Category: Uncategorized

So here’s the deal (I use the word “so” a lot). My site is technically down. Yeah, there’s a nav there, but I’m waiting on a cool little design that’s cooking. In the mean time, a friend sent me something kinda funny. I thought I would throw a WordPress blog up for the time being and address it.

I say funny now, but there was a time when this stuff ticked me off. It doesn’t anymore because this stuff is somewhat run of the mill now. The stuff I’m talking about is of course the anti-SEO bloggers. The people that shout “snake oil” any time there is even a mention of SEO.

Yeah, they seem to be attacking us directly, but they aren’t. And you can’t really be mad at them because so far all of these articles have been written by people that fall into 2 categories. Those that are doing so for attention/links/whatever, and those that don’t quite understand what SEO really is.

It’s difficult to be mad at someone for not know what something is. I know very little of the medical industry, my doctor doesn’t hold this against me (although his bills sometimes make me think otherwise).

I do get a bit disappointed though. These are sometimes people that are generally intelligent. You would think they would educate themselves before they speak on a subject, but what can you do?

So (there it is again) while I’m taking a small break, I would like to look at one of these articles now.

This time it’s from Derek Powazek. I don’t know anything about him at the moment, but from is writing (not his message) he seems somewhat educated in the traditional “I went to college” sense.

Let’s get to it, shall we? You can read his post at: http://powazek.com/posts/2090

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.

Sigh. Here we go.

First came the web, and it was a mess. Servers went up everywhere, the net connected them all, pages bloomed like flowers, and no one could find a damn thing.

Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google with its rankings of most-linked pages, we were finally able to find the pages we needed, mostly.

This is actually exactly how it happened.

The ascendency of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

I don’t think I know any SEOs that claim they can dance a magic dance. I think I saw a few try at a Webmaster Radio party once, but it didn’t work out.

Seriously though. What we are seeing is the result of genuine scammers/poor craftsmen/spammers that claim to be SEOs. These guy and gals don’t actually do anything that resembles SEO, but because that’s what they call themselves, we get goofy posts like this. You can’t really blame Derek for being ignorant on a topic, but that he writes as if he is does kinda get to me.

Think of it like this. Some guy comes to your house and says he’s a plumber. You don’t ask him any questions, ask for credentials/permits or anything else. He claims he can make your pipes work better. The next day, your dog is swimming around the pool that used to be your living room. So, are all plumbers scam artists? No, of course not. This guy was, and he claimed to be a plumber. That doesn’t make him a plumber any more than it makes all plumbers snake oil salesmen.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

Very dramatic.

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web. I’m going to tell you about the problems, and then tell you the one true way to generate traffic on the web, based on my own 14 years of hits and misses.

And this is where SEO comes in. What is logical to one person is not to another. Most SEOs will be up front in the fact that it isn’t that they do anything magical or special. In fact, it’s the logical thinking that produces an excellent SEO. And when we talk about thing of the interwebs, you can’t expect everyone to know what we know (which is why I’m not so mad at Derek).

I’m looking at a list right now. It’s a list of just under 100 hotels. These are my clients. I’m thinking back to the conversations I’ve had with all of them. When I’ve explained such simple items as header tags, titles, relevant content, etc. not a single one of them knew what I was talking about. In fact, of all of the General Managers and Marketing Directors I’ve spoken to, not a one could get a site to rank like I or anyone on my team could. Does this mean they are stupid? According to Derek, yes.

But consider this. Every once in a while a GM will explain something like average daily rate or the numbers they run to determing whether becoming a Hilton hotel would benifit their property and in what way. These men and women run numbers that would make most SEOs cry. And do you know why they can do such magical things? Because that is what they do. That is their craft, their profession. And they excel.

They don’t know SEO. Heck, most of them can’t spell HTML. Because that’s not their job. That’s my job. They need a site. They need visitors. They can’t do this themselves (even if they knew how, they certainly don’t have the time). They ask us to do that for them.

So yeah, Derek. It is logical and obvious. To me.

Dork.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

Actually, look under the hood of any SEO plan and you wouldn’t find anything like this. Sure, these are things we would discuss; usually in person or on the phone. But a real plan revolves around marketing the brand, promoting relevant and quality content, building online relationships that last and yes, gaining rankings. More importantly though, an SEO plan defines the rankings as a tool to the greater Internet marketing objectives which usually involve ROI. At the end, I must not only outline what I will be doing, but I must also prove that your profits have increased because of my efforts.

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.

I…just…I mean…seriously?

And when they do reindex, if they determine that you’ve been acting in bad faith (like hiding links or keywords or other deceptive practices) they’ll drop you like a hot rock. So a temporary gain may result in a lifetime ban.

In the end, you’re sacrificing your brand integrity in a Faustian bargain for an increase in traffic that won’t last the month. And how valuable was that increase, anyway? If you’re tricking people into visiting your site, those visits are going to be bad experiences.

That’s actually true. Don’t do that stuff. But again, that’s not SEO.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Google’s ranking algorithm is based on links. So the most effective way to game their system is to plant links on as many sites as possible, all pointing to your site, linked from specific keywords. This is called Google bombing.

