[swinnipeg]

Been using ahrefs for years, not sure what is sleazy about it.

It audits your site for issues, shows Google rankings for keywords, estimated volume for keywords, backlinks to specific sites, backlinks to specific pages...etc.

It doesn't do anything for SEO (no content, no links...etc), it simply reports on the state of affairs.

[camkego]

The page title of the ahrefs.com site is: "SEO Tools & Resources To Grow Your Search Traffic"

So, it seems Ahrefs describes itself as "SEO Tools..."

[colordrops]

SEO itself is sleazy. Any gaming of search is sleazy, whether active or passive. The NSA is sleazy, even though they simply report on "the state of affairs".

[richardpetersen]

SEO is a skill set that helps algorithms understand content.

Google even lists it as a required skill for some of their roles:

https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/83882884131103430-pr...

[Goronmon]

Google even lists it as a required skill for some of their roles:

I don't know if I'd use Google as a great example of sleazy vs non-sleazy...

[tdehnel]

Hi, I have a small SEO consultancy. We work with tech companies (mostly B2B saas), many you’ve heard of.

You’re right that some approaches to SEO are sleazy. They are a bit old fashioned at this point, and usually result in short term results which crash and burn. Google does actually care if users don’t find a good result; they are working on improving the results every day.

But you’re wrong in the sense that SEO done correctly is just a good way to get in front of potential customers who are actively searching for information by proving value to them up front.

Let’s say you run a company and I tell you customers are searching for your product 1000 times a day. What are you going to do? Not invest in SEO?

So, to demystify it, here’s what we do:

1. Identify topics that people are searching for, prioritize by search volume and conversion potential

2. Create content which is going to best satisfy that person’s search intent. We don’t want them clicking the back button and choosing another result, that would hurt our rankings in the long run

3. Try and link to the new content from other pages on our own site

4. Identify any technical issues which would prevent a search engine crawler from being able to access or understand our content

That’s pretty much it.

[foerbert]

There's another side to the coin that I think you're, understandably, overlooking. I don't think either side alone is the full story. It's a big grey ball of tradeoffs, no matter how it all falls.

Even with just your own description of your activities you can find perverse incentives and negative externalities.

You aren't exactly incentivized to just create content that satisfies common queries. More fully, you're incentivized to create content that makes people think (rightly or wrongly) their query is being answered while also marketing your goods/services to them as much as possible.

Even assuming the best intentions to actually answer the query - be it altruism, discerning searchers, fear of Google, or something else - the content itself is hardly unbiased. This isn't inherently some kind of moral failure on your part, but it's hardly negligible either for the searcher. Everybody is going to have different thresholds here for what crosses the line, but I think it's understandable that some people are just unhappy having to even put in the time and energy to disentangle this aspect in the first place.

And this dovetails into one of the obvious externalities. Who is doing SEO, and who isn't? That totally unaffiliated small-time blogger that just happened to write up a bit of info after having the same problem as you probably isn't doing a whole lot of SEO. At least, they aren't hiring you to help increase their hosting costs. Somebody trying to find less biased views ends up having to wade through all the sites making enough money to pay for SEO first, to actually find what they're looking for. It should be pretty obvious why that does no favors for SEO's reputation.

But as I said at the beginning, you're not wrong either. This stuff goes deep into 'small' questions like profit-motives and competition for limited resources. Obviously and trivially correct answers aren't here.

I really do appreciate that you're approaching this from the much better intentioned side of things. One of the few things that might be obviously correct is that your approach is better than the sleezy way.

But that doesn't make it all rainbows and sunshine either.

[tdehnel]

I think you can find exceptions in any discussion, but that's not exactly helpful.

Here's the thing: If I don't answer the user's query accurately, another website will. Then they will get all the traffic. So my long term incentive is to satisfy the query.

Within that there is a certain tolerance and understanding among search users that websites can't publish information for free. See Wikipedia constantly begging for money.

So companies (my clients) can justifiably get away with a small amount of self promotion. But if you take that too far you'll just get punished in the SERPs too.

[wonderbore]

I get this sentiment. "SEO" is basically an euphemism for spamming at this point. It's no longer just "Let's repeat this keyword 3 times" but "let's add 120 footer links and spam 35 blog comment sections per day"

[rickhaasteren]

That was SEO 15 years ago. If you think that still works, you’ll be disappointed.

[wonderbore]

I don’t think it’s how it works because I see that crap daily in footers, especially in the travel industry. Open any hotel listing on TripAdvisor and count the “[something] in [location]” links in the footer.

[Veen]

How do you think Google knows which pages are helpful when someone searches for “[something] in [location]”? Anchor text in links plays a key role, but with search listings on sites like TripAdvisor, it’s tricky to naturally insert those links into content. Footer links is one way to do it.

I’d agree With you if those links were misleading, but they usually aren’t. They really do point to pages with “[something] in [location]”. And they really are helpful for search engines looking to give useful results for that type of query.

[rickhaasteren]

“I saw some hotel websites with location links in their footer, so that must be what the SEO industry is all about”

Sure.

[wonderbore]

You don’t get it. “Link building” is not 2007 stuff. You find 2022 articles with that. If you don’t believe it it’s not my problem.

[stalkerman]

I don't see any https://www.marketstreethotel.co.uk

[wonderbore]

It’s that a listing on TripAdvisor? It’s not.

[rchaud]

Travel, huh? I wonder if clickbaity links show up for things like life insurance, weight loss, and personal injury lawyers.

Don't blame SEO because capitalism necessitated that businesses use whatever means possible to get their product in front of your face.

[wonderbore]

Thankfully I don't have to deal with any of those so travel websites is what I look at the most.