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Am i the only one who thinks that SEO is more a plague then it is a real profession? Google making it hard for SEO is exactly the right thing to do. Making it i

by buster 14y ago

Am i the only one who thinks that SEO is more a plague then it is a real profession? Google making it hard for SEO is exactly the right thing to do. Making it impossible for SEO should be the ultimate _goal_ of a good search engine.

Caligula 14y ago
My opinion of google improved reading this article. I equate the quality of Google's search as the inverse of the happiness of "seo gurus".
- explicitlyme 14y ago
  Sometimes, that statement is fairly accurate, then in other times when google boosts its own commercial properties to increase their ad revenue, it wouldn't be.
Osmium 14y ago
I think this is a common view, and I share it: I really don't like SEO. The thing is, SEO does provide real value, but it provides value because the system is broken: your website should reach the top of search results based on merit, not based on some arcane black magic. I think it's somewhat akin to lobbyists: I don't blame them for making money off and taking advantage off the political system, and they certainly provide something of value to their customers, but I dislike the fact that they can exist at all. But that's not the lobbyist's fault, it's the system. In this respect, I applaud Google for keeping people on their toes and making SEO less relevant. That's their job after all.
- dpeck 14y ago
  In short, don't hate the player hate the game? I understand where you're coming from, but that's crap. Just because there is always someone willing to do ethically questionable things that fall within the letter of the law, doesn't mean that those types of people shouldn't be treated with disdain by the rest of us.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    don't hate the player hate the game? Why choose? I'm already somewhat of a misanthrope, but the fact that SEO exists just makes me hate everyone and everything.
- bones6 14y ago
  I disagree. Let me quote Cutts: "I’ve said it before, but SEO is in many ways about change. The best SEOs recognize, adapt, and even flourish when changes happen." There's a saying that goes something like "A computer will only do what you tell it to do". That said, merit is important, but you have to show Google merit with code. That's by on page content and structure and appropriate tags, etc or by off-page, with links. That's it. There's no other way. There's no black magic. Cutts speaks to SEOs but he calls he channel GoogleWebmasterHelp . That's the clue to website owners, but many times the owner is not a webmaster. So they can hire an SEO that knows a bit about ranking websites, or they can hire a web programmer. Not all web programmers have ideas on what to do. They likely will want to make a new site for the customer that is not even necessarily any better than the existing, as far as Google cares. That got a bit preachy but it's not as black and white as you make it out to be. There's a niche for SEOs that involves improving existing websites that a web programmer might not be suited for, might not want to do, or might be too expensive for.
illuminate 14y ago
The story really didn't dissuade me from thinking about the profession of SEO as the sorts of people looking for easy money at the expense of others. I'm sure MLM operators and spammers didn't do well in school, were hostile to the people around them and love flashy clothes, big checks, and fast cars as well.
homosaur 14y ago
Depends what you mean. If you mean people whose goal it is to help site owners learn how to structure their data intelligently for dissection by machines, people who make companies think very hard about their content, people who encourage high-quality crosslinks and meta tags, and people who generally help sites manage data, then no, SEOs are great. They help users and companies alike. If you mean the dirtball black hats, then yes, they are a parasite that deserves no mercy and should be eliminated at all costs.
- chc 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey seems relevant.
  - buster 14y ago
    Yes, SEO has clearly a negative notion for me. To deceive the search engine and make it less useful for me is practically the job description of SEO, in my opinion. For all the "no-evil" stuff, it's just plainly the work of a website programmer. Properly formatting your HTML, making it accessible and easily "readable" for machines is part of your job when you create a website. Same for creating a robots.txt. If you say many people don't know how to do that, then those people are just bad in creating websites and they need help of a professional website programmer/creator. No need for a term like SEO here.
    - bones6 14y ago
      I can see what you are saying but I see SEO a bit differently than being simply good web programming. It's about content organization as well as information flow. Some of the time that comes naturally to a webmaster, but there are so many content rich sites with poor web programming and poor organization. SEO is a niche side of web programming that fixes that specific problem. The skills of an SEO sometimes don't even cross the mind of a "good" web programmer because of the unknown unknowns factor. They just haven't thought about even attempting to rank a website on Google. They aren't investigating the competition to see where they fit, and how to be better.
zalew 14y ago
> Am i the only one who thinks that SEO is more a plague then it is a real profession? luckily, no. http://powazek.com/posts/2090 http://powazek.com/posts/2090

by buster 14y ago

Caligula 14y ago

My opinion of google improved reading this article. I equate the quality of Google's search as the inverse of the happiness of "seo gurus".

explicitlyme 14y ago
Sometimes, that statement is fairly accurate, then in other times when google boosts its own commercial properties to increase their ad revenue, it wouldn't be.

