.net magazine on the hottest SEO trends

March 25th, 2008 by Cormac Moylan · 22 Comments

.net “We reveal the latest tools and techniques in the world of SEO and give you valuable insights from some of the major players - The hottest SEO trends“

I generally pick up .net magazine each month. This month the lead article was titled ‘The hottest SEO trends’ which featured Google’s Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land and Yahoo’s Priyank Garg. Mark Buckingham, the author of the piece, claimed he would reveal ‘the latest tools and techniques in the world of SEO’ and also ‘glean valuable insights from some of the major players’.

Excellent, I thought to myself. That should be an interesting read.

I was expecting to hear about emerging technologies and tactics in areas such as foreign language SEO, personalised and localised search, social media optimisation, viral campaigning, geographical targeting of users and maybe something on email campaigning, PPC, sematic web and data sharing/mining.

Instead, I was reading the same old stuff about how ‘content is king’, keyword density, sitemaps and tips on using google analytics. Are those the hottest SEO trends? I don’t think so, not in my opinion anyway.

The piece also included an interview with Chewy Trewhella, Customer Solutions Engineer @ Google, who said that “SEO is the last 10% of completing a website: it’s only when you’ve done everything else that you really want to be thinking about optimising it”. I couldn’t disagree more.

Leaving SEO as an after thought is a potential recipe for disaster. Sure, the content and design are a major consideration, but leaving SEO as a last minute thing could harm a lot of the work which you have already done.

I work for an emerging social network which has a massive amount of user generated content. If the developers and analysts had considered the SEO impact of their site architecture when they were developing then my job of advising them on their search visibility would be a lot lot lot easier. Unfortunately they took the same approach as the one Chewy mentioned and that last 10% of SEO is now a 100% bigger headache.

..
Another quote from this article which had me slightly miffed was one by Jill Whelan of highrankings.com when referring to SEO agencies:

“if they tell you that your keyword meta tag is not good, then that’s a sign they don’t know what they’re talking about, since it makes no difference any more what you put in there”

Google, the dominant player in search, are paying less attention to meta information than the other search engines but meta tags are hardly a thing to ignore. Especially the meta description. Yahoo, MSN and Ask all check on a site’s meta information when indexing content. If you decide to omit a meta description from a page on your site you are then relying on the search engine to pick the correct page description for a page when they index it.

If I used a meta description on my blog homepage then instead of the below site description which appears when you Google my name…

my site description

….I could have something more relevant to my content. (I’m not sure why I don’t have a meta description on my blog actually. Mmm, most put that on my to-do list )

But anyway, you can see my point. If I used proper meta tags then I could have prevented Google from picking a page description which doesn’t describe the page very well. Instead Google’s automated approach to indexing had somehow decided that the comments which appear in my sidebar describe my blog. I guess that means that Jill is a tad wrong about meta information?

The final odd thing about this article was a quote from Matt Cutts about SEO in ten years time.

Will SEO even exist in 10 years’ time? - I think it will. I don’t know whether it will be called ‘SEO’, but I think the idea of making your site friendlier to search engines will definitely be a concept that’s still around. I think a future trend in black-hat SEO will be more cracking attempts, hackers if you want to call them that, where people will go and attack other people’s websites.

So you’ll see an interesting collision between SEO and malicious hacking and I think that will bring a lot of people to a fork in the road, because no one really wants to do something illegal.

Competitors hacking and defacing other people’s websites is the future of black-hat SEO? I really can’t see that happening.

The article wasn’t all bad though. There were some interesting things mentioned but it was very cold for me given that the article title was “The hottest SEO trends”.

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Tags: SEO

22 responses so far ↓

1 Georgie // Mar 25, 2008 at 11:08 pm

Didn’t even know they made .net magazine still. Good points but I agree that hacking(cracking whatever) is creeping into blackhat SEO. Not hacking competitors but exploiting vulnerabilites in open source stuff like Wordpress to get links from sites, especially authority sites. Google is so good these days at discounting links from the usual sources.
2 Cormac // Mar 25, 2008 at 11:22 pm

Hi Georgie,
.Net is a pretty decent magazine. It’s easily the best Web one I have read.

I suppose you know that bit more than me about BH-SEO but I still find hacking/cracking to be a bit on the extreme side of things.
3 Niall Doherty // Mar 26, 2008 at 3:06 pm

Nice read. Your blog post I mean; I didn’t read the .net article. All of those quotes do seem ridiculous.

Cormac, I have a question for you about page titles, which may or may not affect SEO. Would you recommend putting the name of your site in the page title (e.g. “MyBlog.com - Title of my really cool article”), and if so, would it be best to put it before or after the actual content title?
4 Cormac // Mar 26, 2008 at 3:16 pm

Hi Niall,
A lot depends depends on the site name in question and on the amount of pages which the site holds.

But it is generally better to put the site name at the end of the page title. This is because Google only uses the first 64 characters of a page title when displaying search results. Because of this it is better to put the keywords which describe the page at the beginning of the title and then to finish with the site name.

A lot depends too on whether or not the site-name/domain has keywords in it.

So, to answer your question:
“Title of really cool article - Nial Doherty’s blog” would be best as the article title is more relevant to the article content than the site name.
5 Niall Doherty // Mar 26, 2008 at 3:36 pm

Nice one, thanks. I didn’t know that Google only uses the first 64 characters of the title. Excellent info. I’ll keep it in mind.
6 Gavin // Mar 26, 2008 at 8:27 pm

The description snippet from WP does suck, especially when your comment authors or tags are shown as the snippet.

