
SEO is bullshit - danw
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/seo-is-bullshit/
======
callmeed
Yet another anti-SEO post from someone with a notion that SEO is a band-aid
for poorly structured pages and that all SEO professionals are charlatans.

Yes, valid/well structured sites give you an SEO head-start, but there's more
to it: \- Properly structured browser titles matter \- The way you write
matters \- Sitemaps matter \- Optimizing Flash-based sites/pages is important
because there are a lot of them \- Links matter ... A LOT

There is a valid need for honest, skilled SEO professionals. The fact that
there are so many bogus ones simply underscores this. Businesses on the web
simply need to be educated on when and how to find a good one, when not to use
one, and what they can DIY.

I'm sorry, but this post doesn't show much "intellectual honesty".

~~~
mrtron
Anything that 'matters' you should be doing anyways for a good user
experience. So explain what this 'optimization' for search engines exactly is?

Titles? That is for the user. Sitemaps? Actually they don't matter as long as
your content is linked to internally. They can be produced trivially anyways
if you really feel the need, but Google finds all my pages. Optimizing flash
pages? That sounds like frowned upon injection. You should not change the way
you write for a search engine. Have anchor text that represents what you are
linking to? Come on, thats how it should be regardless. The best thing you can
have is backlinks - which good content/interesting sites should naturally
develop.

I don't know of a single thing you should do to optimize your site for a
search engine. edit: If you are downmodding me be because this is incorrect,
speak up.

This article is clearly garbage though.

~~~
callmeed
Everything you mention is common-sense and easy to tech-savvy people like us.
Not so much for "Joe the Plumber" (bad joke, I know) who just wants good
search engine placement for his local business. He doesn't know what a "good
user experience" means and he's not going to get it he builds his site using
an off-the-shelf CMS or have his newphew build it.

Do you just not like the term "SEO"? Would you prefer "user experience
consultant"?

My point is, there's a gap that skilled SEO people fill, regardless of
semantics or the notion that optimization is inherent in a properly built
site.

BTW, there's plenty to optimizing Flash sites that don't involve frowned upon
methods. Yes, much of it is also about user experience.

~~~
davidw
My last boss wasn't technical, and he had all the "SEO" down that he needed -
to the point that he had a string of SEO "experts" come in to see if they
could do anything, and he figured out that he knew as much or more than them.

I have to come down on the side of "SEO is bullshit", even though the article
in question was mostly content free. It's not that there's nothing to "SEO",
just that there's not enough to justify it being a "career". The whole thing
smells fishy to me, and I think that the market for it will eventually implode
due to all the snake oil being sold. That or the structure will change
radically as people who are honest and know their stuff start charging in a
different way - perhaps something like getting money for training rather than
working directly on a site.

Genuine designers/UI/user experience people are a different breed entirely,
who know about making a site nice for people. That's not what "SEO
Professionals" sell, though, generally.

Another few disjointed thoughts from my flu-ridden head:

* In terms of comparative advantage, if the thing you are relatively best at is attempting to fiddle with search engine results, as compared to, say, programming, or user interface work, or design work... what's that say?

* ... I had another one a few minutes ago, but my headache got the better of me. Oh, here it is: can't most of this stuff be automated somehow? That would be a legitimate business, creating tools that help people get things right.

~~~
gaius
The only way to get higher search rankings _without_ improving the overall
quality of the site is by gaming the search engine's algorithms. If someone is
selling that service, overall site improement, they are not doing SEO but
traditional design and HCI work. And if they are getting better search
rankings without making the site better for users, then they are selling snake
oil.

------
webwright
What an utter waste of space (other than, perhaps, as a conversation
starter?).

SEO means lots of things to lots of people, and certainly big slices of it are
crap.

Here are a few bits of SEO that I'd defy anyone to call bullshit:

1) Unique and descriptive title tags, so that results in Google are findable
and make sense when they are found (title tags are used for the "blue link"
part of the SERP).

2) Meta descriptions in the event that Google doesn't use bits of the content
(not uncommon) to describe to the searcher what's on the other side of your
link (this is the 155 or so characters of black text under the link)

3) Keyword research to understand how your customers look for you-- so you can
use words that they search for when you have that choice to make. Is your
ecommerce site selling "shoes" or "footwear"? "Steaks" or "meat"?

4) Backlinks. Sorry, but this is the currency of the web. If you aren't in the
business of trying to be link-worthy and encouraging folks to link to you,
you'll fall behind those who are.

