4 ms·

digital snake-oil, idiots will always fall for it.

ceejayoz 9y ago
Don't confuse idiocy and being non-technical. SEO's confusing enough to many of us, let alone someone who's running a little family diner or something.
- wanda 9y ago
  I think the point is that search-engine optimisation itself is a farce, perpetuated by confidence tricksters—some “SEO experts” do not know that they are conning people, charging people for useless reports, yesterday’s advice and for services that clients could just as easily handle themselves. Obviously no offence should be intended towards victims of SEO cons, but the fact is that it’s a con, and that’s probably why it seems confusing to people without technical knowledge. I have been a web developer for nearly a decade and I still struggle to understand what value an SEO expert/agency is supposed to add. Anyone honest in the field will say that if your website loads reasonably quickly, works on mobile phones and desktop, and comprises useful, quality, regularly-added content—pertinent to things that people actually search for—your website is more or less optimised for search and the rest requires time for search engines to crawl your website and for people to search for it, talk about it, etc. This is the sort of thing that necessitates a good web developer/team and a good writer, and maybe someone to manage social media and press and stuff like that. You don’t need to pay money for some “SEO experts” to give you outdated advice and charge you monthly to provide automatically generated reports from services you could use yourself, for less money, and which provide almost pointless “ranking” measurements. SEO activities of any value include reaching out to high-traffic, trustworthy websites to feature your site (this is PR) and to log into Google Webmaster Tools/Search Console to disavow any “spammy” links to your site (this is something anyone could do).
  - mitchdoogle 9y ago
    When I think of SEO, I think of doing a lot of the work you just described. Performance optimization, responsiveness, and especially content are things that SEOs advise on or even do the work directly. You even mention SEO activities of value such as reaching out to trustworthy sites for promotion, or using webmaster tools. These are the exact things that SEOs do - either you've had a bad experience or you're just misinformed. And to say that anyone could do this for stuff is moot - anyone can do anything if they have the time to learn and desire to do it. Most clients have neither when it comes to SEO.
    - wanda 9y ago
      "anyone can do anything if they have the time to learn and the desire to do it." Sorry, but that argument doesn't work for SEO in my opinion. It's no big investment of time to learn about SEO, it would take most people a couple of days tops. I've just outlined a fair chunk of it above, as you pointed out. If I can summarise what SEO people do in a paragraph, how does that justify their cost? It's not like they charge $20 a month. Hell, all the information required (these days) is provided freely by Google itself. You can literally download an app which teaches you how to market your business on the web. You say you need the desire to learn SEO. Well, I think any CEO would find a desire to flip through Google Primer and some web pages about mobile-friendliness and content-quality if I told them it would save them thousands of dollars a month. "either you've had a bad experience or you're just misinformed." While I appreciate your condescending tone, I must sadly reveal that I am not "misinformed" about SEO experts and agencies — I speak from experience after having worked alongside some of these magic consultants at a couple of companies where I was a front-end developer. I have sat in on meetings with "SEO experts" and "PPC specialists" with the exact purpose of calling them out on their bullshit, which I did on several occasions, because they were charging the company thousands/tens of thousands to do something that an intern could do, after perhaps a day or two's worth of training, and for less money. And an intern is a much better investment in the long term. Sure, there are some honest SEO guys out there, but my point is that the honest SEO guys are not worth paying to do what your business should have or should be doing already — a good website and producing marketing ammunition, respectively. SEO is something that should be an automated service by now.
franze 9y ago
well, sometimes it's even a more or less sophisticated scam (blaming it on idiots is too short sighted) a simple blueprint of the most common seo scam: 1) sell them something external that does not create additional work for the client and assign value to it i.e.: links, linkbuilding services, tools, ... 2) disable feedack loops (it takes x month until you see an impact, introduce "magic numbers" seo tools) 3) wait & take money (a.k.a. deplete ressources that the client might use for otherwise improvement) 4) trigger value creating project i.e.: better targeted title tags, sitemap.xml, responsive, webperformance, ... 5) see immidiate benefits 6) assign impact to 1) 7) addiction / lock-in cycle completed
- shostack 9y ago
  Except some of those things are legit. It can in fact take multiple months to see real movement in the SERPs. Value is added by fixing tagging and such. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen just like in and industry, but some of these things don't belong on that list.

