One of the messages you will see SEO writers and bloggers The Last Seduction movies discuss is the need to create many positive signals to search engines and their users — preferably as many of these signals as possible.
I completely agree. However, I think it becomes increasingly difficult in our world of information abundance. How many ’signals’ are really just noise?
Take, for instance, the meteoric rise of online video. Allegedly, 65,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube each DAY. Many of these are likely low-grade cell phone videos. I shudder to think how many camera phone images are put on sites like Flickr each day. (I admit guilt, there. The camera phone is useful for impromptu cat pictures.)
When faced with this kind of volume, many small businesses and even large Web sites are prone to doing things that create noise, mistaking their actions as signal-creation. Video is a form of interactivity, true, but what is in your video? Just as early business web sites presented brochures in HTML, I expect to see a lot of web sites uploading their standard TV commercials, regardless of buzz quality or content. Arguably, this is just noise, but it may be evolutionary for these businesses. It lets them get started thinking about how to use video to create real value.
Similarly, most cases of content duplication within a domain is done out of a wish to create signals — at least within my experience. Unfortunately, in most cases, all the site owner does is create noise. Having 50 pages of the same content, save for the name of a state, adds nearly no value for a user or a search engine. On the other hand, while this may potentially get a site into some hot water, it too may be evolutionary.
Determining what actions create value — ’signal’ — versus actions that do not — ‘noise’ — is a constantly evolving art. In many cases, even for experienced search marketers, it’s a matter of throwing some spaghetti against a wall, and seeing what sticks.
Some might think this dilutes the value of working with an SEO pro, but I think it reinforces the value. A dedicated SEO is going to have experience on multiple sites in multiple verticals, and will have aggregated experience to apply to your unique situation. A good consultant can prevent you from making rookie mistakes, and build out far more robust experiments that can result in creating a very good signal to both search engines and your target prospects.