A WebmasterWorld thread makes a basic and obvious point that many newbies miss. SEO is not just about technical implementation. You can place your title tags in the right place, have a nice site architecture, get links and so on but still not rank well if your site is not useful.
The thread creator said it nicely:
People come here with a problem about traffic dropping and people try to help by asking technical questions about the website in question.I often wonder what is the business model of the site that dropped. Because Google appears to be grading business models. Example. I have a prospective client who wants me to fix his traffic loss. He has 20 domains each one for each brand. No real info on any of his sites and he is selling some information on each brand. I can see some value to his service but I am sure Google considers it a spam service. 20 sites all the same linked selling the same product.
No amount of tweaking to this site or that site is going to fix his problem in my opinion.
In fact, today, someone forwarded me a site that fit this example. It was built fine, but it had almost no useful content. Nothing was there and the guy was looking for technical help on how to fix it.
To fix it, you need content - content that gives people a reason to want to go to the site, read it and recommend it to others. If the site has nothing to offer, why would it rank well even if it is technically SEO friendly?
So many new SEOs, new webmasters and new site owners just don't get this. It is a shame.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
