12 SEO things I want
November 10, 2009 by ian
- Access to real, accurate, useful, transparent query data.
- For all snake oil sellers to shag off.
- For all people who say all SEO is snake oil to shag off.
- A Google webmaster tools API that actually lets me read data.
- A real competitor to Google. Not that I don't like Google, but c'mon.
- PageRank forever erased from the Google Toolbar.
- The phrase 'link exchange' forever erased from our collective intellect.
- A mandatory kidney punch for anyone who says SEO is about optimizing your meta tags. OK, maybe just a sneer. I'm not a violent man.
- A year to complete all the cool tools I've dreamed up, but can never build because of time constraints. Just a year? Pretty please?
- An end to brand favoritism.
- Linking guidelines that don't resemble the legal system in a Franz Kafka novel. I know everyone's just doing their best, I really do. But still...
- A look 10 years into the future. We've come from nothing, essentially, to what we have now in 10 years. Can you imagine what 2019 will be like? I can't wait.
Join the Conversation:
Ryan Waggoner says:
November 10, 2009 21:46
Can you explain more about "Brand favoritism"?
As far as 2019 goes, I fully expect that it'll be more confusing and complex than ever in some ways, with one important exception: creating great content that people want to share will still be the best way to get traffic.
Sad to say but 95% of the bad SEO stuff out there is just ways to try and get around that reality, because creating great content is genuinely difficult. But I guess that's what makes it so valuable :)
Ian
says:
November 11, 2009 07:23
Brand favoritism is the search engines' nasty habit of putting bigger brands higher up in the SERPs, in spite of godawful optimization.
Mike Smith says:
November 11, 2009 07:24
5-7: for sure.
8: yeah, I'd stick with the kidney punch :)
12: I got to agree, it would be awesome to see what life is like 10 years from now.
Patricia Quedar says:
November 11, 2009 08:11
I totally agree with you! especially on points 6 and 8.. this thing about PageRank is really annoying!!
Jon Payne says:
November 12, 2009 03:48
#1 is great... but don't you just love popping in 5 different keywords only to see they each get exactly 2,440 searches a month? That's wonderful fun. Or not. :)