When I put a keyword phrase in the title tag of my page, I’m communicating to the user and to the search engine what my page is about. That doesn’t defeat the search engine’s purpose, it supports its purpose. The only time it would defeat the search engine’s purpose is if I added a keyword phrase to my title tag that lied about what my page is about.

“They need to assume that all content is equal to deliver the best results, so our work creates the need to filter to combat our effect.”

That’s exactly the opposite of what they need to assume. Some content is better than other content, and the search engines need to assume that this is so in order to rank results. A search engine couldn’t rank results if it assumed that all content is equal.

The energy and attention that we put in artificially inflates certain qualities and reduces that qualities true value. The irony is that making too much relevant content is what necessitates action. If every site has identical signal values new signals have to be created to accommodate differentiation.

My goal when I do SEO is to make sure that my pages get found for as many relevant queries as possible. Since the search engine’s goal is presumably to provide relevant results, it seems as if my goals and the search engine’s goals coincide quite nicely.

The only case where I see that statement being correct is if someone is trying to be found for content that isn’t relevant to a search query, which hardly describes the entire industry.

But I agree with Rand that using your target keyword phrase in your title tag is helpful. :)

Anyway, “link baiting” is not search engine optimization and certainly doesn’t bring much to search engine optimization. It’s a traffic building technique that several people have been claiming in recent months doesn’t bring quality traffic or generate many links.

However, Rand is probably better at creating real link bait, whereas I think other people tend to confuse social media site manipulation with link baiting.

If it’s true link bait, all you have to do is create it and people will link to it.

If you use 50 faux personas on social media sites to link to it, it must not be very linkworthy.

So I stand by what I said about the general SEO community burning through “tips, tricks, and techniques” quickly.

Tina Russell