Here's why I loathe SEO (the term and the industry): It shouldn't exist. There's "good" and "bad" SEO. "Bad" SEO is snake oil, it's cheating, it's gaming the s

Here's why I loathe SEO (the term and the industry): It shouldn't exist. There's "good" and "bad" SEO. "Bad" SEO is snake oil, it's cheating, it's gaming the system for commercial purposes. It's a race to the bottom to see who can screw up their UX and the Internet in general the most to get the most clicks from Google. It's evil. "Good" SEO, though, is nothing but common sense. Search engines emphasise good structure, semantics, accessibility and practises, and this is what "good" SEO takes advantage of. But good developers know if you're doing your job in the first place, there's no need for "good" SEO. That's why we don't like SEO; it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If you can somehow stealthily introduce good practises in the guise of SEO, then I guess that's good, but we cringe at the thought of having to label it like that to get acceptance.