The Best SEO Advice You Will Ever Hear

I think you're pretty far off here. True SEO's believe in creating compelling content and search engine independent websites that flourish with the addition of search traffic.

There's only so much room for make money online sites, thin affiliate sites, and other BS junk on the web. Top notch SEO's pick a vertical and absolutely dominate it from all angles--SEO, PPC, SMO, offline promotion, etc.

The most liquid and highly valued web properties are those that command a large audience from all angles and have a real value add. I think your confusion lies in the fact that you generalize SEO's as people that make MFA sites and try to profit by ranking and getting clicks. Adsense is a terrible business model to rely on and it's just silly to think that it's sustainable.

There is mad money to be made in SEO. I personally work for an entrepreneur that has used SEO to build a networth in the 8 digits. Focus on building a real business, with real customers, and leveraging SEO to gain customers at a low acquisition cost. That's where the money is at.

I'm not confused. i'm talking about 99% of the people that are trying to make money online. You are talking about the 1% that get lucky.

You say adsense isn't a good business model. Neither is seo. they are the same. Both reliant on google traffic.

"I personally work for an entrepreneur that has used SEO to build a networth in the 8 digits."

There are more lottery winners in the states then there are people you just described. That's my point ;)

But you're being ignorant in the fact that lottery is chance and success is choice. Persistence isn't going to pay off in the lottery. But if you're smart it will make you rich. I am talking about a small percent of people, but isn't that true of any business?

SEO is more than relying on Google. It's a mixture of best practices--including but not limited to proper usability, great content, and of course search engine traffic.

"But you're being ignorant in the fact that lottery is chance and success is choice."

Success has a bunch to do with chance also, however that wasn't my point. My point was your ODDS are the same with the lottery and seo.

However there are much better ways to make money online with much better odds. Like building things for real people and then telling them about it.

"SEO is more than relying on Google". not. You can't have "search engine" optimization without the search engine.

Mark,

I think you are 99% correct. SEO matters after you have done all that you can on promotion and getting the word out and you have stagnated at a point in your findability.

I'm making a post of your video to pass the word on.

Loren

(sits back, opens up a bag of chips, and waits for the sh!t to start flying......)

(My $0.02):
Hi Mark, so I take it you've excluded google from crawling your sites in your robots file? ;-)

I think if you can build a site that doesn't rely on SE traffic, that's great.

But I'm buggered if I'm going to ignore the basic SEO things which might add what, three minutes or less to the time it takes me to make a blog post, but have shown to bring consistent, targeted traffic.

(sits back, opens up a bag of chips, and waits for the sh!t to fly......)

Oh Mark you did it again, right on.

I will be the first to admit I have been slapped around by Google and still went back for more. It took one of my friends and client to open my eyes or to take the Google blinders off.

Since I stopped spending most of my time with seo, I still keep it in mind of course, my sites have started to increase traffic. The reason, less time on Google and more time on getting out there like you said, so thanks.

I am one of those guys that need to be reminded of things over and over. So keep your videos coming Mark.

Sigh it makes me sad when people say ignorant things just for bait...

Oh well I hope people really do believe you and forget all about SEO. Makes my job a lot easier.

Oh and by the way, until you stop trying to "make money online" and start trying to "build a true business" your never going to get off the hamster wheel. I know exactly why you think SEO is BS. You have been hanging out with you "make money online" friends who are trying SEO for BS sites. Maybe if they did build something of value, SEO could help them.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

/wasting 10 seconds of my life

Wow you're far off there this time dude.

In early 2007, when I was trying to make a few bucks off AdSense (I didn't know any better back then), I barely did $30 / month and my site had about 100 uniques a day.

I learned a truckload of stuff about SEO and I SEO'd the sh*t out of my website. Within 3 months, my traffic went from 100 uniques a day to 1200 and my AdSense income rised to nearly $400 / month (I optimized my ads too).

I agree that you shouldn't write for search engine but for people but you can find the right balance between both.

@stu - "Hi Mark, so I take it you've excluded google from crawling your sites in your robots file? ;-)"

of course not. that's like saying if I see a $20 on the ground I'm going to pass it up, nope. I won't go hunting $20 bills all day long, but if I pass one on the ground I'll take it.

@loren and @james - thanks for the comments. Glad you liked the post.

@jeremy - you didn't make a single point that defended any argument

@thewebhostinghero - for every story there is of someone going up in earnings because of seo there is another story of somebody getting their earnings shut off because of seo.

Hey Mark, I got a suggestion: how about making an affiliate marketing competition? I mean a friendly and constructive competition.

The point not being to see who's better than who and who's right or wrong but rather to experiment different techniques and see where it goes? I think the readers could benefit from something like this plus it could keep us motivated. We'd promote the same offer but with techniques of our choice.

