

SEO specialists are dead - kirillzubovsky
http://www.unreadyandwilling.com/2011/06/a-new-chapter

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trevelyan
Google is drowning in crap. What frustrates me is that they have the data
through Analytics to figure out what sites people actually find useful, and
yet refuse to use that data out of fear of alienating advertisers. I think the
company should be less focused on opening up new ways for spammers to game
them (+1) and more focused on figuring out ways to efficiently regress SERP
position on site traffic in order to come to a better understanding of which
results people actually use.

That said, I'm really sorry to hear you lost your job. I'm in the education
industry and imagine margins have to be paper thin for a teaching directory
even done right. So maybe it is a good thing to move on and find other
opportunities. Leaving on good terms is important, and it's classy of you to
still promote the company in your blog.

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kirillzubovsky
I d say the difference is between manipulation and marketing. You can still
rank high, but now you just need a really good product that organically earns
place in high-trafficked channels. Now, I you want to do SEO, you need a much
better understanding of marketing and probably a Loy more money. Thoughts?

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KenjiCrosland
I'd say that the link "builder" is dead. "Earning" links however, could be a
different story. If content gets a lot of tweets, fb shares etc and non-
manipulative links (not just 100 links with the same anchor text), then Google
should still reward the site that earns those links. That was the direction
that I was trying to go after the 24th. That said, it was more difficult to do
that for a directory site, which is what TeachStreet was.

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KenjiCrosland
I would have never posted this on HN myself because I'm not a frequent user. I
really have to thank Kirill for posting this. I've already gotten emails from
three CEOs :D. HN is amazing!

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kirillzubovsky
No problem, Kenji :)

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vertr
I think a more apt title is that content farms are dead.

