
Ask Patio11: Why don't you make SEO tools? - wolfparade
SEO is your bread and butter and from my research the existing tools aren't stellar.  You also already have a good following on Hacker News which is exactly the market that would need and use the tools?  I guess my real question should be if you were to make tools what would they be?
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i-like-water
I used to think there was some magic sauce to SEO - that only good content
with proper promotion would get high rankings. I've worked with SEO
consultants on every level. I've worked with two separate individuals who are
extremely well known (sorry NDA prevents sharings names), hired writers, and
outsourced work overseas. For my particular industry, which i won't share
because it will identify me, my content is pretty much un-linkable. You don't
want to talk about it. I paid a writer for years to write top quality content
that is actually useful to users and promoted it accordingly. Because good
content is what Google wants, right? Wrong.

After spending well over $100k in SEO i can tell you sadly the most effective
tactic has been spam. Yep, tons of links on sites, setting up gateway pages
that are focused on particular keywords, spamming social sites with links,
setting up blogs to target keywords, etc.. I've hired/fired about 5 different
companies in India and finally found one that is working magic for us.

Google's algorithm is not a mystery - most 'SEO' people will try to sell you
some snake oil. I was paying 10k a month to a top name SEO consultant (very
popular SEO book, well respected) and never felt so cheated in my life. Beyond
the basics of SEO like semantic structure of your HTML and URL's - SEO is
primarily a popularity contest.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Google's algorithm is not a mystery - most 'SEO' people will try to sell you
some snake oil.

Google's current ranking algorithm is a mystery. Sure we have some good clues
to go on but outside of Google's own info (which on at least one occassion
I've considered to be a deliberate attempt to mislead, though I might be
wrong) or industrial espionage the only way to determine the nature of the
algo is to experiment (or use other's experiments).

Yes they have a heavy reliance on site authority and the external link
structure but this is not all there is.

Good content is arguably what Google wants because it is how they mine their
product (people) to be delivered to their customers. Whether their algo is
optimised to deliver good content is a separate issue - you clearly think not.

Haven't you been stung with any of the algo updates?

~~~
aaronwall
Follow the money.

What % of spam sites are wrapped in AdSense? Greater than 5%? Greater than
50%?

For all Google's talk of content quality, they are clearly willing to make
some concessions with who they have as business partners and the type of
"content" they are willing to fund.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>What % of spam sites are wrapped in AdSense? Greater than 5%? Greater than
50%?

It wouldn't matter if it was 100%. Google apply pressure via their ranking
algorithm to encourage quality content which in turn relies incoming links and
to a lesser extent well crafted pages. Basically Google don't primarily
themselves judge the quality - that would be futile with so many pages, they
allow the net to do it, that's the whole point of PageRank to attain a metric
for quality without actually measuring the quality _per se_.

On the subject of "spam sites" - spam is unsolicited content delivered to you,
that's not possible unless you're talking about popup/popunders. You actively
seek out the sites.

Now if the top rankings on Google are unwanted poor quality sites and Google
are advertising spamily and not flagging malware, etc., then I think you'd
have a point.

~~~
aaronwall
Have to disagree with that 100%. Maybe 110%, if I am allowed.

Bloglines is now a scraped "answers" website. If I took our old
Threadwatch.org and did the exact same thing would Google let it rank based on
existing link equity? If not, what would be the difference? Ask is a bigger
partner so the editorial judgements are not made against them the same way
they might a smaller player.

Google has _frequently_ exercised editorial judgement against some folks,
while letter other folks get away with doing the exact same thing in bulk.

Further, those who are creating original high-quality content have _real_
business costs. Google paying scraper sites like Mahalo and Ask to borrow your
content & wrap it in ads means that you are sometimes getting outranked for
scraped duplications of your own content. That drives down publisher margins
and pushes marginally profitable publishers into losing money.

That said, Google wants to get big into television ads. And that is going to
mean having better respect for copyright. To some degree as we see the Google
business model change we will see their approach of "paying anyone to steal
anything & wrap it in Google ads" (to soften up copyright) change to a model
where the put themselves as a gatekeeper on DRM content & push the "official"
sources of the media (and try to make a cut of the profits).

