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SEO makes it harder for people to find useful information on the web instead of what someone spent time and money to "optimize" for Google. Developers know thi

SEO makes it harder for people to find useful information on the web instead of what someone spent time and money to "optimize" for Google. Developers know this, and so generally dislike SEO.

modoc 16y ago
Bad SEO does that. Good SEO makes it easier for people to find the information they were looking for. It's a race.
- mquander 16y ago
  But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. Bad SEO (gaming the system) is the hard part, and I have to imagine it's mostly the part people are willing to pay a lot of money for.
  - patio11 16y ago
    But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often This is sort of like saying "good programming is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often", and since programming is a solved problem, anybody willing to pay a lot of money for programmers is clearly getting something hinky done. Programming is not a solved problem. Neither is marketing. SEO exists at the intersection of programming and marketing. Every site and every business brings their own unique challenges to the mix, and they're not all addressable with "Slap some alt tags on those images and you're good to go", any more than you can solve any programming problem with "Rewrite it... with more AJAX!" SEO for many startups will involve, among other considerations, "How do we convince our users to create? How do we convince our users to share?" Those are core product/marketing questions for many startups, but they're equally core to the SEO strategy, and they're tricky to get right. For that sort of startup, you could imagine someone looking over their widget's viral activity with the amount of intensity that Zynga spends on its viral channels, because sharing via the widget creates several types of value for the company (via direct traffic, branding, and ranking effects).
    - divinewrite 16y ago
      GREAT reply, patio11. It's not just a question of good versus bad SEO. Within each 'colour', there's a vast range of techniques. Not everyone knows about them, and certainly not everyone can implement them. More importantly, the things that really sets a talented ethical SEO apart from an inept ethical one are creativity and business smarts. Just like any marketing campaign, an effective, sustainable SEO campaign requires a deep understanding of the client's business needs and market.
    - anthonyb 16y ago
      Good programming is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. At least, if you want to ship your product. Also, answering questions as far as getting your users to create and share is largely a UI/product issue, nothing to do with SEO. I think the main issue is that most developers/business owners have seen SEO companies charge enormous sums for adding very little value, or using dubious ethical means such as link farming, keyword stuffing, invisible keywords and so on. It's going to take a long time for all of that to wear off.
    - netcan 16y ago
      I don't want to take this analogy too far but.. In some ways it is similar to a lawyer or accountant. A lot of the time, especially with small common issues, the answer is standard and simple and you could have just looked it up yourself. A lot of sites actually just need to pick some decent keywords to target and write titles for the page. Sometimes, you want a professional to tell you that even though it is mostly just standard stuff because otherwise you don't know if you could be saving tax by doing something else. Sometimes things are complicated and the difference between a creative (which usually also mean experienced) consultant helps. BTW, that doesn't mean rely on professionals and don't learn it yourself. Learning a bit of law or accounting might also be a good idea. Certain types of creative solutions are only really going to come from you. Some solutions are best engineered in from the beginning. EG, you might want a lawyer on the founding team of a music sharing startup.
  - randfish 16y ago
