Sharpe's Opinion
Wednesday, 28th Oct, 2009
Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists
Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.
This is exactly right. As is “the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web.”
Comments
I see where you’re coming from, but I think the point is that taking a badly made website and jerry-rigging it with ‘SEO’ alterations is the old pig-in-lipstick problem.
When you say we need a new term to distinguish ‘legit SEO’ from the pointless search engine gaming, I think there already is one – web design. Search engine optimisation ought to be indistinguishable from proper web design. Well-written, content-rich, accessible websites are already optimised for search engines. Any web designer worth giving money to will have already taken ‘SEO’ into account, so far as it is necessary.
Paying one person a load of money to make a poor website, and then paying somebody else a load of money to ‘optimise’ it is not a good way to make a website. Pure and simple.
On that I agree—a decent web designer should know how to optimise a site instinctively, and you shouldn’t need a makeover.
Unfortunately, a large number of websites still extant don’t do this. Also, a large number of corporate sites, including council sites, are built by teams, and each member does their bit, but rarely are accessibility, usability or SEO taken account as part of the mix.
I came into SEO from usability—if there’s one area that I know really well, it’s usability stuff, I figured I was a **** coder ten years ago, so concentrate on other stuff, and I only got into SEO when I realised it was effectively exactly the same thing, but for entirely different purposes.
Was talking about it to Doctor Pack earlier today actually, making a similar point to what you made:
http://www.markpack.org.uk/seo-for-non-experts-what-you-need-to-know/
Sites should be built well in the first place.
That they’re frequently not, and that large numbers of commercially available and used CMS/webshop platforms are really really bad at it still, means there’s still a need for an expert to go in and break heads. Unfortunately, most self-styled experts aint, and I get all guilty when I start trying to charge the sort of money they do but for actually legit services. Daft, I know, but, y’know…
Disagree. I’ve charged for SEO work in the past, and will do so again. The difference is in what you’re charging for and why it needs doing.
99% of people selling “SEO” services are actually selling very poor quality search marketing.
The massive number of websites out there that are poorly implemented, and break usability, accessibility and search optimisation guidelines shows that, while it’s obvious to thee and me, to many many people building websites, it’s not obvious at all.
I think what’s needed is a new term that legit SEO practitioners can use—unfortunately, within 10 minutes of it becoming well known, the black hat arseholes will start describing themselves as such as well.
MatGB
October 28, 2009 at 7:33 pm