» August 15, 2007 in
Also mentioned as "build websites for people not robots" is the best longterm "seo" advice you will ever hear IMHO. The following are the stats for the 45n5.com blog:
If the search engines banned me today I would only lose 18% of this blogs traffic. Bad, but for sure not anything to lose sleep over.
Building a website like you will never get a single visitor from a search engine means building content that people are willing to link to, building content that people want to link to, making your domain name memorable and easy to attract typin visitors, building relationships with other people in your niches, making your site stickier, increasing the bookmarkability of the site, anything to increase the return visitors, etc. etc.
All of these characteristics make your non search engine traffic a success, and in many cases also leads to search engine success.
I mentioned in the post How To Determine Competition In Google that 99% of the people making money online don't work with stupid google equations all day, rather they build great content that people seek out and remember. These people care little about the competition because THEY ARE the competition.
What Position Are You Looking To Place Your Online Business In?
I'm not perfect and still learning every day. I've already showed you stats from one of my sites that has a small amount of search traffic relative to the direct traffic, here's another stat picture from one of my sites with a few hundred uniques per day, with a much uglier visitor breakdown:
Would you like to have your online business in the position of relying on returning visitors that are finding your site by natural links, typins, and rss feeds, or by google's search algorightm which is likely to change again before the season does?
Personally I would prefer to have my business in a position where search is not the top priority.
In fact I think any online business where search is their top priority, especially new business/websites online, has a rocky road ahead of them.
Build Websites Like Search Traffic Did Not Exist
You shouldn't ignore basic seo principles, however they shouldn't be your priority and they certainly get way to much play.
I suggest you take this advice to the bank. I hope that by doing so your google traffic dwarfs your typin/natural-link traffic, but until then I think building great content and attracting real live returning visitors to your site from typins, bookmarks, inbound links, etc is the only way to go, not rocket science.
(ps. I haven't always followed this advice, which is obvious by my second stats graph and many posts around this blog, but I REALLY wish I would have payed more attention to it)
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Interesting point, but I do think that search engine traffic is a legitimate way to get new readers and traffic. The truth is search engine traffic does exist and I think you should try to get a slice of it, if possible.
It's true that for 45n5 I would like to link to some posts, so what you wrote, and trying to achieve, is really just true!
To be honest, having looked through my different sites, and their statistics, it seems they all look quite similar to your own statistics.
I too believe that SEO may be of a certain importance, however writing content for the user, creating the design for the user, should without a doubt be of the utmost importance, compared to having a site that has excellent SEO.
I have seen several sites where there is no doubt that the sites are immensely optimized SEO wize, however they do have an odd "feel" to them.
They feel artificial. Yeees I am aware that everything on the net is artificial, but these sites tend to give off the vibe that they are created specifically with the web-crawlers in mind, leaving a website that seems difficult to view at best.
Good post :)
however I think the search engines follow the people, so if you have lots of people using your content (with whatever the flavor of the day, links, bookmarking sites, video, whatever) on your site the engines will rank you higher. Your content needs to be relevant to people and if real people aren't sticking around your site your content isn't relevant and it doesn't matter what's in your H1 tag, the algorithms will get you eventually. just my opinion.
I'm down with seo, just don't think it should be at the top of anybody's list, especially not long term.
also thanks koen and peter for the thoughts
I love your point! I have a few sites that have a similar brake down in traffic as your second example. If these get banned I am better look for a second job.
But I thin the first example is an ultimate icon of perfect SEO. Some time we think that the more natural traffic we get, the better job on SEO we have done.... But even Google over and over again has repeated that "incoming links" are one of the most important factors. "Referring Sites" are those incoming links.
That's a great insight. Maybe I should stop spending so much time learning SEO and just focus on my content.
Carl Zetterlund
:)
Content generate readers.
Content generate commenters, fans, people who`ll return.
Content generate, sooner or later, prestige and eventually income.
Optimizing everything for the sake of SE mean content for robots.
As far as I know, robots haven`t paid yet nobody. Probably will never do that.
Is what I`m allways saying.
I will never care if robots (read SE spiders) will never find my blog, until real people will come, read and eventually comment.
I have read many great posts here, Mark, but this one is the best of bests.
@carl - thanks
@valentin - thanks bud, yeah I'm still waiting on my checks from the robots ;-) I reckon they can't find their wallets.
Great tip, and your so very right too. I think lots of webmasters can get stuck "spinning their wheels" with seo mumbo jumbo....
proper keyword density, anchor text, cpm, ecpm, conversation, seo mumojumbo bla bla bla ...
At the end of the day it is all about decent content -
A very well discussed and objective article!