5) Eschewing ajaxy guitar solos so that your content is consumable by search
spiders.

~~~
liamQ
this IS bullshit - those 5 things you can do without paying so-called SEO
Consultants

~~~
fallentimes
Tony, please correct me if I'm wrong - but I think he was just advocating some
simple best practices that improve SERP rankings NOT paying SEO consultants.

~~~
webwright
True 'nuff. And the OP was not attacking SEO consultants-- he was attacking
SEO.

------
dandelany
This is dumb, and essentially the same conversation that was had a week ago.
I'll repeat what I said then:

A job is anything someone will pay you to do, and as long as there are
companies that will pay employees to help them achieve better results on
Google, SEO is and will remain a job.

From the [original] article: "Anybody today can achieve excellent search
engine ranking for his own blog or website in his sparetime (sic)"

True. Anyone can also be a great cook and keep a house clean in their spare
time, but that doesn't mean chefs and housekeepers don't have "real jobs."

I'll agree that there are a lot of overpaid SEO "consultants" who do nothing
more than add META tags and ALT attributes and get paid $100+/hr to jerk off
the rest of the time. However, speaking as an ex-employee of a company who has
3 results on Google's first page for "health insurance," there are legitimate
companies out there who would drown if they didn't have SEO experts working
full-time doing A/B split tests and careful traffic analysis on a daily basis.

~~~
davidw
> working full-time doing A/B split tests and careful traffic analysis on a
> daily basis.

If I did that kind of thing - actual work, I think I'd find a different thing
to call myself to differentiate myself from the snake oil salesmen.

Still though, even that kind of thing strikes me as kind of "zero-sum"-ish...
not really adding a lot of value to the world at large. Tournaments (search
engine rankings in this case) are zero-sum, aren't they? Not that that's a
reason it's "bullshit", but not high on my list of "people making the world a
better place" either.

------
fallentimes
"User experience > SEO" -Dustin Curtis

Many of the SEO best practices can be implemented without taking away from the
user experience. However, once the SEO crap starts taking away from the user
experience...Stop.

~~~
nanijoe
Maybe User experience > SEO, but your users have to find you first right?

~~~
fallentimes
Read the second part.

And they have to come back.

------
showerst
I hesitate to wade into this, especially this late to the party, but what the
heck...

I think a major fallacy of the crowd around here is to see SEO as primarily
just code/content optimization. Good HTML, page structure, and tagging is a
bit of an art, but business as usual to any top flight developer.

The elephant in the room with SEO is paid links. You may have a wonderful
validating, user friendly page, but if your competition has 1000 backlink lead
on you, you'll never see the top SERP spot for big keywords. Viral content can
certainly help, but the unpredictable nature (esp of the links) tends to keep
it in second place.

I think most programmers consider paid links 'beneath' them, and most
marketers don't understand it (and technically it's grounds for a google ban,
but that's only in blatant cases in my experience), but in reality:

1) Identifying proper backlink candidates, in your niche, and tracking contact
info down

2) Crafting a non-spammy pitch, and following up on it

3) Making a deal, optimizing the link, and keeping it up to date

is not only a skill set to be mastered, it's a full time job for any site of
large size.

Of course throwing down a technically sound site with good content is job #1
for any of us, but the idea that that alone will get you traffic, especially
if your idea isn't novel/brilliant, is awfully optimistic. We all want to be
Twitter, but somebody out there is getting rich selling wrenches, and the
publicity/viral opportunities take real work to master.

Finally, many of the services good SEOs offer like advanced site analytics,
integration with PPC campaigns, etc, can be major ROI gainers. They're not
necessarily SEO, but they tend to fall under that community's expertise.

 _whew_ All that said, I too believe that 80% of the SEO experts out there are
hawking snake oil, or black hat google-bomb of the month stuff that will have
negative repercussions, but the idea that the whole industry is bunk comes
from a large number of people that either all have a brilliant, novel idea, or
are missing a serious ROI opportunity.

------
noodle
SEO isn't bullshit. however, it is only a tool in a toolbox.

too many SEO firms are selling turd polish.

~~~
mike_branski
I couldn't agree with you more.

A lot of SEO can be done as you're building a site, but there are certain
aspects to be made aware of. Unfortunately, too many companies sell these BS
packages and belittle true SEO, instead of delivering actual results.

He'd also have more of a leg to stand on if he had given some _reasons_ to
back his statements.

------
brm
What this should say, is that SEO as an INDUSTRY is bullshit, proper search
engine optimization should just be taken into account as you build whatever
you're putting on the web. SEO is a feature not an app in startup terms

------
rationalbeaver
I was once involved in an SEO/PPC pitch for a major pizza company (by major I
mean one of the top 3 players). One of the issues they wanted addressed was
their ranking for the term 'pizza'. This is not something you'd think would be
an issue for a company like this, but they weren't showing up on the first
page of results.

We suggested that they might want to include the word 'pizza' somewhere on
their homepage. That's right. The word pizza wasn't in the title, the meta-
tags, the alt-tags, the body copy- it wasn't anywhere on the page. Apparently,
that little tidbit had gotten lost among all the priorities of Branding,
Marketing, Messaging, Promotions, etc., etc.

As soon as they added the word pizza into their title tag, they rocketed to
the top of the results. Was that value worth paying for? Of course. Was the
solution totally obvious? It should have been, but in case after case we find
that, especially with larger/older companies, it's not.

IMO, SEO is completely natural at the one-man-sized-business level. Like most
things, it gets increasingly complicated as you scale up.