Osmium 14y ago

I think this is a common view, and I share it: I really don't like SEO. The thing is, SEO does provide real value, but it provides value because the system is broken: your website should reach the top of search results based on merit, not based on some arcane black magic. I think it's somewhat akin to lobbyists: I don't blame them for making money off and taking advantage off the political system, and they certainly provide something of value to their customers, but I dislike the fact that they can exist at all. But that's not the lobbyist's fault, it's the system. In this respect, I applaud Google for keeping people on their toes and making SEO less relevant. That's their job after all.

dpeck 14y ago
In short, don't hate the player hate the game? I understand where you're coming from, but that's crap. Just because there is always someone willing to do ethically questionable things that fall within the letter of the law, doesn't mean that those types of people shouldn't be treated with disdain by the rest of us.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  don't hate the player hate the game? Why choose? I'm already somewhat of a misanthrope, but the fact that SEO exists just makes me hate everyone and everything.
bones6 14y ago
I disagree. Let me quote Cutts: "I’ve said it before, but SEO is in many ways about change. The best SEOs recognize, adapt, and even flourish when changes happen." There's a saying that goes something like "A computer will only do what you tell it to do". That said, merit is important, but you have to show Google merit with code. That's by on page content and structure and appropriate tags, etc or by off-page, with links. That's it. There's no other way. There's no black magic. Cutts speaks to SEOs but he calls he channel GoogleWebmasterHelp . That's the clue to website owners, but many times the owner is not a webmaster. So they can hire an SEO that knows a bit about ranking websites, or they can hire a web programmer. Not all web programmers have ideas on what to do. They likely will want to make a new site for the customer that is not even necessarily any better than the existing, as far as Google cares. That got a bit preachy but it's not as black and white as you make it out to be. There's a niche for SEOs that involves improving existing websites that a web programmer might not be suited for, might not want to do, or might be too expensive for.

illuminate 14y ago

The story really didn't dissuade me from thinking about the profession of SEO as the sorts of people looking for easy money at the expense of others. I'm sure MLM operators and spammers didn't do well in school, were hostile to the people around them and love flashy clothes, big checks, and fast cars as well.

homosaur 14y ago

Depends what you mean. If you mean people whose goal it is to help site owners learn how to structure their data intelligently for dissection by machines, people who make companies think very hard about their content, people who encourage high-quality crosslinks and meta tags, and people who generally help sites manage data, then no, SEOs are great. They help users and companies alike. If you mean the dirtball black hats, then yes, they are a parasite that deserves no mercy and should be eliminated at all costs.

chc 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey seems relevant.
- buster 14y ago
  Yes, SEO has clearly a negative notion for me. To deceive the search engine and make it less useful for me is practically the job description of SEO, in my opinion. For all the "no-evil" stuff, it's just plainly the work of a website programmer. Properly formatting your HTML, making it accessible and easily "readable" for machines is part of your job when you create a website. Same for creating a robots.txt. If you say many people don't know how to do that, then those people are just bad in creating websites and they need help of a professional website programmer/creator. No need for a term like SEO here.
  - bones6 14y ago
    I can see what you are saying but I see SEO a bit differently than being simply good web programming. It's about content organization as well as information flow. Some of the time that comes naturally to a webmaster, but there are so many content rich sites with poor web programming and poor organization. SEO is a niche side of web programming that fixes that specific problem. The skills of an SEO sometimes don't even cross the mind of a "good" web programmer because of the unknown unknowns factor. They just haven't thought about even attempting to rank a website on Google. They aren't investigating the competition to see where they fit, and how to be better.

zalew 14y ago

> Am i the only one who thinks that SEO is more a plague then it is a real profession? luckily, no. http://powazek.com/posts/2090 http://powazek.com/posts/2090