

SEO FAQ (or why you shouldn't hire an SEO "expert") - mcargian
http://powazek.com/posts/2101

======
3dFlatLander
_But I use SEO for good.

Then you’re called a Web Developer. Good web development includes using proper
formatting (like putting headlines in H tags) and understanding how the web
works, search engines included. Valid code also has the side-effect of making
your pages more accessible for your users, which is the point. Making your
pages more accessible to robots is for robots._

I've been trying to put that idea into words for a while. I visit a lot of
forums and freelance sites to prowl for good work, and I see many discussions
about page rank, inbound links, three-way links, hosting pages on different
IP's to get more PR juice for all of them, etc etc.

It just seems like it's a backwards way of going about things, like building a
super highway to a place you hope there may be a city in the future.

Good development of a good service and spreading the word about it is what's
needed to get customers.

Just an aside...

 _Did you just quit smoking or something?

Yes._

I just quit cold turkey.. it sucks. Wish I'd never smoked in the first place.

~~~
motherwell
"Good development of a good service and spreading the word about it is what's
needed to get customers."

That's a touch simplistic. Spread the word where? To whom? How?

The issue of getting customers is so complicated that we are all here,
reading, learning and coming up with ideas to be a success.

What is "needed" to get customers varies by market, by demographic, by
expected return, by quality of product etc etc.

To be a success, a site needs to serve a customer base and then MARKET TO THAT
GROUP. SEO may be imperfect, but what SE have is every demographic,
identifying themselves clearly, by the keywords they use. Missing out on that
traffic is just crazy.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
" _Good development of a good service and spreading the word about it is
what's needed to get customers._ "

SEO is the catch all term for "spreading the word" on the internet (I do some
SEO) - we don't limit it to search engine baiting (!) there is a lot more to
it.

One can see things very simply - a bit of widget bait, an active forum, a good
product, these can all create great inflows of PR and visitors. Then of course
you've to optimise your landing pages, ...

SEO is built into the sites I design/write but there's always more one can do.
Good inlinks go a long way.

If you build a store away from civilisation and just wait for customers - you
may have an awesome enough product and enough capital to sit it out. But,
sending a few flyers, issuing a press release, having promotions, a TV advert,
some on-street ads, etc. are all going to help.

Ditto building a website - if you build it and your product is awesome I think
it'll get out there eventually (probably as a copycat site by someone who pays
for some SEO!?!) but using some PPC, gathering good inlinks, being part of an
authority link community, getting blog coverage, getting diggs, etc. are all
going to help.

Good web dev does include _some_ SEO. But SEO is too big a field for a web
developer to do properly by themselves, a web dev team would have an SEO. Like
expecting builders to have painter-decorators, if you want _trompe-loeil_
rather than a slap of magnolia then you're going to need a dedicated expert.

------
motherwell
Bah! What dross.

This is the same BS that gets spewed about everything "If you have a great
product, you don't need marketing", "If you're a great writer, you don't need
an editor" etc etc

A web designer / developer is someone who builds web pages and/or sites. They
can be good designers, bad, indifferent. They can know some SEO, none, or all
of it. They can focus on server code, front end code or both, again to varying
degrees.

But SEO != web designer is simple to prove: if I rank 10000000 for a term, the
web designer still did his job :)

Whether this mythical "you" needs to hire an SEO expert or not depends on so
many things.

And lastly this comment is just bizarre: "Social media is rapidly becoming
much more important than Google." Seriously? Really? The $$ made from a Social
Media click > an SEO click? Seriously dude, you need to get you some Google
analytics and an ecommerce site.

Social Media is to SEO what a park is to a mall. People may prefer parks, they
may prefer having fun, but when they want to buy, they go to the mall, and
most smart businesses would surely rather be situated in the mall.

~~~
gaius
The point is that there are only two ways to "optimize" your site: 1) hire a
better designer and 2) game the ranking algorithms. The latter is what SEO
"experts" do. From the search engine's perspective, they want their ranking to
accurately match which site is most useful and relevant to their user. The
ideal search engine, once things like location are discounted (a brilliantly
designed site offering a useful service too far away from me is a bad search
result) _is_ going to rank on how good the site actually is.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So is, say, a better onsite link structure, an optimised description on each
page, SERP indented listing, ... (1) or (2).