As for Matts 2008 predictions. I read his blog post a while back and the blackhat site hijacking really stood out. I think its going to be a real threat and will get more aggressive.
7 Mission Control ~ We have lift off!!!!! | Richards World // Mar 26, 2008 at 9:31 pm

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8 Ina // Mar 27, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Hi Cormac,

Great blog post.I was going to buy .Net for the article but you’ve saved me the hassle.Im currently SEO-ing a site for a photographer friend of mine.There are so many ways to cheat.Ill keep my white hat on me though! : )

Ina
9 Ina // Mar 27, 2008 at 12:23 pm

Hi Cormac,

Maybe this article may be of more interest to you.

http://www.chiefmartec.com/2008/03/seo-semantic-we.html

Ina
10 Cormac Moylan // Mar 27, 2008 at 3:11 pm

Hi Ina, this month’s magazine is actually quite good. Better than previous ones anyway. I just thought that the title of the SEO article was a bit mis-leading.

Thanks for the link too. I’ll give it a read this evening.
Cormac
11 Jennifer // Mar 31, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Hi Cormac

I get .net each month too. I think they repeat their topics quite frequently so you see the same sort of articles come up like, blogging for business, site redesign and SEO tools. I find it useful for giving a sort of superficial look at different topics that I feel I should at least know exist, rather than giving an indepth tutorial. I love the design showcase section.
12 Cormac Moylan // Mar 31, 2008 at 3:46 pm

The designs on the site are great. I find the content really good for the most part.

I should start using their website more than I am at the moment though. I believe that most of the articles are available as PDF downloads. These aren’t free though!

It’s probably better that I get the magazine as I hate reading from screens.
13 Dan Oliver // Apr 9, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Good to see that the feature has sparked some debate. We may do an Advanced SEO feature in the coming months, but when limited to four pages of copy there are obviously areas that we can’t cover. As for our PDF tutorials available online, they’re all free. At least I hope they are
14 Cormac Moylan // Apr 9, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Hi Dan,
Thanks very much for dropping by. It’s nice to see the publishers take an interest in the after thoughts of its readers. I hope my post didn’t come across as pretentious or anything. I’m a very avid reader of .net

Keep up the good work,
Cormac
15 Mark B // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:55 pm

Hi Cormac

Dan’s right, given another 4 or so pages, I could have covered all the real nitty gritty that you were evidently expecting. This is where it can be tricky to satisfy what I imagine is a fairly wide demographic, each with their own conception (rightly or wrongly) of what SEO really is.

Still, I think we’ve crammed in quite a lot: boxouts, a step by step guide, and an interview, additional to the main piece. Credit must go to the .Net design team for managing to fittin it all in.

In this piece, I wanted to clarify what I consider to be SEO “best practise.” Whilst I’m not sure I agree with *all* your points, I guess we can both concur firmly that our industry at large is replete with SEO misinformation (and, more disturbingly, those charlatans who evidently prey on those less savvy, eager for a quick fix).
If I’ve helped one comany or self-startera avoid being ripped off, then I’m happy.

Incidentally, Jill Whalen was specifically referring to the keyword meta tag, which we know are virtually redundant, at least in Google’s eyes. I don’t have the piece to hand, but I don’t believe Jill’s quote referred to the meta description tag - I would raised an eyebrow at that one!

As for the last 10% quote - that’s Chewy’s, not mine. But, I agree with the principle. The words Kettle and Fish come to mind.

Perhaps you would like to contribute to my monthly Pro Search page for .Net If so, drop me a line.

Mark
16 Cormac // Apr 10, 2008 at 10:36 am

Hi Mark, thanks for dropping by.

I quite enjoyed your piece but found it to be at the beginners level of things. It’s the title which I found a bit misleading but I suppose that depends on the readers perspective and how much they know about SEO before reading the article.

I suppose it is difficult to get overly technical and advanced when the piece needs to be preached to the entire crowd.

Cormac
17 Mark // Apr 10, 2008 at 5:40 pm

Hi Cormac. Personally, I’d say the piece was nudging towards intermediate - but that’s relative! I think an overly technical piece would have put some readers off. I may have fallen asleep at the keyboard, too!

All the best,
Mark
p.s I didn’t write the cover title.
18 Cormac Moylan // Apr 10, 2008 at 5:47 pm

Hi Mark,
Sleeping at the keyboard can be damaging for your head. Try getting a CTRL AlT DEL out of your forehead, not nice.

I sent you a mail earlier to the address you are using to post comments. Is this email account the correct one to use?
19 Michael Wall // Apr 24, 2008 at 9:06 am

Hi Cormac,

In Jill’s defence although I haven’t read the article I think she is only referring to the meta keyword rather than the meta description which carries no weight in Google.
20 Cormac Moylan // Apr 24, 2008 at 9:28 am

Hi Micky,
I must check over the article for the exact quote…
21 Cormac Moylan // Apr 24, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Just checked the article,
She only mentioned the meta keyword. I jumped the gun on that one a bit. Woopsie.
22 Michael Wall // Apr 25, 2008 at 6:56 am

Oops sorry, looks like someone else pointed that out.

I used to buy .Net years ago, I think one of my sites got a mention in it as well which was nice at the time.

Might buy a copy and read the article for myself.

Cormac Moylan

Hi, my name is Cormac and this is my blog. On the web circa July 2006.