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I could find out for free how to do a lot of things. Make my own whisky, fix my car. However I'm not a distiller or a mechanic so I leave those tasks to peopl

I could find out for free how to do a lot of things. Make my own whisky, fix my car. However I'm not a distiller or a mechanic so I leave those tasks to people who know what to do without having to read a manual every time. Someone who also knows what not to waste time on(meta tags for example which for some reason still seem to feature high in all entry level seo step lists).

brown9-2 17y ago
Doesn't your last point about meta tags prove that SEO shouldn't be placed in the same category of "experts" as mechanics and distillers?
- sanswork 17y ago
  I don't see how. My last point was that a lot of the information on this stuff is not helpful. Just like a expert mechanic can listen to an engine and hear problems without having to check every part an expert at SEO can decide which changes are most important without having to go through every checklist and step out there.
tumult 17y ago
No, it's Google's job to help people find things. That's what it does. SEO exists to game Google into placing your site higher in results. I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google within hours if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO.
- sanswork 17y ago
  And it is SEOs job to help Google find things. I'm not going to deny blackhat SEO exists like I wouldn't deny blackhat developers exist but you can't tarnish the whole profession because of your ignorance of the actual role of a whitehat SEO professional. It shows up in hours on github because github has a lot of authority. It shows up high on google because I'm guessing you're searching for pretty long keyword strings. So if your ok with people finding your code when they search for "ruby gem for mysql connections" thats cool you don't need to hire an SEO professional. Hell you never need to hire an SEO professional. But if you want someone who knows more about it to help you with making sure Google and yahoo and bing can find your information then you can. I really don't get the hatred on this site for SEO in general. I'm not an SEO professional myself but I know quite a few and now a days most people in the profession that are active and well known are all above board. They help you structure your information to make it easier to find and help you build relationships with other sources of traffic. Hardly evil stuff.
- motherwell 17y ago
  In the same way that marketing exists to game people into buying things? A one word argument, "game", lacks substance. The goal of SEO, good SEO, is to build a site that caters to both users AND SEs. After all, users make you money, and ignoring one over the other is silly. A classic example is AJAX. SEs can't pass it, and neither cana lot of users. A "good" designer may know this and buid a site to cater for these users, but how? Will it use forms (invisible to SEs) or an alternate structure? Sure, a great web designer may "get" all this, but can you be sure? Given that SEs provide the largest, ongoing form of traffic online, why take the risk? "I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google within hours if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO." Fallacy of dosage: ranking for a service with little competition is pretty easy. Capturing the whole raft of traffic available on a topic: difficult!!

brown9-2 17y ago

Doesn't your last point about meta tags prove that SEO shouldn't be placed in the same category of "experts" as mechanics and distillers?

sanswork 17y ago
I don't see how. My last point was that a lot of the information on this stuff is not helpful. Just like a expert mechanic can listen to an engine and hear problems without having to check every part an expert at SEO can decide which changes are most important without having to go through every checklist and step out there.

tumult 17y ago

No, it's Google's job to help people find things. That's what it does. SEO exists to game Google into placing your site higher in results. I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google within hours if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO.

sanswork 17y ago
And it is SEOs job to help Google find things. I'm not going to deny blackhat SEO exists like I wouldn't deny blackhat developers exist but you can't tarnish the whole profession because of your ignorance of the actual role of a whitehat SEO professional. It shows up in hours on github because github has a lot of authority. It shows up high on google because I'm guessing you're searching for pretty long keyword strings. So if your ok with people finding your code when they search for "ruby gem for mysql connections" thats cool you don't need to hire an SEO professional. Hell you never need to hire an SEO professional. But if you want someone who knows more about it to help you with making sure Google and yahoo and bing can find your information then you can. I really don't get the hatred on this site for SEO in general. I'm not an SEO professional myself but I know quite a few and now a days most people in the profession that are active and well known are all above board. They help you structure your information to make it easier to find and help you build relationships with other sources of traffic. Hardly evil stuff.
motherwell 17y ago
In the same way that marketing exists to game people into buying things? A one word argument, "game", lacks substance. The goal of SEO, good SEO, is to build a site that caters to both users AND SEs. After all, users make you money, and ignoring one over the other is silly. A classic example is AJAX. SEs can't pass it, and neither cana lot of users. A "good" designer may know this and buid a site to cater for these users, but how? Will it use forms (invisible to SEs) or an alternate structure? Sure, a great web designer may "get" all this, but can you be sure? Given that SEs provide the largest, ongoing form of traffic online, why take the risk? "I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google within hours if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO." Fallacy of dosage: ranking for a service with little competition is pretty easy. Capturing the whole raft of traffic available on a topic: difficult!!