I suppose you wouldn't hire a UI expert for a GUI program either?

 _a brilliantly designed site offering a useful service too far away from me
is a bad search result_

How far is too far? Depends what you're buying right? That's a complex algo.
How about if you happen to be travelling there anyway? How does the SE know?
What if it's the only place in your country that sells it, would you go
further now?

------
JCThoughtscream
I recall some time ago that the concept of SEM/SEO-based marketing had
actually become somewhat unnecessary - the major search engines (ie: Google)
were working to deliberately curtail the demand for such services in the first
place.

Say, by developing tech that actually gives you what you were searching for,
and not what you were lead into reading via various search "hacks."

I dunno. Seems cheaper, to me, to get a decent web dev at market rates than a
verbose "SEO expert" at inflated worth.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
And how do Google curtail demand? By adding complexity to the algos that
compile the SERPs ... and what do we need SEOs for? To decompile the
complexity in the algos used by the SEs. Google add brand weightings, my ranks
go down and sales are through the floor, do I say "oh well I'm not a brand
I'll just quit" or "how do I show Google I'm still worth ranking"?

When I go to a restaurant I like to have the barman to make my drinks and the
to chef cook for me. The barman is cheaper(!) but he tends to cook worse than
the chef and his repertoire sucks.

~~~
JCThoughtscream
Except that, if we take your restaurant staff analogy seriously, you're
actually bribing the bartender to get the chef to put your product on the
menu.

Depending on the product or service your offering, the traditional (if time-
consuming) direct outreach to the intended audience may still be better than
hiring the services of an SEO "expert."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
_the traditional (if time-consuming) direct outreach to the intended audience
may still be better_

If by better you mean something involving a smaller ROI, then I guess you're
right.

------
davidw
I'm not really in favor of SEO in that it seems to be a zero-sum proposition
(if ten companies hire ten SEO "experts" to get the number one position...
nine of them aren't going to get what they wanted). Also, it's not about
building new stuff, creating new wealth, but more about (in the non-evil
cases) repackaging something that already exists. That's not really my cup of
tea.

~~~
patio11
That depends entirely on what you're doing. If you're competing for #1 on
[credit cards], yep, its a zero-sum game and most people will lose. SEO is
about so much more than just winning on one term, though. (Do we say marketing
is a zero-sum game because There Can Be Only One, e.g., pizza shop for any
given delivery?)

Concrete examples:

1) Over 25% of searches are globally unique, and the results for these are
often suboptimal. (Google has a very good handle on what [credit cards] there
are, but does not necessarily know a [good class activity for Halloween].)
Proper SEO for your site to target those things is mostly just about getting
links and writing your onpage content better, and creates value for the
searcher.

2) Content creation is a core SEO strategy and is a source of new wealth.

This was the #1 page for [biology bingo] three years ago:

<http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/blankbingo.html>

(Its a blank bingo template which says "biology" on it. Yaaaay.)

This is the #1 page for [biology bingo] for most searchers now:

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/bingo-cards/biology>

There are 43 activities there created by a teacher to mesh well with common
lesson plans (people really like the Parts of A Cell one for whatever reason),
and an option to tweak any of them to exactly what you need for your lesson.
Those 43 activities have helped teach well in excess of 80,000 students. And
they all exist because I saw SEO value in creating new stuff.

~~~
davidw
> 2) Content creation is a core SEO strategy and is a source of new wealth.

Could be, but are "SEO experts" actually _doing_ the content creation?

You should not be paying someone more than 5$ an hour to tell you to "create
good stuff". Like the article says, most of this isn't hard to figure out. Did
you have to hire an SEO expert to get your biology page built?

Also, marketing is about much more than just 'selling stuff'. It's about
identifying potential customers, understanding their needs, and shaping the
direction of development to meet those needs.

~~~
patio11
I did not hire an SEO expert for the same reason I did not hire a programmer.

(More broadly I think that most people should not hire "SEO experts" because
any one you are able to afford is less competent than you need, but that is
another discussion altogether.)

There are many people around these parts who think SEO is useless, dirty,
dirty-and-useless, or totally obvious. Those people could benefit enormously
from broadening their perspectives a little bit.