It's something we (bloggers) should really think upon to secure a good future..
- Wakish -
And I think my attitude is now like, search engines do exists :(
I came to your site with recommendation by someone else. Guess that's one more example to prove your point. However, for new site that are building up content (like mine), it is tough to get either referral traffic nor search engine traffic. SEO becomes very important to at least get people to look at my site. Without people coming, the contents will be lesser so lesser pagerank. It's like a chicken and egg issue. I wish I am better to doing SEO, or I have a HUGE amount of contacts that I can get them to visit my site, if not, my site may just become another site in the WWW. Meanwhile, i am brushing my both my contents and my SEO techniques.
nah, my brand new site is here
www.showyouradhere.com
I have no plans on any seo traffic so i will be pitching the site to bloggers probably for the rest of the week to get some word of mouth started.
if your site is worth talking about, you just need to make sure people know about it, then they will talk.
also, here's what is needed to not care about seo
http://www.45n5.com/permalink/final-advice-win-your-blog-s-popularity-contest.html
Great great topic Mark.
Why the heck do you think I am here? Worth reading and digesting every bit of it.
Now - please delete this topic so no one knows the secret of SEOs except us.
"let the fools drown like Rats while we watch the show from the hillside"
"Build Websites Like Search Traffic Did Not Exist"
If this is true,then Domain Parking is a scam, right?
A very well discussed and objective article!
It's something we should really think upon to secure a good future..
All your proving here is that google hates your site and you dont know a thing about SEO.
You are RIGHT on the MONEY!
Finally another Internet Marketer who knows how to do it on the internet. Search engines can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Real internet marketers don't care about the search engines. Solve a problem > Capture Leads > Make Sales > Then BACKEND! Kudos buddy - I'm glad I found your blog.
If the search engines banned me today I would only lose 18% of this blogs traffic. Bad, but for sure not anything to lose sleep over.
Building a website like you will never get a single visitor from a search engine means building content that people are willing to link to, building content that people want to link to, making your domain name memorable and easy to attract typin visitors, building relationships with other people in your niches, making your site stickier, increasing the bookmarkability of the site, anything to increase the return visitors, etc. etc.
All of these characteristics make your non search engine traffic a success, and in many cases also leads to search engine success.
I mentioned in the post How To Determine Competition In Google that 99% of the people making money online don't work with stupid google equations all day, rather they build great content that people seek out and remember. These people care little about the competition because THEY ARE the competition.
What Position Are You Looking To Place Your Online Business In?
I'm not perfect and still learning every day. I've already showed you stats from one of my sites that has a small amount of search traffic relative to the direct traffic, here's another stat picture from one of my sites with a few hundred uniques per day, with a much uglier visitor breakdown:
Would you like to have your online business in the position of relying on returning visitors that are finding your site by natural links, typins, and rss feeds, or by google's search algorightm which is likely to change again before the season does?
Personally I would prefer to have my business in a position where search is not the top priority.
In fact I think any online business where search is their top priority, especially new business/websites online, has a rocky road ahead of them.
Build Websites Like Search Traffic Did Not Exist
You shouldn't ignore basic seo principles, however they shouldn't be your priority and they certainly get way to much play.
I suggest you take this advice to the bank. I hope that by doing so your google traffic dwarfs your typin/natural-link traffic, but until then I think building great content and attracting real live returning visitors to your site from typins, bookmarks, inbound links, etc is the only way to go, not rocket science.
(ps. I haven't always followed this advice, which is obvious by my second stats graph and many posts around this blog, but I REALLY wish I would have payed more attention to it)
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also Subscribe to 45n5 by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Erik Karey says on August 15, 2007
Interesting point, but I do think that search engine traffic is a legitimate way to get new readers and traffic. The truth is search engine traffic does exist and I think you should try to get a slice of it, if possible.
koen () says on August 15, 2007:
Interesting article ... :)It's true that for 45n5 I would like to link to some posts, so what you wrote, and trying to achieve, is really just true!
Peter says on August 15, 2007
To be honest, having looked through my different sites, and their statistics, it seems they all look quite similar to your own statistics.
I too believe that SEO may be of a certain importance, however writing content for the user, creating the design for the user, should without a doubt be of the utmost importance, compared to having a site that has excellent SEO.
I have seen several sites where there is no doubt that the sites are immensely optimized SEO wize, however they do have an odd "feel" to them.
They feel artificial. Yeees I am aware that everything on the net is artificial, but these sites tend to give off the vibe that they are created specifically with the web-crawlers in mind, leaving a website that seems difficult to view at best.
