my socks don't fit

Tuesday October 13, 2009 at 13:07

“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.”

—

Derek Powazek in the best SEO rant I’ve ever seen. (via davidkaneda)

I call bullshit. There are ways to enhance the utility of your site from the perspective of search engines. There just are. Some people are better at this than others, if only because they have more experience. There are entire businesses built on SEO (About.com) that couldn’t exist without SEO experts. If someone makes an absolute statement about virtually everything and you believe them, you have been conned.

(via mikehudack)

i’m with mike. you can disagree with the morality of various SEO consultants, but you can’t deny that good SEO works for both companies and users. how do i know? empirical data. metrics. benchmarks. when i make changes, things happen.

EDIT: upon further review, i agree with his main points: build good websites and some SEOs are conmen. i agree that what we know as SEO is a necessary part of building a good website, just like good design & UX. however, i disagree that seo is “common sense.” the thriving SEO (and i would add, social media) industry - illegitimate or not - indicates that it’s not common sense. i’ve worked with enough intelligent clients to know that some things just don’t occur to people. perhaps they’re stuck in a paradigm. or perhaps most web designers couldn’t care less about search-friendly code because all they care about is how it looks. SEO. Social Media. Graphic design. User experience. Information architecture. these are disciplines, a solid combination of which makes a good website perform well.

This post was reblogged from Mike Hudack.

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