For example: I have over 700 bingo activities. I suppose they could have been
posted chronologically, like a blog, or alphabetically, like a directory. They
aren't -- they're "siloed" into categories, with each category being
thematically coherent, and category pages linking to related activities and
activities linking to related categories. That is sort of the tip of the
information architecture iceberg for my site. It has clear usability and SEO
benefits. (If you're looking at Parts of a Cell bingo right now, you're rather
more likely to be interested in other Biology bingo activities than Japanese
culture bingo.) You might think this is obvious, and indeed, it is that
special kind of obvious that no one in my niche bothers to do.

There is also an algorithm for promotion of popular content. (If you took a
quick gander around my site right now, you'd notice nearly every page links to
a Halloween bingo activity. That is not an accident.) Does "build good stuff"
imply to you "You should probably make the link graph on your website
dynamically change in response to market conditions and analytics data,
because that will maximize conversions and also deliver great SEO benefits"?
No, thats just solid SEO -- a bit of marketing, a bit of usability, a bit of
tech, and a bit understanding how to play an important game whose umpire makes
unquestionable calls according to a rulebook only they can read.

~~~
davidw
Everything you are pointing out as "SEO" seems to either not really be the
same thing the "SEO experts" are selling or actually is nearly "totally
obvious" to anyone in the web business. I think the only thing I've ever
really seen that struck me as "real work that is non obvious" connected with
SEO was A/B testing.

Once again, trotting out Halloween specials in October is not something you
need to hire an SEO expert for.

> unquestionable calls according to a rulebook only they can read.

That's something else that bugs me about the whole "SEO expert" business.
They're on the same playing field as you are, and since Google changes and
adapts as well, "years of experience" don't really count for a lot.

No one is questioning the value of paying some attention to this stuff - you
ignore it at your own peril if you operate on the web. What people find
dubious are the "SEO experts" who sell that and only that. If someone's a good
web developer, they're going to be able to tell you the same stuff anyway, and
probably add more value elsewhere to boot. And all of this commentary is
ignoring the genuinely shady operators who have also taken to using the "SEO"
moniker, who further muddy the waters.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
_Once again, trotting out Halloween specials in October is not something you
need to hire an SEO expert for._

If you're trotting them out in October you're about five years too late if
you're aiming at the top spot on Google. You need those pages to gather
authority; part of that is from longevity, partly from past inlinks you've
gathered, your linkbait for halloween last year ..... Reuse a page created for
"Halloween 2009" from several years ago - which pages looks most
authoritative, the one created in Oct 2009 about the subject along with 2
Million others or the one that is 5 years old and has established inlinks
perhaps from .edu sites, perhaps one hop from pages with millions of
"halloween" inlinks. Oh but your competitor has "halloween2009.com", oh well.

A/B testing is easier than knowing what to test especially if you need to keep
ahead of competitors _and_ ontrack with the changes to the search, discovery
and marketing environment online.

I don't find the answers to questions like "how much should I spend on getting
a higher listing, I'm top 10 now, what's the ROI", "how can I get my
competitors indented SERPs links removed", "how can I get a second top 10
listing", "does PR scuplting work", "should I tweet to improve my blog's
visibility, what sales return will I expect", "how can I optimise my landing
page", "will a shallower link structure increase CTR, revenue?", "will that
outlink hurt me? help?", "what's the most important ranking factor?" etc. that
obvious.

I must be a klutz.

Oh and do you think years of experience as a tailor will help one make good
suits? Every customer is a different size ...

~~~
davidw
Your honor, I present exhibit A, and rest my case.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If one were selling halloween crap to simply try and exploit a calendar date I
don't think one need be too high and mighty about optimising ones search
position.

There is more than one company selling stuff for halloween. The top spot on
Google gets 85% of the entire SE traffic (say). Remind me why one guy selling
crappy plastic tridents, witch masks and pumpkin shaped buckets deserves to
get all that traffic and the other guys don't?

------
dkokelley
I think people are splitting hairs between SEO and SEM. SEO is what good web
developers should have done. It's proper formatting, crawler accessibility, et
cetera.

SEM, on the other hand, is link-building, keyword targeting, PPC campaigns,
_quality content_ , et cetera. Basically, anything designed to manipulate
behavior towards visiting your site.

