Derek Powazek is causing something of a stir recently within the SEO industry with a blog article: Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists
To summarize: ‘In no uncertain terms… SEO’s bottle common sense and label it as super secret and expensive cure-all for your website. They are all basically snake oil salesmen.’ This is a gross simplification, and represents what I took from the article, but I have to admit that I sort of agree with it.
Similarly Search Engine Land responded with: An Open Letter To Derek Powazek On The Value Of SEO
To summarize: ‘We do real stuff, hear are examples of real stuff, and hear is how you can measure the effects of that stuff… and we don’t like the people who call themselves SEOs and do bad stuff either.’ It’s worth reading as it is a sensible defence.
My Thoughts on the Debate…
I am a web developer/designer and copy writer… basically a content developer. and I have/do used the SEO term to market my services. I know that the reality is that all the stuff that an SEO does (without the knowledge to code) can be done by anyone, and should be done by the company that is running a website.
However there is a psychological need for companies that want to know that a designer is making the right choices for them. And where there is doubt in business there is always a middle man ready to ‘help’.
SEOs function like these middlemen between developers, and copy-writers. They have the responsibility and knowledge that all Webmasters should have. The simple truth is that it is hard to justify this middleman service if you already have a Webmaster that knows this ‘common sense stuff’ and applies it to the site they administer.
Liars and cheats aside (as any misrepresentation of a service-provided is despicable) but these things are usually a problem of semantics. I don’t really have a problem with someone calling themselves a web marketer and going out there and getting links through usual networking channels. But in my mind ‘SEO’ denotes some kind of technical expertise that is more often than not absent. It is like a stylist pretending they have the skills of a fashion designer or tailor. A marketer that knows about keywords and ‘latent semantic indexing’ is just that and nothing more.
A lot of the chips are still up in the air when it comes to SEO. At the moment it is the outsourced thing that self proclaimed ‘Gurus’, with no aptitude for code copy or strategy, do just because they have some keyword tools. I am hoping that it becomes an iterative part of the ongoing design and development strategy that Web Masters create. I know that designers and developers want the repeat business, and I know that the iterative approach to a web strategy provides that work. SEO has become a marketing buzz word around that iterative approach. I’m genuinely unsure if that buzz has done more damage or good?
In short: I want a world where Web Masters, Designers & Copywriters do SEO.
Not a world where SEO’s ‘do’ Web Masters, Designers & Copywriters.
Philip Markwick is the principal at Papershark Media, a Online Media & Design Company mostly serving companies in Surrey, Hants, Berkshire & London.
Contact Phil at phil@papershark.co.uk about blogs, business, media… anything!
I primarily make my living as an SEO and even then I must say that I partially agree with whatever you mentioned here. However, the fact remains that ..
“I want a world where Web Masters, Designers & Copywriters do SEO.
Not a world where SEO’s ‘do’ Web Masters, Designers & Copywriters.” – is an Utopian situation.
It would indeed be nice to have webmasters who can do fantastic user friendly designs and then develop them using clean, compatible codes with proper semantics and validation and then add content to the site that would be of such high value that everyone would love to link to it. – however, do you think it’s really gonna happen and that too at a mass level that would eradicate the SEO business completely ?
Particularly with the Web 2.0 platforms around.. today everyone is a content producer, anyone can be a web master using one or the other blogging or web platform – do you think its possible for everyone who publishes on the web to have all the skills ?
Yes, I do agree a lot of SEO stuff is basically common sense but fortunately or unfortunately “common sense is not very common in common people” and that is why SEOs would be required.
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