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Avatar Went Hot: March 13, 2008 - 10:02 pm
Posted By: Wiep 301 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://seo-theory.com)
Category: SEO
An advanced SEO is more interested in mastering the trends and less concerned with studying the day-to-day tasks associated with optimization. You know how to write good content, you know how to get links. Advanced SEO is not about link building and analytics, it’s about resource building and metrics.
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Comments

from mattroberts 301 days ago #
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I agree. Much of my teams time is spent developing and managing our resources with the guy who does it, being our most talented SEO expert. Good post :-)

from tonyp 301 days ago #
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This was an informative post about what is considered advanced SEO.  I have been studying SEO for around 9 years and I'm not close to the advanced level as described.  I do some of the long range planning tasks but much of my work is still more immediate.

from emanuelh 300 days ago #
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My first impression was that this article has been written from the perspective of advanced SEO. But my final judgment is that it has been written from the perspective of advanced intermediate SEO. For instance: If you look at a search results page and say, “We have a problem” you’re at the intermediate level. If you look at a search results page and say, “Well, stuff happens”, you’re doing advanced SEO.

Advanced SEO, to use Wiep's terminology, cannot have anything more advanced above it, by definition. Otherwise we must invent ugly terms like super-advanced SEO, for instance, which only help us to demote the formerly thought to be advanced SEO to a lower status. Which means that our process of categorization has not been really completed. The same logical process can be accomplished without inventing new terms, just by being more careful with what we choose to include in the advanced SEO category and what we choose to include in the lower, intermediate SEO category.

And therefore, if we categorize SEO by what we actually do and what we think about what we observe, things will always flow like water from high to low, because the practice of SEO and the reflection which accompanies the work of the better SEO practitioners is always in advance. If only thanks to the growing number and sophistication of the obstacles invented by the search engines to protect their search results from our manipulation - their advance.

However, if we reserve the advanced category for the meta perspective, for thinking about the limits and not the contents of SEO, we will not yet completely stop this conceptual flow from high to low, but it will always be clear what remains in the top level - thinking about the limits of SEO and the creative process of inventing solutions, if possible. The results of the creative process, the actual solutions, will flow into the upper part of intermediate SEO to be used at once by their inventor and after a short or longer process of digestion by some others. (The crowds, as usual, don't think that there is a limit to what they know and certainly dislike philosophizing about the limits of they can possibly know. Even though, in this particular case, there are only a few and well-known culprits responsible for the limits of SEO knowledge.) 

Wiep wrote that saying “Well, stuff happens” instead of “We have a problem” while looking at a search results page on which our web page has dropped down or even dropped out of it, means thinking from an advanced SEO position in the first case and from a lower, intermediate SEO position in the second case. Well, for once stuff happens all the time.  And think of just two out of many possible scenarios:
1. We are # 9 for a given search query, we employ a new optimization technique we have good reasons to trust its promises for success, many weeks pass but nothing happens. Possible explanation: anyone above us and those closely below us employ the same technique, so the relevance scores rise but the gaps between them remain too stable for allowing rankings change.

2. We are # 11 for that search query and we employ a new optimization technique we have good reasons to trust its promises for success, and soon enough we jump to # 9 while the former # 9 drops to # 10 and the former # 10 drops to # 11. At this point we still don't know whether the advance in rankings is real - whether it is accompanied by a real advance in the relevance score - or whether it is false and the relevance score has actually dropped down too dangerously close to that of the page at # 12. Because I, and the SEOs of the pages formerly at # 9 and 10 have all of us employed the same harmful technique, but those two were much more industrious than lazy me!

The terminology used in the second scenario is helpful for describing the unknown facts behind the appearances in a particular case. It cannot be immediately turned into SEO practice in the positive sense of doing this and not that, but it should be used as a permanent warning sign not to believe that the appearances are all there is and not to trust what the appearances show. It belongs therefore to the meta SEO, to the advanced SEO.        

from Gab 299 days ago #
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While Michael is a better SEO, I disagree with his understanding/explanation of advanced SEO, or at least this post.

1) To a large extent the post just alters vocabulary and doesn't necessarily change the substance behind advanced SEO. Building links/content vs building resources... how many linkbait articles have explained the resource hook? Just an example, but the rest of the post feels the same too.

Here's another:

"Advanced SEO shapes Web sites (rather than optimizing them) to achieve specific results." So you're developing a site with your goals in mind? What's the big deal? Web Design 4 ROI (great book: wd4roi.com) highlights this sort of stuff, focusing on the specific result of conversions. Perhaps Michael meant that you're also getting good-converting traffic from non SE sources (yay! Webmaster Independence ;) ) and/or understand various stakeholders' interests (such as investors etc) but this doesn't seem like something very meaningful.

Where I do agree is in regards to using metrics not currently tracked by analytics, as well as getting custom work done (though that's kind of a similar thing). For instance, you can track IPs of people who do specific longtail searches and show them custom stuff after.

Like gabriel ROI, which is a pretty odd search until you realize that the search brings up my site among the first ... something i just found in my logs lately). What you can do with that stuff is find people who are loyal readers but unsubcribed, for instance (hence searching to check if there's new content and bouncing when they find nothing, in the gabriel ROI example). Or another example I gave in a post of mine sharing 3 new metrics was to use this to find linkerati in your visitors and show them your best, fresh content next time they visit.

from emanuelh 299 days ago #
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Sorry for arguing with Wiep - the real author of the article is of course Michael Martinez.


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