Slowly but surely the search results will fill up with official hotel sites,
official music sources, official video sources, official ebook sources, etc
etc etc ... with Google putting a big foot on the gas.

As that shift happens the longtail spam model will lose out on its
profitability because it will be forced to compete with higher quality content
that is automatically mixed into the search results. (The whole point of
universal search was to allow Google to short cut certain types of information
right into the core search results...as they start making money from micro-
payments and such look for that trend to accelerate).

------
bigiain
My first guess is that he's smart enough to realise the somewhat greater
competition for all the good keywords you'd be facing if your product was "SEO
tools" compared to "bingo cards"...

If you had to choose _one_ vertical to be in, would _you_ chose one where
every competitor in it knew all the dirty SEO tricks in the book?

~~~
aaronwall
This is a bit ironic, but inside the field of SEO I don't think search
rankings matter that much.

Anytime you sell something which is a higher end service or an abstract type
of service what drives sales is word of mouth recommendations rather than
rankings. This is true for the higher end of the legal spectrum, the higher
end of the health spectrum, and the higher end for any b2b services sort of
business model.

Those who are buying based on rankings will see the Google AdWords ads for
$149 SEO and such...and get sucked into buying trash. Those who are even
cheaper will get scammed by their domain registrar or web host.

It is _hard_ to make much money in the SEO game teaching others or providing
tools to other. It is _much_ easier to make more as a publisher, as Patrick
stated.

One of the reasons I haven't invested more into some tools area is just how
much stuff is becoming freely accessible. Google's keyword tool is amazing,
Google analytics is amazing, some of the competitive research tools are
awesome & cheap.

When you get down to it, its hard to automate the link parts without running
into issues. Automating some of the link research areas is still an area for
innovation, but most the stuff around keyword research, keyword organization &
general content creation have already been heavily commoditized.

Another area where some folks work is baking a semi-legitimate cloaking
service into their SEO product & then making it seem legitimate by only
working with huge brands who agree to minimum contract amounts in the 5 or 6
figures per month. That model works well for the SEO because they typically
get paid by the click, but it is pretty crappy for the client because they end
up reliant on a tool that can be pulled out from under them at any time.

Brokering links is a huge business as well...but its sorta a gray area.

------
il
I don't mean to be a jerk, and I'm going to be downvoted into oblivion for
this, but I don't think Patrick is the brilliant SEO wizard some people on
here make him out to be, certainly not anywhere near a Rand Fishkin type
level.

He's an excellent writer and marketer, but it's not like he's privy to some
magical SEO techniques that would explode SEO traffic.

I would be surprised if he uses SEO tools much himself. From what I've seen,
he's very good at identifying small niches, creating good content, etc.
Basically good SEO fundamentals, not cutting edge trickery.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think _Patrick_ would claim to be a "brilliant SEO wizard". He's made
mention of friends who are.

Patrick's SEO abilities are notable on HN because he has managed to run a
business quantifiably tied to SEO and search advertising. He's hasn't just
"done" SEO. Lots of HN people can claim that. He's successfully taken a
product to market with it. That's impressive.

Referring to Patrick as an SEO undervalues him. SEO isn't really his schtick.
Engineered product marketing is. Engineered marketing includes SEO, but also
A/B testing, metrics, optimization, and a grab bag of other "lean startup"
ideas.

(Also, in case it isn't obvious, Patrick is popular here because he writes
thoughtfully, helpfully, and often.)

~~~
patio11
Please rap my knuckles soundly with a wooden spoon if I ever refer to myself
as a wizard in a context unrelated to Dungeons and Dragons.

------
patio11
For your future reference, I have an email address and answer at least half of
all questions asked to it. (100% for elementary school teachers.)

1) Providing value in a scalable fashion in SEO is hard, because Google has an
incentive to make it hard. If SEO were only as hard as AdWords, Google would
lose billions of dollars. Google considers virtually any repeatable process
that improves rankings to be black hat. I don't enjoy having to joust with a
giant team of PhDs who have infinite budget.

