To SEO or not to SEO - the Social Question.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  S?awomir Zdunek: To be honest I agree 100% with the approach to launching new websites presented in the article by +Rand Wilson ;.  ;A very nice read by the way. And what is more interesting the website in question does not have any trace of SEO plugins :) ;
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  Dave Keys: I greatly appreciate and agree with the emphasis on the principles behind the traffic to this website. Creating content people like and appreciate is core to success but the differences between this venue and the "real world" of others start to show up pretty fast.
  
  Many people who find themselves concerned with SEO become that way because they don't have the luxury of creating sensation or appeal on a basis of their choosing. If I want to get a lot of traffic, I can follow the same idea and create an intent with wide appeal. I could start a website that focuses on "Lies Politicians Tell" and review every recent speech and statement of politicians and give my take on what they say. People like the expose' kind of content. If I started writing about Trayvon Martin every day or every few days, I'd get some traffic pretty fast.
  
  The problem for a lot of website owners is that their website is about things like real estate in Topeka KS. Let's be honest. To most people this topic has zero appeal and even those who "need" real estate services would rather not deal with an agent- but they have to. This is a much different scenario because one or two hundred agents are all competing for the same few eyeballs. They've got to have some visibility, not only ahead of local competitors but against the growing number of syndicate aggregator websites which Google unfortunately categorizes as "brands." This is just one business sector. There are legion small business owners who, unless they want to become small time entertainers and reviewers, are stuck with finding a way through the competition that falls back to SEO methods that still work while avoiding the minefield of algorithmic penalties and suppression.
  
  Again, I absolutely emphasize that everything anyone can do to create interesting content is mandatory to success but if you don't have the luxury of discovering an absolutely appealing niche as the basis of promoting your business, you've got another, much different scenario on your hands.
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  Rob Wagner: +Dave Keys ;I will agree that every situation is different and requires different techniques in order to be successful.  ;
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  S?awomir Zdunek: But on the other hand I wonder if applying all these SEO techniques would speed up the whole process of indexing and improve ranking. I guess it could.
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  Justin Y: I wonder how much of this true. I question this because of the spike pattern. Those spikes make it look like there was some sort of advertising done if you ask me. I could be wrong but it doesn't look natural.
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  Dave Keys: +Rob Wagner ;It is indeed a strong case for content. Even the scenario I so verbosely described could be improved by the local specialist taking time to answer every probable question about their community to every likely person who asks. Of course, they need to know to match the question in their post title. People really do tend to type questions rather than "queries" into Google. I actually saw a search recently that literally read, "Is Dave Keys good at SEO?" People type every kind of imaginable question about your market that nobody has yet answered directly because they're too busy trying to outrank Zillow.