We're both new at this so we're pretty much on the same level. I barely make $1000 a month with affiliate marketing right now.

So are you up to the challenge? If so, let me know so we can pick an offer on NeverblueAds and start working on it!

Stephane

I think your general point is valid. Too many people think is they change this one little thing on their pages that they'll automatically get loads of traffic. Too many people worry about all the little things.

However, I do see SE's as a source of free traffic and to ignore that, in my opinion, would not be a smart move.

I believe there are a few things (mainly on-page) that we should all be doing SEO-wise ie. good title tags, nofollowing worthless pages (contact etc.) providing a good site structure etc.

These are things that may take a little initial work, but not much long-term effort.

I'm actually working a report right now (the easy seo report) that explains the basics and advises against worry too much about SEO.

I just worry about the basics, which takes very little time out of my day and I have front page rankings on Google for make money online, article directory, article marketing etc. etc. etc. many of which are pretty competitive.

So I don't agree that SEO should be ignored, but I definitely agree with you that far too many people worry about the little things and waste a whole lot of time that could be spent building good content, software etc.

SEO is great. Getting into this arena takes lots of research on your competitors, practice, and proper techniques for setting up your site. Depending on the amount of competition in your niche, it can be very profitable. If you are able to pick a niche that is not over saturated with competitors, you can rise fast with the right blueprint. I think it is the best form of traffic to be honest because it is free. Except for the amount of time it takes to research and build the site. Is it profitable, very. Just ask Jerry West. I know for a fact he makes well over your figures in this article.

SEO doesn't make money itself. A person who performs SEO services makes money by doing just that: performing SEO services. And the people who perform these services for a living are making PLENTY of money.

You're lumping all this stuff together and calling it SEO. That's ignorant, man. I'm surprised at you. SEO is not SEM. The purpose of SEO activities is to boost your search rankings. All that stuff you were saying about scripts and everything isn't SEO. It might be bullshit SEO to someone who doesn't know what they're doing, maybe. Another way to define SEO is that it is methods and techniques to give your excellent (not crappy) content a fighting chance against all the rest of the optimized content (that's the reality, welcome to it).

Do not act as though SEO doesn't exist. Google has already given out the best SEO advice ever: create content for people, not for search engines. Good, correct SEO recognizes this. Do a search for "untitled document". Those are people who act as if there's no such thing as SEO, because for them, there isn't. And they pay the price for that every day in low traffic.

It would be very flattering and tempting to think that I'm on the first page (or nearly so) in all major search engines for the term "blog consulting" because of my fabulous content. But I bet my whitehat amateur SEO efforts had something to do with that. SEO isn't a replacement for any other necessary activity, it's just another necessary activity. Very. Necessary.

You certainly got people's attention with this one, so good job on that. I always dig what you have to say, but you struck out with this one.

@micheal.

"Do not act as though SEO doesn't exist."

it exists, I'm not saying that. google has to pick something to rank things with. I just think for some rookie to think they will reverse engineer google that's silly, the word shouldn't even be in someone's vocabulary.

people can't even blog or create something that is interesting but they are going to worry about their "seo"? seo is nonsense.

I rank on the first page of google for liquidweb at the moment by writing about them yesterday. that is a very competitive "hosting" term.

I didn't do anything except make content people wanted to look at and continue to every day. much better seo than a proper url structure and I think you agree also.

certainly seo exists, but it should be at the very bottom of anybodies todo list.

Yeah, sorry, bad choice of words on my part. All the things we should be doing anyways that make sure content rocks for people (little things like appropriate titles and headings and big things like compelling, likable content) are great SEO. Leaving your page as "untitled document" for example, sucks for people and it sucks for SEO.

Worrying about SEO when your content sucks is definitely a pointless waste of time. And nobody wants to believe their content sucks, they want to blame something else and find the solution in something else... oh! I need SEO! You and I both know that's BS.

The difference between good SEO and what's happening to you with this LiquidWeb business is that with good SEO and great content, you would ALWAYS rank high for a term, not just be a flash in the pan. Long-term SEO is slow and steady-as-she-goes.

Anyways, thanks for the response, and much respect.

@micheal - thanks, yeah I think we both think basically the same.

and it might be one page for a newbies ebook, but that's it, set and forget.

@Mark - Hey there, started a response to this video, but it turned into something that seemed to have a life of its own... I think it is probably the longest article I have written on Bloglyne to date (it violates all rules as to length and being "short winded")... drop me a line via email when you get a chance, would like to "shoot the breeze" with ya on some of this stuff when you have a chance.

Interesting discussion you started here. Btw, your comment about SEO and lottery winners made me laugh out loud.