SEO is perfectly understandable as a legitimate business provided it is
services defined as above. It's just about making sure that the technical
aspects of your site are in order. Still, I believe that this segment is
shrinking, as search engines are getting better at understanding the sites and
developers are getting better at optimizing their sites in the first place.

SEM is where the debate should be taking place. For lack of a better
definition, SEM is about 'tricking' people into visiting your site, or
otherwise 'gaming' the system. Those words might not be the best, but I hope
their point is taken. (Note: 'Trick' could be read 'manipulate' or
'encourage'.) Quality content 'tricks' people into visiting your site. Link-
bait titles 'trick' people into clicking. Back-links 'trick' Google into
ranking you higher, which in turn 'tricks' others into clicking on your
results more.

Point of order: I am not a professional web developer, and I don't sell or
know personally anyone who sells any sort of SEO/SEM services.

~~~
ivankirigin
Huh? SEM can be as simple as running an ad campaign. People search stuff, and
click on your ad instead of a result. Is that a trick?

If you lack a better definition, try "sponsored demand fulfillment". It isn't
an industry that started with the internet.

~~~
dkokelley
I'm not sure what your point is. 'Trick' could be read as manipulation. An ad
campaign could be considered a form of manipulation. The advertiser is
manipulating the behavior of the viewer by convincing them to take action.
It's driving users to your site because of something off-site.

With my post above I really just wanted to say that the broad term 'SEO' would
be better divided based on the type of work done. SE Optimization is on-site.
SE Marketing is off-site. I think the current definitions are too broad.

------
jacquesm
> This article is linkbait/SEO.

> Just because something attracts a lot of links doesn’t mean it was linkbait.
> This is my personal site, where I talk

> about things I’m passionate about. That’s all I did here.

Shades of Bill Hicks there.

~~~
Steve0
Bill Hicks on Marketing: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo>

------
pbhjpbhj
_You’re just looking for work/promotion/love. Please, God, no. I’ve got two
clients that keep me busy full time right now, and I work on Fray when I
should be sleeping. I have no reason to promote this site. I make no money
from it. And I’m married, thanks._

I like that bit, especially with the links to "fray" a couple, diverse anchors
and then the big landing page button "buy or subscribe" on the Fray.com page.
I don't believe he's naive enough to think this is not gaining him rankings
for Fray.

From what I can see he's saying we don't need SEOs, we need webdesigners to do
SEO and SEOs should do webdesign. I guess he likes one person to do everything
for him rather than have experts do what they are expert at.

SEO is self selective, want to be top of Google? Google for "SEO", the top guy
knows how to get the top position better than anyone else! For me in the UK
that guy is below Wikipedia (surprise!) but has Wikipedia style site-spotlight
links and so he's up to date too ... wonder what black hat stuff he's doing
...

~~~
tptacek
You could make that same comment about his commercial links to _anything_ he
says. Derek is pretty famous. I don't think he needs to stir up controversy to
get attention. But even if he wasn't, this comment is almost content-free.

------
sekizaru
The argument that web designers, web developers etc. should understand
everything related to their work is fine at a small scale eg. creating a
personal blog/small website. But it's a stretch to say that nobody should
focus on just one area.

To be an expert at something normally requires that you specialize in that
area. For a start-up you need to be a jack-of-all-trades but as a company
grows it makes sense to have staff that specialize in different areas.

My background is in pay-per-click marketing and a lot of companies do very
well managing their own Adwords campaigns. But for large companies or small
companies that don't want to deal with learning a new skill, the cost of
hiring/outsourcing to someone who specializes in that is justified by the time
saved and the improved ROI. This applies to SEO as well but also to any area
where the work involved has a significant impact on the business.

~~~
blasdel
Except that you're a drop-in replacement for an existing middleman -- the
broadcast/print media ad-agency. Companies weren't really doing the low-level
management of their ad campaigns before.

SEO is a bit more of a novelty, especially since the 'SEO professionals'
aren't middlemen between you and Google.