~~~
bena
Soooo, your client was Papa John's?

~~~
rationalbeaver
Close! But nope.

------
jdg
Yawn. Haven't we had this conversation before?

------
jwesley
If you think SEO is bullshit, you are probably isolated in web-app-make-
believe-land and think the only way to build an internet business is coding an
ajax heavy service, getting viral growth, and being acquired.

This is not the way most internet businesses operate. Most depend on search
engines to deliver prospective buyers to their site.

If you think SEO is easy, or completely self explanatory, you have clearly
never tried to get a site ranked for a semi-competitive keyword. The vast
amounts money associate with commercial search terms makes ranking highly
competitive and the constant updates to Google's algorithm make it a
constantly moving target.

Maybe all this anti-SEO sentiment stems from jealousy. Good SEO sites can make
millions and have a much higher probability of success (compared to web apps)
when orchestrated by an experienced SEO.

~~~
axod
I think you're being harsh there. SEO is a byproduct of creating a good
website/webapp.

Think about your users first, and they will link to you. You'll get inbound
links. Make your site easy to use and navigate, and it'll be search engine
friendly. It's far more useful to spend time making a good product, than
trying to game the search engines.

------
wmeredith
SEO is _mostly_ cleaning up after lazy developers or WYSWIG site builders who
didn't write standards compliant, accessible, lean code and didn't know
anything about information architecture. I know because I do it every day.

Search is how most people find most things online, period. Designing a website
with such a contempt for SEO is a recipe for disaster. Yes, some websites
don't need SEO or SEM, because they're naturally viral or sticky. Some
products also don't need any marketing to catch on. In both cases, this is the
exception and not the rule.

(SEO is also spending a large amount of your time defending your reputation
against something that was left behind for you by snake-oil salesmen.)

------
jolly
Just for the argument. Here is a SEO case study and how backlink can help you.

[http://blog.ask2link.com/case-study-advertisers-get-great-
re...](http://blog.ask2link.com/case-study-advertisers-get-great-results-with-
ask2link-text-links)

~~~
fallentimes
Interesting, but isn't this more "marketing" than "case study"?

------
jasonlbaptiste
This post is bullshit.

SEO, just like anything by itself, is not an answer. Simple logical way to
look at this:

1) You need more customers, visitors, users,etc. 2) Google often drives them
to you. The higher you are, the more of them you see. 3) You apply SEO tactics
to increase ranking 4) More people come, you've achieved your goals.

Now, doing this alone doesnt mean anything:

a) if your product sucks, you can be number one on google. odds are, you still
wont go anywhere. b) if your support sucks, the people you convery will leave.
c) if you cant sell, these people will leave after talking to you.

Hope this makes sense, just giving a balanced opinion.

------
trickjarrett
SEO in its most puerile form of purely gaming the system is indeed BS.

But SEO is also about making your website as friendly as possible for search
engines and improving your linking for users while also helping with the
search engines. It's about developing your links from other sites and helping
get your site placed in front of as many eyes as possible.

Sure a great product or service will rise to the top. But for those who aren't
the best, SEO is a tool that they can utilize.

------
unalone
For people who want a more detailed follow-up:
<http://www.contrast.ie/blog/seo-is-still-bullshit/>

------
ErrantX
BAD SEO is bullshit.

Well thought out SEO as part of a larger scale site impact consideration is
AWESOME :D

~~~
ErrantX
:( I thought that was a succint evaluation....

There are plenty of bad SEO firms out there who have no clue about what they
are doing (and often do more harm than good to a site). Also SEO is seen as a
fix-all solution - which it really isn't.

But SEO practices are an essential part of any website design, refresh or
update.

At the end of the day it's just a buzzword that creates a market for selling
their knowledge (knowt wrong with that of course!)

------
jcapote
It's retarded posts like these that make me with HN had downmods...

------
kajecounterhack
Lol all this, and we all ask one question in return:

why?

------
lutorm
What's SEO?

------
jmtame
What a shortsighted, lame argument. It's like taking anything you disagree
with and then comparing it to a bunch of arbitrary truths in life.

Look at this article and replace "SEO" with any other word that you disagree
with.

For entertainment, just replace "SEO" with "McCain."

