Derek stirred the pot, and more people seemed to give him high-fives, than question what he was saying.
Photo: SEO87 on Flickr
This means (not that it’s a huge surprise) that there are a lot of people out there with a really bad taste in their about SEO. Why? What happened? What did you experience? I know that there are sleaze ballz out there. But I also know what I do, and I wouldn’t call it even close to sleazy, spammy, etc (neither would you, if I helped you understand best practices for your site & business).
Do me a solid? Answer this question honestly:
To me, SEO is _________
Use as many or as few words as you need to. While I’m happy to hear from my colleagues, I’d love to hear from the rest of the world (i.e. you don’t work in SEO) on this one.
8 Comments
To me, SEO is the art of helping people find what they are looking for.
To me, SEO is a very important ongoing process that takes many different parts of an agency.
The way I see it, it’s making sure that people find your site when they’re out there looking for something that you’re talking about.
To me, SEO is… a legitimate form of marketing that, like most other forms of marketing, can be done by most people, even web developers, who take the time to learn it in detail.
The Devil is in the details!
Thanks Mitch!
I’m headed out of town now…so hopefully all (both) of my other readers can chime in, and I’ll be back next week to check in!
Talk amongst yourselves…
To me, SEO is pointing people to the most relevant, useful content on the topic they’re searching about – and helping them find it by making sure the search engines know what to look for.
Great thoughts everybody! It seems like a lot of your comments focus on the user – not the marketer. That’s a great perspective.
Even though SEO services are performed for a marketer, if we do our jobs right, we will end up making a better search experience for users.
I know Derek is way over this by now (http://twitter.com/fraying/status/4872472797), so I think I’ll give up on trying to explain why “SEO isn’t either obvious web design or an unethical scam” to deaf ears.
Still…it was a good eye opener about how there are some really strong feelings out there against our profession, and any of us (all of us) who can shed light on what we do, and why can really help online marketers make smarter decisions about their websites.
Thanks again!
SEO is research and practices on making information more accessible.
In the same way that “pure” marketing is simply informing you about something you already wanted to know about (I would have bought it if I knew it existed!), SEO is the same thing for information on web sites (I would have read their site if I could have found it on Google).
Building something great is a good long-term strategy and makes it easier because there is a natural pull from the public (once word gets out) instead of a push from the content makers. But I’d also say that there have been many underdogs in all sorts of industries that (even having a superior product) failed. Maybe they would have succeeded if their search engine rank had been just one notch higher.