~~~
sekizaru
Point taken. Perhaps a more appropriate analogy is the PR industry. I know the
PR industry gets almost as much criticism as SEO. But the argument that we
shouldn't use specialists in whatever field because we could do it ourselves
is very damaging. Here's another example. If I run a coffee shop and 50% of my
customers are walk-ins from the street, it makes sense for me to hire a sign-
writer to attract more people. Even though my coffee might be the same as
always I get more customers because people can find my shop. I could paint the
sign myself but hiring an expert to do it will likely pay for itself. If I run
a website and 50% of my customers come from search engines then it makes sense
to invest an appropriate amount in making sure those customers can find me. If
I have a small site, that investment might be of my time or I could outsource
it. So the important thing is that we need to invest in what brings new
customers. If you think that an SEO professional doesn't deliver enough value
that's a perfectly valid decision but I think it's a big mistake to extend
this to not investing in SEO itself.

------
Tichy
Bullshit. I have an astrology site (moon calendar) that is now not even among
the first 10 pages of Google search results for the main keyword. Believe me
when I say that most of the results that show up before my site are decidedly
_not_ better than my moon calendar. SEO has nothing to do with it?

I did all the web development things properly (certainly all the headings and
what not - I even have RSS feeds and a Twitter bot, and of course sitemap and
so on). It didn't help.

To get an impression (all in German): this is my site <http://mondhandy.de>
and this is a typical search result from the Google top 10:
<http://www.bunkahle.com/astrolog/mocal.cgi>

Edit: I even have a widget that people can include on their blogs, though
admittedly it could be prettier.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I looked for 10seconds tops at the two pages .. first thing, they
"mondkalendar" have keywords in title first, you have your domain, switch that
around. Yes it matters. Yes I'm sure there are more "obvious" things too.

<http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors?2009>
[http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-
shee...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet)

Yes I do SEO, no I don't work for SEOmoz.

~~~
Tichy
Thanks - I don't know if I should invest more energy in that site, but maybe
I'll try the title rewrite :-(

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think that alone is worth too much, those links should see you right
for 95% of what's possible.

~~~
Tichy
Hm, didn't find much else that I had missed, but thanks.

I must admit to one mistake, though: at one time I entered the site in some
web catalogs. I guess I'll try to get it out there again, which might become
difficult.

------
YorkSEO
As an SEO "expert" I take exception to this post, Yes there are a lot of bad
companies out there selling snake oil, just like there are in most (all?)
industries. That does not mean that all SEO companies are evil and it
certainly doesn't mean that all SEO techniques don't work. Lots of people
spout the "content is king" mantra, and while i'd agree content is the most
important part of a website, you could have the best content in the world, but
without SEO, how are people going to find your content and link to it? Unlike
the author, most people can't afford to wait 10 years for their site to become
popular. The fact is, to get to the top of the results pages you generally
need a lot of links, and link building is HARD. This is why every major
company has an in house SEO team or hires an agency - because SEO is one of
the most effective ways to increase your ROI.

~~~
brown9-2
"you could have the best content in the world, but without SEO, how are people
going to find your content and link to it?"

By following common sense, good design, and doing some research and reading
about Google's suggestions to web developers.

You shouldn't have to hire someone to tell you what you can find out for free.

Also, you registered just to make this post?

~~~
sanswork
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).

~~~
tumult
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
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.

------
timf
Interesting tidbit on the flickr page he links to: _"Google can customize your
search results based on location, recent search activity and/or other, logged
out or not.... Adding &pws=0 to your query turns of personalization."_

------
rmason
I worked in another industry that got regulated and watched the cycle.

It's clear to me that if you do SEO you will eventually need to be certified
by a neutral body.

You will notice regardless of industry that it's only 5% of the bad actors
(black hats) that cause 95% of the problems.

A certification process forces these guys to clean up their act or move on.
Social network consulting anyone ;<)?

------
qeorge
If you don't like paying your mechanic, you can learn to fix your own car.
That doesn't mean he/she is ripping you off.

~~~
jacquesm
But that's not how it is now, isn't it.

An seo is not a mechanic that fixes your car, an seo is a person that will
lead lots of people to your store (so they say) because everybody else is also
hiring hustlers (so they say).

