Brisbane SEO 2.0
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008CAVEAT: It is not my intention to bag Pete here, mearly point out a few things. We are far different seo’s, with different goals and different techniques. Naturally I think mine are better, that’s why I watch so closely, just to make sure! For the record I have nfi about most new school techniques compared to Pete (I know, use a bit and monitor - but the effectiveness just isn’t there - yep - yet!) Pete is a smart guy and well into what he does.
This cranky seo just prefers web 1.0 = more money. Pete know’s his Web 2.0, he is sphinning, stumbling and twittering like no tomorrow! While I understand and test 2.0, the real money still belongs to 1.0 and the old school seo mindset. Let the bitching begin!
The SEO community really is becoming quite novel. I am watching a generation of younger seo’s and monitoring their techniques. It’s very interesting and looks like a whole ton of work to me ;-P I’m sure it will put them in good stead someday, but I’m 99% sure the older seo’s would still kick their ass. fwiw I am clearly disapointed by some of the newer techniques to get links etc, I am fairly sure Google don’t approve too much either. Yes folks, it’s their algo, nice and broken 
Good to see the older seo’s like GerBot visiting Pete’s Newsome’s Brisbane SEO blog too, I really think Pete’s onto a winner with the Brisbane SEO blog - locals are reading!!
In this post by young Pete aka sitemost, http://blog.sitemost.com.au/2008/01/23/maintaining-your-rankings/ we get a great comment from GerBot (Gerard Doyle), a uk and (once?) Brisbane based older school seo (and avid spammer if I remember correctly) and Darryl @ ireckon, so in total interaction from 3 local Brisbane based seo’s. The part I don’t get is the post itself.
Now I am not ripping into Pete too far here, but I disagree with his advice. What scares me is the fact that nobody has pulled him up on it. This advice simply would not work it the areas I play in as they are simply too competitive. So perhaps a little disclaimer about the types of serps in the post may have been appropriate.
a. Following this advice would lead my clients sites no where
b. People agreed with the advice (including GerBot?)
c. It’s a little scary to think that this could even work (unless it’s a barebones site ranking by the skin of it’s teeth)
For anyone to optimise past a client in an established niche you are going to need only one thing - LINKS - and not social media links either, they would help, but not the point!
Establishing an ongoing budget for links, or an intergrated method which your client is building backlinks as as they do business is a far smarter idea than wasting time on content creation and weak backlinks.
Put your efforts where they will count most = better rankings and happier clients.
An excellent example can be found in the Google SERP’s for the term “Brisbane SEO”, according to my watch - Pete’s blog is one spot above one of my domains, brisbaneseo.com. They rank #6 and #7 respectively.
The backlinks are as follows,
Pages (163) | Inlinks (8,630) (entire site, no pages from domain)
http://blog.sitemost.com.au/
Pages (2) | Inlinks (5) (entire site, no pages from domain)
http://www.brisbaneseo.com/
Not the fairest match up - due to the domain, but you will see my point.
Seriously if I built over 8K backlinks and wasn’t #1 for what was in my title, I’d be well pissed. So what can we do about this (apart from conclude that the entire seo community is downgraded heavily in the algo - obviously), well I am going to offer a few SEO tips to Pete to get this puppy ranking.
* In the footer: Brisbane SEO Blog is powered… - make Brisbane SEO a live link to the home page. Guess what? You just build 162 ontopic links to your homepage. Nice!
I found it strange that Google didn’t change the ranking when Pete changed the page title away from Brisbane seo. The new title is avail as a domain I am fairly sure too Pete 
