Seth Godin interrogates SEO Options

[cre8pc]

Seth Godin has much to say about the "black art" of SEO...

The problem with search engine optimization

I just got a note from someone asking me for a recommendation, and when I said I didn't think that most SEO was worth the money, he asked me why. So here goes:

1. Because it's a black art, it's really hard to tell who's good and who's not. Andrew Goodman is good, there are people who are less reputable... no matter what, it's hard to guarantee you'll get your money's worth.

2. my real problem, though, starts with an analogy. Imagine your retail store was on a road that no one ever drove down unless they found it on a map. And then imagine that they redid the maps every week and the mapmakers refused to tell you exactly how they went about deciding which roads to draw and in which hierarchy to place them.

I agree to some extent. SEO has changed from the days of trying to accommodate every engine, directory and algorithm. The emphasis on one - Google, and the popularity contest pressure behind PageRank, removed some of the challenge and skills needed for true SEO.

It became a war game.

But, for all the manipulation and underhanded tactics that evolved, and all the resistance by engine companies to being challenged at every turn, two things persist.

Clicks do not always convert to sales.

Organic SEO still works.

This is why when I recommend an SEO, I refer to people and companies who include some sort of usability perspective in their service. Those that care as much about the people who use a web site, I think, are a more valuable hire, than those SEO companies that take risks that can destroy online businesses or get them banned from engines. Those companies have no concern for the client. It's their bottom line that matters, and they'll do whatever it takes to get away with what they can.

Much of what goes into organic, "natural" SEO, also works towards web page ease of use.

Is Seth on the mark, or not being objective?

Is SEO a black art, dying art, was never an art at all?

<<<Edited, because I keep thinking about this .

[bragadocchio]

Online, it's about adwords and site design.

I can't bring myself to agree. I think Seth oversimplifies here, to the detriment of his readers, and himself.

I'm not saying that someone can't do well with a web site without hiring an SEO, but someone who thinks that they can't design their web site without search engines in mind deserves to spend lots and lots of money on adwords.

Imagine your retail store was on a road that no one ever drove down unless they found it on a map.

I would say that would be every web site in the world except for ones that have spent so much money advertising that people know the brand name, and just append a "www." in front, and a ".com" at the end in the browser address bar.

And then imagine that they redid the maps every week and the mapmakers refused to tell you exactly how they went about deciding which roads to draw and in which hierarchy to place them.

The map and search engine analogy is questionable. Search engine results do change, but a site that uses words customers will look for, and expect to see, that intelligently uses page titles, headlines, subheadlines, body text, well organized site architecture, and smartly labeled anchor text for internal links stands a better chance of doing well in search engines than one that doesn't.

A site that follows a linking strategy that benefits its visitors by providing value to people who link to the site, and by providing value to its visitors in the sites it links to will do very well in terms of building link popularity and page rank.

If you build a destination that people want to visit, you are doing so though pages other than just search engines, and the search engines, if they are doing their jobs right are recognizing your efforts by making those pathways to your site more evident to others. It's not the search engines that build maps to your site - it's you. The search engines are just recognizing those pathways.

Could you imagine finding investors for that sort of store? Could you imagine being confident enough in your ability to grow that business that you'd want to work there?

Yep.

Lucking into (and it is luck) the top slot of a great word on Google is not a business plan. It's superstition. It's blind faith.

It's only luck if you refuse to acknowledge that there are intelligent ways to build a web site, and that a business that can cater to a specific niche market, and can do a great job of attracting that market.

SEOs are not a shortcut to success, at least not for 99% of the companies out there.  

SEOs should not be considered shortcuts to success. But it is possible to build pages that do very well in search engines.

You won't win by fooling Google into listing you first for a common search term.

Nope. But I didn't see anywhere that said that was what SEOs want to do. I "listened" to Purple Cow. I know of a number of people who do SEO and SEM for a living who have also. We know that it's easier to capture someone's attention by trying to sell them Jalapeno ice cream than Vanilla ice cream. Chances are good that we even knew that before reading or listening to your book Purple Cow.

You will win once you figure out the simple mechanics of turning strangers into friends and friends into customers.

I'm not sure that you need to be friends with your customers. It would be a much nicer world if you did. And it truly is great when it's a pleasure dealing with your customers, and you've built relationships with them that are close.

But I will say that if you can treat your customers with intelligence, respect, and compassion, than you stand a much better chance of success than if you don't. And you'll enjoy what you do for a living a whole lot more.

[cline]

I tend to agree with Seth, but his sweeping generalizations are troubling and are full of weaknesses.

SEO is akin to public relations. PR is a great marketing tool. Some companies have been built on it. It's hugely important in the marketing mix of many companies. But, it's unreliable. If you're in business for the long run, it's dangerous to depend heavily on PR.

Although there are plenty of exceptions, if a business cannot make PPC work for them, there's something profoundly wrong with the business.

[Black_Knight]

Through the wonderful interactive nature of blogs, Seth has himself already seen and agreed with a counter-claim made at ConversionRater.

So while Seth's advice is good about using keyword buys and optimizing your site, don't ignore search engine optimization. Either find someone reputable by doing diligent research to help you, or learn it yourself through many of the free resources out on the web.

of course, you're right.

Seth

My own greatest dissappointment with Seth's posts (and indeed thought process) was with the following statement from his original blog post:

Lucking into (and it is luck) the top slot of a great word on Google is not a business plan. It's superstition. It's blind faith.

From a man who usually has such a smart mind for marketing, this seemed to show an oversight that would have been incredible, and therefore seems to indicate a personal 'bigotry' against SEO.

You see, running any form of advertising involves guesswork and faith. Oh, you can place your ad for cash, but how many people will respond? That part is always guesswork to the exact same extent.