You ever hear someone talk about something with which you had a greater understanding and experience? Almost as if they read an article somewhere and truely believe they fully understand what they are talking about? Yeah, I get that too. Everyone’s a lawyer now. Everyone’s a doctor. And everyone is an SEO.

I ask that question because of Derek’s statement. Take those statements independently and without the context, and they are all true. But it’s not quite understood by the speaker.

SEO cockroaches employ botnets, third-world labor, and zombie computers to blanket the web with link spam. 99% of spam comments to blogs are these kind of links. The target of these links is not the blog readers, it’s Google.

Again, these are not SEOs. Yup, there are people that do that. Most of the SEOs out there, especially the bloggers know how to not only combat this, but make it work in our favor. So, if you notice that your content is being scraped by someone else in an attempt to rank, let me show you how to make it work for you. If you are receiving an inordinate amount of comment spam and need help combating that, I can show you how to do that too.

Because to me, the solution is logical and obvious.

Man, what a dork.

SEO bastards are behind worms that attack blog services like Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type. Some hack into the blog templates themselves to insert links that are hidden from the readers of that blog, but visible to a Google crawler.

And they create programs to grab expired domain names, automatically create websites, filling the pages with content stolen from RSS feeds, creating billions of bad results for users.

You guys know that there’s a secret alien moon base on the dark side of the moon, right? The government knows about it and they are working with the aliens to produce flu vaxines that will one day turn us all into slaves; building pyramids on Mars. Well those aliens are the ones that do that, not SEOs.

Ok, it’s not quite like that. But again, this isn’t SEO. There are hackers (more appropriately ‘crackers’) that can do this kind of stuff. And yet again, that’s not SEO.

It’s a game, and every link is a score for the SEO jerkwads and their disreputable clients. And every time they win, those of us trying to create quality work and good experiences on the web lose.

So, what if my client just needs traffic and they don’t know how to get it? What if I know how to get it? We don’t use these methods. We don’t hack. We don’t hide anything. We just show our clients how to promote their products/services/information in a manner that Google desires.

Worse than the hackers are the competent journalists and site creators that are making legitimate content online, but get seduced by the SEO dark side into thinking they need to create content for Google instead of for their readers. It dumbs-down the content, which turns off your real audience, which ultimately makes you less valuable to advertisers. If you want to know why there’s so much remnant advertising on online news sites, it’s because you’re treating the stories like remnants already.

Actually, the exact opposite is true. You see, Derek is right about one thing; this is mostly logical stuff. So logica in fact that you could say that a robot is making the decisions. Robots don’t have feelings and can’t be bribed. They simply see 1s and 0s, yes and no, black and white (not the last one, those are colors…except black. That’s not a color).

So, when you have a website comprised of only images where the text describing your product should be, the robot doesn’t see it. And when you have a few hundred of the smartest people in the world working on said robot in an attempt to serve the best results possible, you get a robot programmed to take not the words on your site, but its meaning.

This is a bit in depth, but we are talking about semantics and its role in content creation. Google strives very diligently to serve results on your search that are most relevant. As flawed as they may sometimes seem they are doing a pretty good job.

I say these things because Google wants to provide people with what they are looking for. And in order to do that, their robot needs to understand how to tell the difference between spam and quality content. So many years into it, and they are really good at it.

So we agree on this point Derek. You need to write quality content. That’s what Google is looking for, that’s what searchers are looking for and that’s what an SEO will help you create and promote.

Remember this: It’s not your job to create content for Google. it’s their job to find the best of the web for their results. Your audience is your readers, not Google’s algorithm.

Well, that’s not quite right. First your readers are using Google to find what they want. And Google can’t/won’t rank your site if they don’t know what it’s about. And that’s what SEO does. We tell Google what your site is about, and prove to it why you should rank.

As for who is responsible for what, Derek is mistaken. If you run a business, not only is it your job to provide whatever it is you do, it is indeed your job to let people know that you do it.

Let’s say you open a shoe store. Would you advertise? Would you hand our flyers for your new store? Would you have a commercial made? If nobody knows your store even exists, why would they shop there?

For any business owner it is not only your job to run the business, it’s also your job to promote it. In the case of small businesses, it’s probably also your job to take care of payroll, expenses, etc. That’s simply the way it works.

So, we don’t create content for Google. We create content for readers. But we also show you how to make sure Google knows you exist and give them a reason to show your site in a results page.

The One True Way

I can’t wait for this.

Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:

Crap. That guy on T.V. said the same thing right before he sold me something.

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Well, I appreciate the sentiment but I’m afraid that’s not always the case. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it’s a brand new domain name. Maybe the whole thing is in Flash. Maybe you haven’t told the right people about it. There are a million other reasons that it might not be getting traffic, and “not good enough” is only one of them.

Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.

I think this guy is in advertising or something. He uses a bunch of neat buzz words that don’t actually amount to real advice.

Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.

It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

So here we are at the end of Derek’s post. All I can think is that he simply has no idea what SEO is. This is likely because his blog is primarily a personal one. Maybe he gets traffic, maybe he doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter if he does. He doesn’t get anything out of it other than self gratification. Which is just fine.

But if you have a new product that you want to promote, waiting around for people to hear about it from the people you know isn’t going to cut it. And if you have a site that Google can’t even crawl, waiting won’t help that either.

Well, it was fun.