They don't fix anything that was broken before they arrived on the scene, but
once one person starts misbehaving in this way everybody else that's purely in
it for the money will have to follow suit.

~~~
qeorge
But you're not understanding SEO, are you.

I do SEO consulting in addition to web design and development consulting. And
most of what I do in this area is exactly that: fixing what's broken.

Almost all sites we encounter have one or more of the following problems:

    
    
      - Content that is unreachable by crawlers
      - Improperly used HTML tags, or lack of semantic tags in general
      - Poorly designed, or non-existant, information architecture
      - Lack of meta descriptions, alternate text, etc
    

And almost all sites we review could benefit from:

    
    
      - Keyword research and targeting
      - Load time optimization
      - Internal linking optimization
      - Content creation
      - Link building
    

How exactly you equate that with hustling is beyond me.

~~~
jacquesm
It's hustling because you can only have 10 sites in the first 10 spots for any
keyword or combination.

By selling services to party 'A' you can temporarily upset the balance, which
then immediately gives you a new customer in parties B through to infinity
because they all would like to be in that 'top' spot.

So, the 'scarcity' of the positions on the first few pages for any given set
of keywords are what drives that whole market with all of these clueless
companies shelling out tons of money for something that only benefits the SEO
and the temporary holders of those 10 slots.

I'ts like with lawyers, stoke the fight, everybody loses but the lawyers win.

It's a classical example of an arms race.

btw, the funniest thing you can do when an SEO approaches you is ask them if
they have a website, then type 'SEO services' in to google and see if they
come up in the first 10 results, if not (and that's a 99% chance) enjoy
hearing them squirming to explain why not.

~~~
ellyagg
While I'm fairly sympathetic to your overall perspective, your last point is
simply not persuasive at all. As a former SEO, I'd have had no problem
comfortably answering that question, and any squirming would be entirely in
your own smug imagination.

First, 'SEO services' isn't self-evidently the most important keyword phrase
in the industry. Why pick that one? That's just a gotcha.

Second, SEO is extremely competitive. The agencies on the first page for high
profile SEO-related keyword phrases charge at least several hundreds of
dollars per hour in consulting fees. Most businesses can't afford that.

Third, incumbency is a huge advantage for placement in competitive SERPs, both
by itself and because it implies the accumulation of important ranking factors
you can't just gin up at a moment's notice. (Don't read too much into that
though. There are plenty of opportunities for less competitive phrases and a
long campaign can build up to more competitive terms.)

~~~
jacquesm
> Why pick that one? That's just a gotcha.

Because it is _the_ set of keywords that any SEO would like to be found under.

> Second, SEO is extremely competitive.

ANY business is extremely competitive, not just SEO, why do you think SEO is
some kind of magical special case ?

> Third, incumbency is a huge advantage for placement in competitive SERPs,
> both by itself and because it implies the accumulation of important ranking
> factors you can't just gin up at a moment's notice.

That we agree on for the most part. I've seen relative newcomers do some
amazing stuff, without SEO simply by getting their users energized. There
isn't any SEO strategy that will work as well for you as a couple of hundred
thousand uses creating buzz for you.

> There are plenty of opportunities for less competitive phrases

That's the low hanging fruit though.

> a long campaign can build up to more competitive terms.

And that is where we agree again, but most SEOs are people making very large
promises that they find hard to fulfill. The whole industry has an extremely
bad reputation because of this, and it's not just a 'few bad apples' either.

I'm sure there are 'good' SEOs, just like there are 'good' lawyers, but for
the most part I wouldn't want to be associated with any of that stuff.

Search engines are for the most part doing everything they can to look at the
web through an SEO neutral lens.

Fixing stuff that is obviously broken is fine with me, but don't get me
started on 'link building'.

Gaming the system is where I draw the line and there isn't an SEO out there
that wouldn't game the system given half a chance.

------
tpiddy
i did audience acquisition at a large established media company and in the
span of about a year helped increase their traffic from natural(as opposed to
paid) search over 90%.

now i'm a web analyst at a large retail site and at least 1/8 of orders is
directly attributed to natural search traffic on a last touch and many more on
a less direct attribution window.

if you don't think natural search is a marketing channel that needs attention,
great- it'll leave more opportunity for the the rest of us.

------
skuvnar
"And after less than 24 hours, my post about SEO is the ninth Google result
for 'SEO'."

Is it just me, but when I did a google search for 'SEO', it seems that his
position is ~40...

~~~
chaosmachine
Google pushes new results to the top, then they slowly fall off. In certain
cases, anyway.

------
redorb
I have to say it, this guy is a smug asshole. Right or wrong about seo; his
writing is smug.