    Working in the SEO world for a long time on a huge number and variety of projects, I'd have to say that despite my respect for the people who visit and comment here, this comment is entirely false. Bad SEO is easy, good SEO is hard. Just like anything else in life; nothing worth having comes easy.
    - billswift 16y ago
      You are (purposely?) mis-stating what he claimed: He wrote "good SEO" meaning ethical or non-sleazy and "bad SEO (gaming the system)" as sleazy SEO. Not your re-defining them as "good" as "effective" and "bad" as "incompetent".
  - modoc 16y ago
    In my experience with several large-ish companies (ymmv with smaller shops), they paid outside SEO firms good money to provide "good" SEO and tell them what we (the technical folks) already knew. However, the value was that then we were given budget/time to go make the changes/cleanup the pages/etc... And it gave weight to our suggesting that maybe not all the content should only be showing in fancy JS driven modals, etc... They also had some metrics and advice regarding the most useful keywords/content we should be utilizing (helpful stuff) that the internal marketing folks had no ideas on. Thankfully, I haven't worked at a company that hired a "bad" SEO firm, yet.
webwright 16y ago
Really? So, say tomorrow you build a better Wikipedia. How long before you're on page 1 of ANYTHING? If you're 1000% better than Wikipedia, maybe it's only 12 months. But if you're only 15% better than Wikipedia... It could be years or never. SEO allows small/smart companies to compete against established behemoths in search engine results. Your statement is true of ALL marketing and ALL sales. The truth is that marketing and sales efforts are a success multiplier to the quality of your product. Yes, that means that good companies can get beaten by crappy companies who out-execute them in the arena of sales and marketing. You can ignore sales and marketing in the hopes that your product is SO much better than the competition that it will win anyway... But that's almost never the case (note the $ that Apple spends on marketing, bizdev, and branding).
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I think people are reacting to the game theoretical aspects of this. Sure, if one firm uses SEO, it gives them a chance to get a leg up on the competition and put their product out in front of people. But if everybody uses SEO, nobody else is better off than they were before, and yet a huge amount of time has been wasted on SEO. And unfortunately everyone will be using SEO, because they'll get left behind if they don't. Many developers are developers precisely because they didn't want to get into these zero-sum games. Think of the other professions where smart, logical, creative people can end up. Finance, law, and advertising. Most of these pay better than software engineering does. If we wanted to go into them, we would've. But it's precisely the constructive, innovative part of software development that appeals to us. The question was "Why do developers not want to go into SEO?", not "Why do salespeople and marketers not want to get into SEO?" It's because the question is already self-selecting for the people that don't want to do that. If we liked gaming the system for personal gain, we'd work for Goldman Sachs.
  - webwright 16y ago
    I think you're absolutely right. I'd say that's the difference between a developer and a hacker-founder. Look at the YC App-- YC optimizes for people who game systems because BUSINESS rewards people who game systems. If you leave low-hanging opportunity on the table because your software business won't lower itself to things like sales, marketing, SEO, PR, etc-- you're doing a disservice to your investors and your co-founders.
DLarsen 16y ago
Not all areas of content attract SEO manipulators. In my current position, I see a lot of content that would benefit greatly from basic SEO since the competition for search engine ranking in this domain is relatively mild. My biggest gripe as a developer is having to deal with the perceptions of non-technical folks. I still frequently encounter folks who hope SEO can magically redeem their lousy-to-mediocre website. I always encourage them to first build content worth finding before going nuts worrying about how many people will find it.

