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Do questions not related directly to system administration, but rather web site administration, SEO, etc. belong on Server Fault?

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7 Answers

up vote 16 down vote

YES to website admin, YES to SEO administration, NO to SEO techniques

Website and SEO administration is fine, but SEO techniques are generally a marketing topic, not an IT professional's topic.

Since this is a poll type question, here's the waffling YES/MAYBE answer. Please only add a new answer if you have something very different from the existing answers, otherwise add comments below the YES or NO answer for minor nits and vote for the one that most closely represents your views.

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I felt there needed to be a distinction between administering SEO and the techniques. I completely agree that SEO techniques do not really have relevance on SF, but I feel that administering your site in regards to SEO is indeed something that does belong here. – Joseph May 8 '09 at 17:40
Quite frankly some SEO techniques might be interesting topics if the only thing discussed pertains to how the website is configured/developed/administrated, but it certainly wouldn't cover general SEO techniques, spamming, link bait, etc - which is the bread and butter of typical SEO. Keep this site for server configuration, setup, and administration issues, and as SEO requires these professional activities, great, but any SEO topic that doesn't relate to those specific activities, then go to an SEO forum - there are many. – Pollyanna May 8 '09 at 17:43
@Adam thanks, I wanted to try and go along with your theme as best I could =) – Joseph May 8 '09 at 17:46
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up vote 7 down vote

YES to website admin, no to any SEO

Website administration is fine, but SEO is generally a marketing topic, not an IT professional's topic.

Since this is a poll type question, here's the waffling YES answer. Please only add a new answer if you have something very different from YES or NO, otherwise add comments below the YES or NO answer for minor nits.

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up vote 5 down vote

If your question is related to how your website interacts with the server, then yes - so web server configuration, mail servers, configuration settings for your site, even so far as problems accessing the site.

If your question becomes about the site itself, its content, presentation, or the code in it, and I think SEO falls into this bracket, then no, serverfault is not the place for that.

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up vote 2 down vote

Website administration, I'd say yes, that's also sysadmin stuff (Apache, proxies, etc.). SEO, not at all.

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Why wouldn't SEO belong? As a sysadmin, don't you have to register sites with search engines, submit sitemaps, etc? – Joseph May 8 '09 at 17:10
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As a sysadmin, I have never had to do that. That is generally the job of the site developer, or the person responsible for the sites content – Sam♦ May 8 '09 at 17:12
And SEO is much more than just registering sites and sitemaps. It has a lot more to do with the site's content and marketing. – Ivan May 8 '09 at 17:16
I'm not speaking to the content of the site, that is solely the developer's responsiblity, but I do disagree with the idea that the developer is responsible for administering the web site once it's reached the publishing stage. At that point the developer should be hands off, which isn't what is being advocated here. – Joseph May 8 '09 at 17:34
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up vote 2 down vote

YES

Website administration and SEO should both be accepted.

Since this is a poll type question, here's the YES answer. Please only add a new answer if you have something very different from YES or NO, otherwise add comments below the YES or NO answer for minor nits.

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up vote 1 down vote

NO

Both website and SEO topics should go to other (probably better) forums.

Since this is a poll type question, here's the NO answer. Please only add a new answer if you have something very different from YES or NO, otherwise add comments below the YES or NO answer for minor nits.

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up vote 1 down vote

SEO is a type of fraud. If SEO questions are allowed, then questions about how to hack should be allowed.

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SEO is not fraud, it's called "organic traffic building". You can acquire good SEO by having well-formed hyperlinks and good and relevant content. Half of it is the exact science of cleaning up broken links, remembering to add meta tags, etc. The other half is the art of being relevant to your niche and giving people reason to link to you. Little of this (but some of it nonetheless) relates to Server Vault. However, none of this has to do with hacking. What you refer to is considered SEO abuse. By the way, I am a developer for a very popular SEO tool. We don't support nor deal with hackers. – stimpy77 Aug 13 '10 at 4:09
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