[mbesto]

I read this awhile back and it's great.

Curious honest question to the SEOs out there - other than present me with a strategy, is there anything specifically an SEO can offer to my site? As far as I can tell, any gimmick or scheme an SEO could do previously is now effectively non-existent since the Penguin and Hummingbird updates to Google. Is there anything outside of the standard stuff that I have to do that can make my site stand out?

[BetterLateThan]

Google has been using regular people like you and me as scouts for years.

We all have certain patterns and interests and the order of priorities - and Google know them all. They are the sysadmin of the Internet.

If we save a link, share a link or return to a page more than X times in $period, G. knows we think it's valuable. Multiply by the number of Google users who share $this_interest.

Conversely, any freshly created Twitter account associated with a freshly created Gmail account registered from an Indian IP has little authority in any field.

Any abnormal activity is an eyesore to Google algorithms and jumps out right away.

If your site sucks, you can't make Google think it doesn't. Fancy crap won't make your boring content look attractive. SEO today is customer satisfaction, disruption, uniqueness.

It doesn't matter any more what you say about your site - it's what actions of other people, real people, not your shills, say about your site.

This is, very roughly, how it works.

Source: SEO work since 2003, including a year as Google page quality rater.

[rjbwork]

So you're saying that the old PageRank and hubs/authorities algos are completely irrelevant these days? Its all simply based upon user behavior?

[butler14]

You managed to say a great deal without saying anything at all.

Classic old school SEO. Rock on.

[butler14]

Um, your question is unclear so I'm not sure exactly what answer you're looking for but, in short, yes, there's quite a lot you can do to improve your site from an SEO perspective.

[mbesto]

Let me try to rephrase. If an SEO comes and regurgitates the same tools and strategies that are easily obtainable to me, what value is the SEO adding? Are there limitless things outside of a predetermined checklist of 50 or so items that fall outside my general responsibilities as a startup founder? Which would therefore require me to outsource it? If an SEO told me that you could go build link farms and that would boost my SERP, I'd pay an SEO. Seems like a good ROI right?

My general assumption with SEO is (1) create good content and (2) make sure content is tagged correctly (3) share content.

Honestly, I'd love to be sold on why I should ever spend money on it, but given the recent updates to the Google algorithm, I can't seem to figure out why...

[gabemart]

The most difficult part of SEO (and, perhaps tellingly, the part covered only extremely briefly and superficially in the PDF) is getting links from relevant, high-authority sources with relevant anchor text. It's more important than any other factor by a vast margin. Building image sitemaps or optimizing your custom 404 error pages pales in significance by many orders of magnitude. On-site SEO is child's play compared to offsite SEO.

Getting these links ethically is a hard problem to solve, even for a high quality site with unique content.

I don't have much connection with the world of commercial SEO, but I imagine there are people good enough at solving this problem to charge a premium and get good returns for their clients.

[butler14]

So you're basically saying your knowledge of SEO was limited to crude link building tactics that have since been rendered ineffective by algorithmic updates. You're not alone, as that certainly cuts out a large swathe of what SEO was.

That's not to say there's nothing left though. And although there's much debate on whether what is left is actually 'SEO', good old fashioned PR, or now falls under the related, but rather nondescript 'content marketing', the business case for conducting such activity is still very strong in many cases.