SEO makes it harder for people to find useful information on the web instead of what someone spent time and money to "optimize" for Google. Developers know this, and so generally dislike SEO.

modoc 16y ago

Bad SEO does that. Good SEO makes it easier for people to find the information they were looking for. It's a race.

mquander 16y ago
But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. Bad SEO (gaming the system) is the hard part, and I have to imagine it's mostly the part people are willing to pay a lot of money for.
- patio11 16y ago
  But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often This is sort of like saying "good programming is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often", and since programming is a solved problem, anybody willing to pay a lot of money for programmers is clearly getting something hinky done. Programming is not a solved problem. Neither is marketing. SEO exists at the intersection of programming and marketing. Every site and every business brings their own unique challenges to the mix, and they're not all addressable with "Slap some alt tags on those images and you're good to go", any more than you can solve any programming problem with "Rewrite it... with more AJAX!" SEO for many startups will involve, among other considerations, "How do we convince our users to create? How do we convince our users to share?" Those are core product/marketing questions for many startups, but they're equally core to the SEO strategy, and they're tricky to get right. For that sort of startup, you could imagine someone looking over their widget's viral activity with the amount of intensity that Zynga spends on its viral channels, because sharing via the widget creates several types of value for the company (via direct traffic, branding, and ranking effects).
  - divinewrite 16y ago
    GREAT reply, patio11. It's not just a question of good versus bad SEO. Within each 'colour', there's a vast range of techniques. Not everyone knows about them, and certainly not everyone can implement them. More importantly, the things that really sets a talented ethical SEO apart from an inept ethical one are creativity and business smarts. Just like any marketing campaign, an effective, sustainable SEO campaign requires a deep understanding of the client's business needs and market.
  - anthonyb 16y ago
    Good programming is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. At least, if you want to ship your product. Also, answering questions as far as getting your users to create and share is largely a UI/product issue, nothing to do with SEO. I think the main issue is that most developers/business owners have seen SEO companies charge enormous sums for adding very little value, or using dubious ethical means such as link farming, keyword stuffing, invisible keywords and so on. It's going to take a long time for all of that to wear off.
  - netcan 16y ago
    I don't want to take this analogy too far but.. In some ways it is similar to a lawyer or accountant. A lot of the time, especially with small common issues, the answer is standard and simple and you could have just looked it up yourself. A lot of sites actually just need to pick some decent keywords to target and write titles for the page. Sometimes, you want a professional to tell you that even though it is mostly just standard stuff because otherwise you don't know if you could be saving tax by doing something else. Sometimes things are complicated and the difference between a creative (which usually also mean experienced) consultant helps. BTW, that doesn't mean rely on professionals and don't learn it yourself. Learning a bit of law or accounting might also be a good idea. Certain types of creative solutions are only really going to come from you. Some solutions are best engineered in from the beginning. EG, you might want a lawyer on the founding team of a music sharing startup.
- randfish 16y ago
  Working in the SEO world for a long time on a huge number and variety of projects, I'd have to say that despite my respect for the people who visit and comment here, this comment is entirely false. Bad SEO is easy, good SEO is hard. Just like anything else in life; nothing worth having comes easy.
  - billswift 16y ago
    You are (purposely?) mis-stating what he claimed: He wrote "good SEO" meaning ethical or non-sleazy and "bad SEO (gaming the system)" as sleazy SEO. Not your re-defining them as "good" as "effective" and "bad" as "incompetent".
- modoc 16y ago
  In my experience with several large-ish companies (ymmv with smaller shops), they paid outside SEO firms good money to provide "good" SEO and tell them what we (the technical folks) already knew. However, the value was that then we were given budget/time to go make the changes/cleanup the pages/etc... And it gave weight to our suggesting that maybe not all the content should only be showing in fancy JS driven modals, etc... They also had some metrics and advice regarding the most useful keywords/content we should be utilizing (helpful stuff) that the internal marketing folks had no ideas on. Thankfully, I haven't worked at a company that hired a "bad" SEO firm, yet.

webwright 16y ago

Really? So, say tomorrow you build a better Wikipedia. How long before you're on page 1 of ANYTHING? If you're 1000% better than Wikipedia, maybe it's only 12 months. But if you're only 15% better than Wikipedia... It could be years or never. SEO allows small/smart companies to compete against established behemoths in search engine results. Your statement is true of ALL marketing and ALL sales. The truth is that marketing and sales efforts are a success multiplier to the quality of your product. Yes, that means that good companies can get beaten by crappy companies who out-execute them in the arena of sales and marketing. You can ignore sales and marketing in the hopes that your product is SO much better than the competition that it will win anyway... But that's almost never the case (note the $ that Apple spends on marketing, bizdev, and branding).

nostrademons 16y ago
I think people are reacting to the game theoretical aspects of this. Sure, if one firm uses SEO, it gives them a chance to get a leg up on the competition and put their product out in front of people. But if everybody uses SEO, nobody else is better off than they were before, and yet a huge amount of time has been wasted on SEO. And unfortunately everyone will be using SEO, because they'll get left behind if they don't. Many developers are developers precisely because they didn't want to get into these zero-sum games. Think of the other professions where smart, logical, creative people can end up. Finance, law, and advertising. Most of these pay better than software engineering does. If we wanted to go into them, we would've. But it's precisely the constructive, innovative part of software development that appeals to us. The question was "Why do developers not want to go into SEO?", not "Why do salespeople and marketers not want to get into SEO?" It's because the question is already self-selecting for the people that don't want to do that. If we liked gaming the system for personal gain, we'd work for Goldman Sachs.
- webwright 16y ago
  I think you're absolutely right. I'd say that's the difference between a developer and a hacker-founder. Look at the YC App-- YC optimizes for people who game systems because BUSINESS rewards people who game systems. If you leave low-hanging opportunity on the table because your software business won't lower itself to things like sales, marketing, SEO, PR, etc-- you're doing a disservice to your investors and your co-founders.

DLarsen 16y ago

Not all areas of content attract SEO manipulators. In my current position, I see a lot of content that would benefit greatly from basic SEO since the competition for search engine ranking in this domain is relatively mild. My biggest gripe as a developer is having to deal with the perceptions of non-technical folks. I still frequently encounter folks who hope SEO can magically redeem their lousy-to-mediocre website. I always encourage them to first build content worth finding before going nuts worrying about how many people will find it.