2) The SEO tools space is hard. Small-scale website owners are often very
skeptical that there is positive ROI in SEO. (There is positive ROI in SEO.
Crikey, if you learn one thing from me this year, learn that.) You have to do
_huge_ amounts of teaching to raise people to the point where they can begin
to benefit from it. That starts, literally, at "What is a search engine?",
because most website owners _do not know_ , especially in small business.

For marginally savvier website owners, like the average HNer, you can skip
some of the teaching and proceed directly to "I don't want to pay you money
for this." You've been on the same HN I have for the last year, right? We talk
a good game about raising $50,000 each of a dozen angels and valuations in the
tens of millions and whatnot, but what happens _every single time_ someone
suggests raising prices past, oh, $20 a month?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1510986>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780348>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357592>

SEO makes me thousands a month. I'm not interested in selling it for less than
many hundreds a month, _at the low end_.

3) Enterprise sales is not my idea of fun. Selling SEO to people who really
would seriously benefit from it -- companies which do a lot of transactions
online -- requires a high touch sales process. I'm not incapable of that -- I
do it for consulting -- but it isn't my passion in life, and it wouldn't scale
easily without me building a sales force. That requires a whole lot of skills
(hiring, managing salesmen, showing up promptly at nine to an office
somewhere, etc) that I don't have experience with, natural aptitude for, or
any reason to suspect that I'd be really good at.

4) What would it _do_ , really? (Your "real" question.)

Broadly speaking,

\+ SEO analytics: Hard to demonstrate value. Most obvious feature sets are
well represented by free competitors. Significant competition from SEO
training providers who like to throw in a bag of tools subscriptions to make
the $N00 a month fee look cheaper.

\+ Tools which purport to "do" SEO for you: if it works Google will call it
black hat, if it doesn't work it is snake oil. I have seen an _awful_ lot of
snake oil.

\+ Demand Media In A Box: Probably the best SEO tool I can think of writing --
automate topic selection and direct outsourced production of content for it.
Let's hypothetically pretend that I both was capable of and wanted to write
this: what is my incentive to selling it to people who pay little money and
need lots of handholding when instead I could point it at any problem domain I
wanted and make a million dollars _each time_?

5) What is the opportunity cost?

I'm pretty good at what I do: I make and sell software, and I do occasional
consulting for other people who mostly make and sell software. Consulting is
fantastically lucrative, and would (and has) helped me get together enough
money to launch any software/service I care to.

I picked out one I thought was a good bet, and am busy implementing it. Ask me
next December, but I am cautiously optimistic, in a way I have never been
optimistic about SEO tools.

THAT SAID:

There may be a profitable, addressable market for SEO tools. There certainly
is for SEO-related training/services -- SEOBook and SEOMoz are both doing
quite well. YC has funded at least one SEO-related company.

I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, though.

~~~
wolfparade
I think "Demand media in a box" is brilliant. It is exactly what I would want
in SEO tools. I have a problem domain where I need SEO traffic. You obviously
know how to find good free lance writers and you can teach them all the SEO
basic and anything else they need to know. So it's like consulting but
scalable or it's like running a free lance writing website but target at
making great SEO content and picking topics in the problem domain space to
write about. The reason you don't just do this and apply it to any problem
domain is because of scale at the end of day in SEO you need to sell a product
and I don't think you can produce 1000s of products

~~~
mattgratt
I believe CopyPress by BlueGlass (<http://www.copypress.com/>) is this. And
those guys are some SEO geniuses - like Greg Boser?

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kriru
I have done loads of SEO research and no tool comes close seomoz.org . They
have created their OWN index similar to that of google's . I would make a
similar tool or maybe even better

~~~
nickfromseattle
Can you expand on 'no tool comes close.'? What makes Seomoz pro tools stand
out?

------
robryan
Can this process really be automated in any way that Google would not consider
black hat?

~~~
gacba
The problem is not "Is this possible?", but how long before Google recognizes
it and then classifies it as black hat, thereby causing anyone who uses the
technique to get downranked. The problem with any popular SEO technique or
tool is that it will eventually attract the attention of Google and then be
evaluated as "black" or "white" hat.

