
Why SEO is not a job - nreece
http://dotnetbutchering.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-seo-is-not-job.html
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dandelany
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 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.

~~~
netcan
_"Anybody today can achieve excellent search engine ranking for his own blog
or website in his sparetime"_

That is something that always gets me. How can _easy_ (implied) be a
meaningful term for anything that is competitive. This is not like run a mile
in x minutes (if x is big enough, anyone can do it), This is like run a mile
faster then everyone else. By definition, not everyone can do it.

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streety
"The most sophisticated SEO strategy I've ever heard about is "remember to
provide a back link whenever you put a link on you[sic] website". What's this,
if not a joke."

The joke being that the author feels qualified to make a blog post on a
subject they clearly haven't researched. Even assuming they meant "request a
backlink for every link you put on your site" it's nonsense advice with just
enough truth to it for it to seem credible that the author actually has
received this as advice. It's like a networking consultant advising you to
throw handfuls of your business cards into the crowds at conferences.

The SEO industry has more incompetent individuals than some industries who
claim expert status but we shouldn't tar everyone with the same brush. There
are SEOs out there sufficiently knowledgeable to make a real difference to the
profitability of businesses. As dandelany says, as long as that is true
companies will continue to, happily, pay them.

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sidsavara
This is a terrible article. I completely disagree with the sentiment. As Dan
stated, just because you could do it yourself doesn't mean it's not worth
hiring someone else to do it.

Of course there are simple things that make a difference. Keyword density,
whether you strong/emphasize your keywords, use it in titles, duplicate
content, the type of hierarchy and organization on your site, and of course:
backlinks.

And how about analyzing what keywords are driving traffic to your blog, so you
can see where you rank, and modify your own internal backlinks and perhaps
change the text on the page so that it ranks higher for keywords it already
ranks for?

These are all additional, mundane tasks that do NOT fall in the realm of "just
writing it." So what, if I just write a blog these will all magically take
care of themselves? No, of course not, These are "search engine OPTIMIZATIONS"
because you take the time to review your own work and optimize it.

So, I am in agreement that anybody "could" do it, just like anybody "could" do
their own taxes. Are we going to see H&R Block go down anytime soon? Unlikely.

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tdonia
I've met more than a few fraudulent SEOs, but you cannot support this
generalization merely because their are a few bad apples in the cart. Every
profession has its share. I've also met some invaluable SEOs, especially in
the magazine and publishing businesses, that thrive in large corporations as
the bridge between the editorial staff and the tech team. These people can be
characterized as smart, undervalued and overworked - as they often perform a
largely thankless job that has direct impact on the bottom line. In many
cases, these people are as close to a starter upper that you'll be able to
find in otherwise stagnant labor pools.

~~~
jrockway
_I've also met some invaluable SEOs, especially in the magazine and publishing
businesses, that thrive in large corporations as the bridge between the
editorial staff and the tech team._

Are these people really SEOs, people who optimize only for search engines, or
are they UI designers, who make the site good for its users? If you are making
the content good for humans, then you are not an SEO -- making a good site is
not SEO, it's making a good site. It will probably be good for your search
engine ranking though.

~~~
tdonia
well, in this case i've only met them from my role as a ui designer who's been
called in because of a need for ui design. that said - you're very right -
given the circumstances, they were the closest position to a ui designer that
these companies had. and they do tend to think more about the users than most
other roles. their focus was though was on a traffic funnel with a rhythm
dictated by crawlers, not the all of general interest. in companies with a
strong editorial culture, these people are closer to the literal language of a
site & copywriting than us diagrammers. they care about interaction design,
but only as long as it's not annoying & isn't something the crawlers would
have a problem with. i can't imagine it working in smaller companies with the
same dynamics, nor do i think it would work well as a consultancy - but it
some cases, it fits the given context extremely well.

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callmeed
I love how there's SEO links in his adsense ... ha

This guy doesn't have a clue. There are a lot of SEO "hacks" out there, but
that doesn't de-legitimize the truly skilled people.

I've done a good amount of industry-specific SEO with good success (both for
the customer and myself). Not only that, buy I've created educational materiel
that let people learn how to do things themselves. So, yes, SEO is a job–in
more ways than one.

~~~
jrockway
The point is that you will naturally do well in search engines if your site is
useful. You don't need SEO, you need a good site.

If your site is shit, you deserve to have a low ranking, and it's likely that
an SEO consultant won't get you a good rank anyway,

~~~
callmeed
No, you do well in search engines if they "think" your site is useful. I'd
also argue that "relevant" is a better term than "useful". A site can be
extremely useful to humans but not necessarily rank extremely well.

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brk
If I could upvote this twice, I would.

~~~
liamQ
I totally agree - most of SEO people are scum

~~~
brk
Well, I wouldn't exactly rate them as "scum", but IMO a lot of the SEO stuff
is basic "best practices". It's really not magic (or art), just some basic
rules to follow.

The majority of the SEO stuff is, to me, similar to what we saw with HTML
"programmers" in the mid to late 90's. It's not rocket science, and it's not
hard, but it seems to be new and misunderstood by a lot of people.

~~~
liamQ
I agree. I'd say if you have a decent content manager and an average web-
designer who can read english and stay up-to-date with todays web-practices
SEO consultants are completely useless.

