Only Value Add
April 10th, 2008 by Michael Gray in SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
In my early days I played a bit more in the darker side of the game. I fully admit that I built and ran more than 1 or 2 scrapers, aggregators, and MFA style sites, but as a business model those type of sites are really on the decline, and not something I’d ever recommend to a beginner or intermediate level person.
The key difference is Google has set the bar so high for trust, that the time and energy put into making a a POS site rank aren’t worth it any more. It’s just as much work to build something that has real value as opposed to something that doesn’t. There are exceptions to the rule, say you are able to bankroll buying old sites with years of established back links and fine tune the content without Google noticing and “reseting the meter” on you. Or if you have a network of well established sites that you can “borrow” a little juice from to get yourself on track, that will work too, as will some really nice underground, and under the radar link buys. Again these are tools that aren’t in the toolbox of your intermediate or beginner SEO’s.
So what is my advice to someone starting out or ready to break out, look for a way to differentiate yourself first and use SEO to promote it, not the other way around. Sugarrae calls this a POD or point of difference (see Sugarrae interview with Chris Garrett). Your POD is the thing you do differently, that makes you stand out and makes you memorable, and in some cases it even makes you defensible. If you’re early enough to the market you can become the self referencing authority, but if you’re not you need that value add and point off difference.
Here ’s the reason you need the value of good content to back up your SEO, if you are a decent SEO at some point your are going to start to rank, someone will mention you, out you, or even narc on you (cause you know Google encourages that kind of behavior … do no evil my ass). At the time when some engineer decides to crawl over your suspected SEO site, if you don’t have the content that makes the grade, or your POD, you wont have the links or on site material to pass the sniff test, and all you’ll have is a nicely polished turd, whose rankings are about to get flushed down the toilet.
Build something of value, and use the SEO to elevate it, because while not everyone will call out something useless with a bit of hype, deep inside people know quality content from bad content, if they didn’t we’d all be watching more reality shows like who wants to marry a midget instead of Battlestar Galactica.
Sphere It
April 10th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Great post, I strongly agree, esp about battlestar
April 10th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I follow the 20-10 rule that states:
“Build a web page that is 20% better than any of the top 10 results and then promote the heck out of it.”
April 10th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Differentiating yourself is one of the most valuable things that people can do in anything — but especially online. With so many websites out there covering so many different topics, you need to ask yourself, “Why would someone visit my site?” Hopefully, you will have done this prior to getting your site up and running, but if not, there’s no time like the present. Great advice!
April 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Making that difference sounds so easy. Especially when the road has been scrapped in front of you. Ambition and will are not enough alone. What separates so many is the dedication to adding that value. Each successful person will figure out their own value. I do love how easily it sounds the way you put it.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Excellent post. You’re starting to sound like Jason Calacanis. I wish more people who were building things online thought like this. It sure would make the Interwebs a better place to visit.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
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April 13th, 2008 at 5:44 am
I agree with your point of view but you must admit that it what are you saying it much easier said then done. Somebody new in the game probably will write a couple of posts and then start to link spam everywhere.
The web would be a much nicer place if seos would listen to your advice. Well, maybe it would be
Sasha T.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:43 am
The frustrating thing for those who start out with mentality (value-adding) still have to climb that damb-enormous authority hurdle that Google has setup. It’s a morale buster for those who start out with value-add in mind and execute. So while Google has done a fine job of pressuring business models towards value-add, they have not done an equally good job of making the path climbable for your average straight-laced publisher. Rather, it’s only people who can fall-back on social media for about 6 months who can really leverage the current environment when starting from scratch.
April 13th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Good way to get rid of the competition
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
What a great read and sound advice. To be honest im quite new to all this and after reading this i feel a little better as my blog is starting to get better rankings. From the start of my project i have concentrated on balancing between the seo side of things but at the same time making sure that the content was there for the readers.