Good post :)
45n5 () says on August 15, 2007:
@Erik Karey - I agree search engine traffic is a legitimate way to get new readers, sales, conversions, or whatever.however I think the search engines follow the people, so if you have lots of people using your content (with whatever the flavor of the day, links, bookmarking sites, video, whatever) on your site the engines will rank you higher. Your content needs to be relevant to people and if real people aren't sticking around your site your content isn't relevant and it doesn't matter what's in your H1 tag, the algorithms will get you eventually. just my opinion.
I'm down with seo, just don't think it should be at the top of anybody's list, especially not long term.
also thanks koen and peter for the thoughts
Vlad () says on August 15, 2007:
Hey MarkI love your point! I have a few sites that have a similar brake down in traffic as your second example. If these get banned I am better look for a second job.
But I thin the first example is an ultimate icon of perfect SEO. Some time we think that the more natural traffic we get, the better job on SEO we have done.... But even Google over and over again has repeated that "incoming links" are one of the most important factors. "Referring Sites" are those incoming links.
Carl of PseudoPower says on August 15, 2007
That's a great insight. Maybe I should stop spending so much time learning SEO and just focus on my content.
Carl Zetterlund
:)
Valentin says on August 16, 2007
Content generate readers.
Content generate commenters, fans, people who`ll return.
Content generate, sooner or later, prestige and eventually income.
Optimizing everything for the sake of SE mean content for robots.
As far as I know, robots haven`t paid yet nobody. Probably will never do that.
Is what I`m allways saying.
I will never care if robots (read SE spiders) will never find my blog, until real people will come, read and eventually comment.
I have read many great posts here, Mark, but this one is the best of bests.
45n5 () says on August 16, 2007:
@vlad - "But I thin the first example is an ultimate icon of perfect SEO." Yeah i agree and think the search engines will eventually follow the links and start to look like graph two, the key (i think) is to always ignore the engines conceptually and always build to make graph 1 ;-)@carl - thanks
@valentin - thanks bud, yeah I'm still waiting on my checks from the robots ;-) I reckon they can't find their wallets.
BJohnson () says on August 16, 2007:
Hey Mark,Great tip, and your so very right too. I think lots of webmasters can get stuck "spinning their wheels" with seo mumbo jumbo....
proper keyword density, anchor text, cpm, ecpm, conversation, seo mumojumbo bla bla bla ...
At the end of the day it is all about decent content -
Wakish says on December 7, 2007
A very well discussed and objective article!
It's something we (bloggers) should really think upon to secure a good future..
- Wakish -
vishnu () says on December 31, 2007:
Great.. in my case I'm getting around 20-25% from search engine.And I think my attitude is now like, search engines do exists :(
Kelvin says on January 28, 2008
I came to your site with recommendation by someone else. Guess that's one more example to prove your point. However, for new site that are building up content (like mine), it is tough to get either referral traffic nor search engine traffic. SEO becomes very important to at least get people to look at my site. Without people coming, the contents will be lesser so lesser pagerank. It's like a chicken and egg issue. I wish I am better to doing SEO, or I have a HUGE amount of contacts that I can get them to visit my site, if not, my site may just become another site in the WWW. Meanwhile, i am brushing my both my contents and my SEO techniques.
45n5 () says on January 28, 2008:
"However, for new site that are building up content (like mine), it is tough to get either referral traffic nor search engine traffic."nah, my brand new site is here
www.showyouradhere.com
I have no plans on any seo traffic so i will be pitching the site to bloggers probably for the rest of the week to get some word of mouth started.
if your site is worth talking about, you just need to make sure people know about it, then they will talk.
45n5 () says on January 28, 2008:
@kelvin - and welcome to 45n5 ;)also, here's what is needed to not care about seo
http://www.45n5.com/permalink/final-advice-win-your-blog-s-popularity-contest.html
HomeLess says on January 30, 2008
Great great topic Mark.
Why the heck do you think I am here? Worth reading and digesting every bit of it.
Now - please delete this topic so no one knows the secret of SEOs except us.
"let the fools drown like Rats while we watch the show from the hillside"
HomeLess says on January 30, 2008
"Build Websites Like Search Traffic Did Not Exist"
If this is true,then Domain Parking is a scam, right?
jackiexu says on February 21, 2008
A very well discussed and objective article!
It's something we should really think upon to secure a good future..
lolol says on March 5, 2008
All your proving here is that google hates your site and you dont know a thing about SEO.
June Beezy says on April 20, 2008
You are RIGHT on the MONEY!
Finally another Internet Marketer who knows how to do it on the internet. Search engines can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Real internet marketers don't care about the search engines. Solve a problem > Capture Leads > Make Sales > Then BACKEND! Kudos buddy - I'm glad I found your blog.
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