Fuzzy SEO = An instance where I have read completely differing views from people within the search marketing industry. This page will be edited over time  depending on examples that I see on my travels.

I would like to get across that this page is in no way personal to any examples that I use, in many cases the examples shown are by SEO’s with a far greater knowledge than myself. It is only to show the differing views that people have within the SEO industry.

As far as I can see this is down to 3 reasons:

1. People have conflicting views by working in different markets with a variety of clients.
2. People are purposely trying to give out false or conflicting information in order to confuse.
3. People don’t have a clue whether a certain technique works or not but have given an opinion.

Exact Match Domains:

Dr. Peter J. Meyers – Stop buying exact-match domains just to rank for long-tail keywords. One or two are fine, and domain keywords still matter, but Google is turning down the volume, and the days where you could register 100 domains and link them all to yourself are gone. You’re wasting time and money on a tactic that will eventually crash and burn. – http://edgyseo.com/seo/seo-tips-2012/ – January 2nd 2012

Phil Nottingham – Exact match domains became more powerful – Despite what i think will be a general consensus that the quality of Google SERPs improved dramatically over the past year, exact match domain names seemed to be ranking better and appearing in greater number, even for extremely competitive keywords – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/search-industry-surprises-of-2011 – Jan 1st 2012

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Social Media & SEO:

Rand Fishkin – (in regards to 2011 prediction) Social search will rise = -1 – This guess was also quite nearly off the mark, but Google’s move into social saved it, at least partially. Google+ has added a lot more depth of social elements and signals for the engine, and for anyone logged into their Google/Gmail/Google+ account, the prevalence of social results is quite remarkable – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/8-predictions-for-seo-in-2012 – Jan 2nd 2012

Rand Fishkin – (in regards to 2012 prediction) – SEO Without Social Media Will Become a Relic of the Past – Already, we’re seeing SEO and social media marketing become intrinsically intertwined, but in 2012, I believe we’ll see SEO without social fade, just as SEO without link building did from 1999-2000. It’s not just that social signals are making their way into the ranking algorithms (in both direct and indirect ways), but also that social is becoming the dominant method of both sharing and discovery for web users. The link graph will remain useful for years to come, but the social “sharegraph” is chipping away at its ability to illustrate what’s new, interesting, useful, relevant and high quality. – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/8-predictions-for-seo-in-2012 – Jan 2nd 2012