Greg Hartnett

I read a post at WMW by Brett - 101 Signals of Quality. Unfortunately for those of my readers who are not supporters of WMW, it is a supporters-only forum. If you are trying to do business online, and if you are serious about your craft there is nothing I would recommend more than bookmarking WMW, and becoming a supporter. The knowledge garnered from picking the minds of the most intelligent people in the business cannot be measured.

Some of the highlights (I hope this doesn’t piss on any toes):

A blog is one of the best means of forcing ones self to generate timely content that also acquires quality links. As we all know, links are still the #1 currency on todays web. Thus, a good blog, is like a license to print money. On the other hand, if everyone is so busy blogging, it has left little time for people to actually work on seo’ing sites and creating quality content for those sites. I think this is part of the reason we also saw a few major bloggers lose their jobs and blogs this last year.

By focusing on quality, you are bound to attract eyeballs, and with those eyeballs come links, and more eyeballs, and more links. Kind of a selp-perpetuating cycle. Like being #1 for a top key-phrase. By focusing on relevant, captivating content you are likely to get some of the best links you could. For instance, by making a dissenting decision, and informing your peers about it, you are bound to get noticed. When the Zawodny v. Cutts debate broke, we decided to go with the link condom, and then I posted about our decision on the company blog. The whole thing proved to be a learning experience, and we got additional play out of the whole commotion. Additionally, Jeremy even posted a follow up, devoting a few paragraphs to us, and a couple of links.

Another major trend has happened in the SEO employment space. I count 15 independent blackhat SEO’s that have went to work for other corporations. The actual number must be closer to 50 or 60 that have thrown in the towel and went to work for the man. There are very few old time techless SEO’s left.

Ha - I guess I would be considered one of the “few old time techless SEO’s” that are still around, though I would not consider the color of my hat to be quite so dark. Seriously though, it will make for an interesting landscape in the years to follow now that the big companies have some of “us” in their pockets.

Further reading:

WMW - Signals of Quality - What are They?
SEW - Why Quality Content is Key For Search Engines
Sitening Blog - What Will SEO Look Like In 2006?
Warpspire - Writing quality content
Idiot’s Guide to Web 2.0 - How to Blog Good