SEO's Bad Rap
Posted by sarah on February 12, 2007 at 02:48 PM
From Jason Calcanis' ranting about how SEO is "bullsh-t" to members spewing vitriolic comments at digg.com to SEO is Not Rocket Science t-shirts, SEO really seems to be getting a bad rap lately.
The problem is that search engine optimization - along with much of all online marketing - has become equated with spam.
Spam in traditional advertising is nothing new. Junk mail. Telemarketers. Billboards. You name it, companies are always trying to shove themselves in our face, and humanity is forever resenting it and gobbling it all up at the same time. In the long run, as much as we hate to admit it, we're sold. Even the too-cool-for-you brands with the chip on their shoulder - they're still gaming us just as much as Clairol Herbal Essences is.
The same thing goes for online marketing. It can be meaningful, it can win you over, or it can really suck. I detest MFA (Made For AdSense) sites, I abhor email spam, and I resent landing pages (either organic or paid) that have such a poor user experience that I trip over my keyboard trying to hit the back button.
But I like a well-optimized site. And if a page is able to position well in SERPs, providing quality relevant content that leads me that much closer to what I'm searching for, then I'm one happy user. And I can guarantee you that there's one satisfied business owner behind that site as well.
So is all SEO spam? Of course not, but a lot of the confusion also seems to be a direct result of the fact that no one can agree on what SEO really is.
Even Jason Calcanis says that there are some companies who do "white hat" SEO, but he doesn't consider that SEO at all because what they're really doing is "solid web design".
Our Oneupweb glossary provides a thorough definition of search engine optimization.
I personally would like to add to that by saying that to us here at Oneupweb, SEO means helping you connect with the people who are searching for you online - not forcing yourself in front of those who aren't. It means enriching a site with quality content and facilitating a design that is accessible to search engine web crawlers as well as users (you'll find that the two practically go hand-in-hand).
That's the difference between a mountain vista and a billboard, and that's the difference between SEO and spam.
Comments (2)
Posted on February 13, 2007 09:11 AM
"solid web design" - that is the problem. Most in-house web designers and/or web design companies don't understand SEO to save their soul - or care about it. Why? Their clients don't know about it either - they only want a visually appealing product because they don't know any better. I get most my clients from a web design company in town, and these are NEWLY designed sites! They don't know the value of title tags, meta tags, header tags, alt tags, don't use CSS, choose terrible anchor text, etc. The list goes on. Now, if every design company knew this stuff, SEO would go hand-in-hand with grass roots development. But it has taken me quite some time to built the tool set I have, and until everyone else out there that builds website takes that same time to learn, SEO will be alive and well.
Posted on February 13, 2007 01:26 AM
Right on Sarah... Not that I agree with Calcanis but if there weren't so many "firms" out there building sites the exact same way they were building them 6 years ago, we wouldn't need SEOs to go in and clean things up. In that respect, much of SEO is just solid web design I guess. Personally, I will gladly do my part to help the SEO cause...BS or not.