Don't confuse idiocy and being non-technical. SEO's confusing enough to many of us, let alone someone who's running a little family diner or something.

wanda 9y ago
I think the point is that search-engine optimisation itself is a farce, perpetuated by confidence tricksters—some “SEO experts” do not know that they are conning people, charging people for useless reports, yesterday’s advice and for services that clients could just as easily handle themselves. Obviously no offence should be intended towards victims of SEO cons, but the fact is that it’s a con, and that’s probably why it seems confusing to people without technical knowledge. I have been a web developer for nearly a decade and I still struggle to understand what value an SEO expert/agency is supposed to add. Anyone honest in the field will say that if your website loads reasonably quickly, works on mobile phones and desktop, and comprises useful, quality, regularly-added content—pertinent to things that people actually search for—your website is more or less optimised for search and the rest requires time for search engines to crawl your website and for people to search for it, talk about it, etc. This is the sort of thing that necessitates a good web developer/team and a good writer, and maybe someone to manage social media and press and stuff like that. You don’t need to pay money for some “SEO experts” to give you outdated advice and charge you monthly to provide automatically generated reports from services you could use yourself, for less money, and which provide almost pointless “ranking” measurements. SEO activities of any value include reaching out to high-traffic, trustworthy websites to feature your site (this is PR) and to log into Google Webmaster Tools/Search Console to disavow any “spammy” links to your site (this is something anyone could do).
- mitchdoogle 9y ago
  When I think of SEO, I think of doing a lot of the work you just described. Performance optimization, responsiveness, and especially content are things that SEOs advise on or even do the work directly. You even mention SEO activities of value such as reaching out to trustworthy sites for promotion, or using webmaster tools. These are the exact things that SEOs do - either you've had a bad experience or you're just misinformed. And to say that anyone could do this for stuff is moot - anyone can do anything if they have the time to learn and desire to do it. Most clients have neither when it comes to SEO.
  - wanda 9y ago
    "anyone can do anything if they have the time to learn and the desire to do it." Sorry, but that argument doesn't work for SEO in my opinion. It's no big investment of time to learn about SEO, it would take most people a couple of days tops. I've just outlined a fair chunk of it above, as you pointed out. If I can summarise what SEO people do in a paragraph, how does that justify their cost? It's not like they charge $20 a month. Hell, all the information required (these days) is provided freely by Google itself. You can literally download an app which teaches you how to market your business on the web. You say you need the desire to learn SEO. Well, I think any CEO would find a desire to flip through Google Primer and some web pages about mobile-friendliness and content-quality if I told them it would save them thousands of dollars a month. "either you've had a bad experience or you're just misinformed." While I appreciate your condescending tone, I must sadly reveal that I am not "misinformed" about SEO experts and agencies — I speak from experience after having worked alongside some of these magic consultants at a couple of companies where I was a front-end developer. I have sat in on meetings with "SEO experts" and "PPC specialists" with the exact purpose of calling them out on their bullshit, which I did on several occasions, because they were charging the company thousands/tens of thousands to do something that an intern could do, after perhaps a day or two's worth of training, and for less money. And an intern is a much better investment in the long term. Sure, there are some honest SEO guys out there, but my point is that the honest SEO guys are not worth paying to do what your business should have or should be doing already — a good website and producing marketing ammunition, respectively. SEO is something that should be an automated service by now.

franze 9y ago

well, sometimes it's even a more or less sophisticated scam (blaming it on idiots is too short sighted) a simple blueprint of the most common seo scam: 1) sell them something external that does not create additional work for the client and assign value to it i.e.: links, linkbuilding services, tools, ... 2) disable feedack loops (it takes x month until you see an impact, introduce "magic numbers" seo tools) 3) wait & take money (a.k.a. deplete ressources that the client might use for otherwise improvement) 4) trigger value creating project i.e.: better targeted title tags, sitemap.xml, responsive, webperformance, ... 5) see immidiate benefits 6) assign impact to 1) 7) addiction / lock-in cycle completed

shostack 9y ago
Except some of those things are legit. It can in fact take multiple months to see real movement in the SERPs. Value is added by fixing tagging and such. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen just like in and industry, but some of these things don't belong on that list.