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For most people, SEO still is either a complete unknown, magic or the scapegoat for almost everything that doesn’t work on the Web. In particular, bloggers seeking attention, publicity and links love to leverage all the ignorance and prejudice and launch attacks on SEO as a whole again and again.
Recently, another popular blogger, who leads one of the most important technology blogs (which uses all kinds of SEO techniques) did it again. This time it was not the average “SEO is rubbish” attack; it was a broader “search sucks” attack where of course not search engines themselves are guilty of being broken but the scapegoat: SEO.
Before we go on, let me define SEO again for all those who still don’t understand it: SEO is the craft of fixing and improving websites so that they can be found in search results, among others. Of course, good SEO is also good for the users. I know this SEO definition is still kind of abstract, so let me use a metaphor to explain it even better:
Imagine the Web as a virtual world, where search engines provide the transport infrastructure to move from A to B.
Most websites are like buildings, while some are more like cars, buses, trains or even planes. A blog like ours at SEOptimise is like a bus: it has lots of outgoing links and thus leads to lots of places many people want to go to. Whereas a site like Microsoft.com is like a huge building complex or a skyscraper. People need cars and buses, and of course they need an infrastructure to get to where they want to go. Google is like that infrastructure; it has a road, rail and airport system leading to all kinds of destinations. So people need car-like or bus-like sites to get there.
The SEO specialist is like a mechanic.
The SEO specialist doesn’t build the road system or control the airports, but he allows you to get to where you want to go by fixing your car or bus. An SEO may be an architect as well. You may ask an architect to refurbish a home or a shop, or to build one. Now imagine blaming mechanics for harassment by TSA on airports, for dilapidated public transport systems in US cities or the broken railroads in both the US/UK. Did the mechanics repair too many cars, so that the streets are jammed with traffic? Are they guilty of repairing cars? Are there too many planes in the sky because mechanics have fixed them? Are there too many buildings out there because evil architects have refurbished them?
Likewise, blaming the SEO industry for bad search results is nonsense and absurd. Let’s take a recent example from the “increasing spam by SEO means” debate: content farms. Content farms are the Walmarts of the Internet. One stop shops for everything. It may be low quality, cheap and Made in China but people flock there by the thousands. Do you hate Walmart? Why do you go there then? I have read lots of criticism of Walmart but I’ve rarely heard the idea that it’s evil architects who brought us Walmart to pollute our environment. And it’s not evil mechanics fixing your cars who have allowed the public rail or road system to deteriorate.
The only thing you can blame mechanics and architects for is that they broke cars instead of fixing them, or that they built houses that break down or shops that don’t sell.
Incidentally, Techcrunch, the tech blog which has published the nonsense article about SEO being to blame for bad search results, uses outdated SEO techniques such as PageRank sculpting (using the nofollow attribute on internal links). Effectively, they mark their own internal links as untrustworthy. They should blame their own mechanic for being bad at SEO.
“The SEO specialist is like a mechanic” yes this is really nice word. All sites need a good mechanic to go for a long travel. Great post. Thank you for your share….
Nice concept! I totally agree with. Its like an SEO can provide you better website exposure, a lot of meaningful traffic, but if your site does not convert the same way a mechanic can make the best bike or car, but if the road is not good, whats the benefit.
What a great piece and I’m so so glad that others have noticed what we’ve seen over at techcrunch now for years….that their OWN SEO campaign is faulty, eh!
LOL!
:-)
Jim
This is brilliant, Tad! There are businesses out there that easily dismiss SEO as being the root cause of their online business branding (and ROI) problems. So many just don’t see the complete picture and, when the business becomes frustrated, they throw the SEO out with the bath water.
I share a number of articles with my potential and existing clients to help them better understand SEO and my strategic services. How do you best recommend to convey the importance of team work and long-term strategies, in regards to SEO, to potential clients?
SEO as mechanic! kinda lame comparison but agreed on the sentiments from the point of being SEO myself. SEO is about making deserving content more easily accessible to users through search. search engines on other hand are more responsible towards sorting results based on user choice. in both cases its users who should win. If that happens everybody wins. If it doesn’t everybody is to be blamed. The SEO, the content, the search engines and even the users who prefer undeserving content.
Thanks for the great post.
SEO to me is an art, it is always evolving and different players enter and exit regularly. People shouldn’t blame evolution for their problems, otherwise we wouldn’t be here to start.
Matt
Agreed. Someone who does SEO is no more to blame for the system than a mechanic is to blame for how bad the roads are. For many I suppose they think SEO is instant and that once their site is tweaked it should get to the top of the page rankings. What many don’t realize is that it is a process and that your site is in competition with other sites that are also doing SEO.
Shannon: great question I often have to deal with myself. I’m afraid the client has to know what SEO is before you talk specifics, otherwise convincing them about SEO as long term investment may be a problem, even when it works out as they will blame you for any issues later on. It’s better to go after the clients who what SEO is and that it’s a long term strategic partnership.