As an addendum to his article on link building for kindergartner’s over at SEOMoz Pritam Barhate posits the idea of an SEO Wiki, which is an interesting idea to which my first reaction was “Cool! Let’s do it!”. But on reflection I think there are several reasons a public SEO wiki just wouldn’t work:
- SEO moves too fast
Techniques and tricks change almost daily in the current environment. Much of an SEO wiki’s content would be out of date almost as soon as it was written. Even with a core of dedicated users trying to keep things current it’s not hard to imagine out of the way areas being forgotten and showing inaccurate content. And just like real encyclopedias bad information can sometimes be worse than no information at all. - SEOs argue too much
The endless point/counterpoint that fills the days of Editors and contributors on Wikipedia has nothing on the SEO community. For every person who’ll stand up and champion a certain method you’ll find at least one other authoritative voice willing to swear blind such a thing will get you googleslapped. SEO seems to be an area where it’s impossible to please all of the people all of the time. That isn’t a good fit for a community edited wiki. - An SEO wiki
When a blogger outlines techniques or methods you know who’s speaking and wether you value their word. An SEO wiki would be faceless and easily gameable. What’s to stop some nefarious SEO (no, not DaveN) seeding the wiki with techniques that lead to banning/lost rankings? Or to use a competiting sites techniques they’ve investigated as an example on how to do (or not to do) things, thus exposing their competition in a very public place? In short there’d be any number of ways to game an SEO wiki for commerical advantage, and few of them would be benign.
I’d love to see an authoritative wiki-style resource for SEO, but if it’s going to happen it’d need to be a closed system edited by a handful of experts…and who’s going to give away their entire armoury of techniques in that way?
Dan Mcskelly
8 Comments
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10th September 2008 @ 18:58
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I’m not so sure Jaan - I think that’s down to a lack of knowledge in academic circles more than anything. SEO is an inherently commercial discipline which, by and large, attracts people who want to make money for themselves and their clients. Not the kind of people to sit in a classroom lecturing students.
I think it’d be quite possible to give, say, students in marketing courses with an online component a grounding in the basics of SEO in the classroom. The details change day-by-day but the foundations stay the same for years (the meta-tags era, the links era, the good content era, the social era…those “eras” overlap but the thing they have in common is that they’re all long term plays).
In a classroom environment I think it’d be possible to give a roomful of fresh faces a decent grounding in SEO - enough to let them choose if they wanted to develop their skills in their area at least. I’m just doubtful a wiki is the way to spread SEO knowledge online. Blogs will be king in this area for the foreseeable future, I think.
10th September 2008 @ 20:36
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1. SEO moves pretty fast, but the fundamentals of a well built site remain. So while tricks may work today and not tomorrow, somethings remain and can be taught.
2. Biggest issue. SEO’s never agree. Mostly because of those tricks. Take any 5 good SEO’s and they are likely to all disagree on many points - and without any real proof otherwise they are all right/wrong.
3. Much like the current Wikipedia, don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Try at own risk, show some common sense and you should be fine.11th September 2008 @ 08:44
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Isn’t that the same reason why some private forums are working better than the DigitalPoints of this world?
I’d love to see DaveN spill his guts in an SEO Wiki.
11th September 2008 @ 09:05
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@Dan: The reason it’s not taught in college is one of the same reasons a wiki wouldn’t work: The arguing point is moot … people argue about politics, but Political Science is taught most effectively when opposing viewpoints are given equal time. Anonymity wouldn’t be an issue, because the experts would be exactly who was consulted for a college/university class. But, as you pointed out, techniques for high-level SEO change on a weekly, if not daily, basis … schools use one textbook a year, at best. Everything you learned in a college SEO class would be out of date before you learned it.
More or less what Jane said.
Just using more words. hehe11th September 2008 @ 10:25
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[...] example : http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/taking-your-laptop-into-the-us-how-to-protect-yourself.html http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/a-week-in-the-life-of-david-naylor.html http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-wiki.html [...]
15th September 2008 @ 15:36
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[...] Would an SEO Wiki work? [...]
15th September 2008 @ 15:39
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I don’t think SEO moves THAT fast. I mean, there are still some tried and true methods that work before, work now, and will work in the future.
15th October 2008 @ 16:24
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hmmmm, same reasons SEO is not taught in school/college.