Usually, with other forms of advertising, the guesswork is in the needs of the audience. You try to get a demographic breakdown, by age, gender and broad interest, and then place an ad in front of those people. You hope that this isn't the week when that audience will change. Or the week when people won't tune in.

Even then, you are only hoping and praying, pretty much on blind faith, that if you pitch to enough folks in the right general demographic group for your needs that x percentage of them will take the ad well, remember it later when buying.

SEO has far greater targeting and involves far less 'faith' in that respect. I'm never having to guess that people might just possibly be interested in what I offer, but am instead replying to their own independant assertion of interest. Less guesswork. Less 'blind faith'.

Seth shows a sad lack of understanding of how people use search. I don't need to be #1 for one and only one phrase. 50% of referrals that end in a sale come through unique searches to them. Searches that turn up only once in a thousand referrals.

The 'window shopper' searching for 'cameras' is attractive only to the SEO doing a PR campaign. Where the site isn't ROI focused and is focusing on branding as the place for cameras.

The average person searching for cameras is nowhere near the buying part of the shopping process, and statistically speaking, will not go through the entire shopping process on the same site. That only happens with impulse buying - not shopping.

People online shop much as people offline do. They start with an idea of what they want. They go to a few stores to see what's on offer. They may already have a preference for a certain brand, but mainly are looking for information.

They shop around, touring not just one site in the first and only search, but many of them in several searches. They see what many stores offer, what models and makes have the right balance of values and features. They inform themselves and research the purchase.

They'll probably ask folk offline that they know about what cameras, or at least makes, they'd buy (assuming that it wasn't a friend's purchase that inspired their shopping in the first place). That friend may also recommend a particular site too.

They may well search more. This time they'll be qualifying their search a lot. They won't search for cameras, but will instead search for something like "Kodak camera that takes panoramic view photos" or ", etc.

Once all that is done, they'll usually not be searching for cameras. they'll have a make and model that they want. That's what they'll search for, to find the best price and value of deal they can get. This is when the buying process starts, and they may have already visited over 20 sites to get here. They will now be using real buying terms like "Pentax camera suppliers in Cleveland" (see that they are looking specifically for a store or supplier, and have given a region to keep shipping costs low or non-existant?)

'Black Arts' my Aunt.

Real SEO isn't based on 'secrets' but on knowledge that is rare only because it may be hard-won. We give away much of this information right here hour after hour, day after day. It is not a black art, but a specialist knowledge gained from working at it.

If you want to see 'Black Arts' ask ad sales people how they sell ads. Most will ring up a company and say "competitor X is running a double page ad this week, and since we're pals I thought I'd give you a heads-up and see if you'd wanter to counter that with an ad of your own". That happens every day.

The people who see your ad on AdWords and ring all your competitors to use that as a spur to get those competitors to open or increase their own AdWords budget and compete against you, driving up the costs, diminishing the benefit, and making the ads companies very happy.

There's guesswork in all advertising. In whether or not a competitor will be running a bigger and better ad that will overshadow your own. SEO involves less guesswork than many forms of marketing, and to highlight the guesswork of SEO alone is frankly disappointingly naive-seeming of the usually insightful Mr Godin.

[gravelsack]

People are frightened of what they don't understand.

2. my real problem, though, starts with an analogy. Imagine your retail store was on a road that no one ever drove down unless they found it on a map. And then imagine that they redid the maps every week and the mapmakers refused to tell you exactly how they went about deciding which roads to draw and in which hierarchy to place them.

That analogy is 'pants', as we say in th UK.

The roads that go past my sites don't change every week, and even if they did it wouldn't hurt me too much - got belt and braces, multiple sites and multiple markets. As one rises another goes down, its a numbers game and SEO is crucial to maximising the return.

I approve of him spreading this nonsense though - suits me well if Joe Public gives up on the idea of SEO - more money for those that DO get it

[peter_d]

Lucking into (and it is luck) the top slot of a great word on Google is not a business plan. It's superstition. It's blind faith.

Eh? Seth has a lot of good things to say, but this isn't one of them.

SEO is a publishing strategy, not a singular event. The true benefit of SEO comes from covering thousands of keyword terms and/or knowing which terms to target, and doing so in a cost effective manner. It's like the single line fisherman scoffing at the fisherman who builds a net and travels to a particular spot. Both catch fish, but one fisherman is failing to grasp the true potential of his endevour.

I approve of him spreading this nonsense though - suits me well if Joe Public gives up on the idea of SEO - more money for those that DO get it

Heh. Agreed

[cline]

Real SEO isn't based on 'secrets' but on knowledge that is rare only because it may be hard-won. We give away much of this information right here hour after hour, day after day. It is not a black art, but a specialist knowledge gained from working at it.

That's of course all true, but it's still insider knowledge. I've got clients who still don't grasp what I'm actually doing. It takes a certain ability plus a lot of background knowlege to wrap one's head around this. It's reasonable to call it a black art -- even if the practioners know it's not magic -- because to normal people it is magic. IMHO, that's the definition of a black art.

[Black_Knight]

That's not quite the classic interpretation of a 'black art' though, Cline.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Ablack+art gives us

the belief in magical spells that harness occult forces or evil spirits to produce unnatural effects in the world  http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stage=1&word=black+art

Black Arts always imply evil or dark powers. That's not true of SEO, though there are folks who use SEO in a somewhat diabolical way. We all know Google's views about 'evil'. We need to stop this pathetic belief that SEO is akin to evil, sacrificing morality, or otherwise anything other than simply applying an obscure, but not black nor arcane, knowledge.

[peter_d]

My technique is largely dependent on the sacrifice of bats. During a full moon.

But you can't tell clients that...

[Black_Knight]

I just sacrifice a pizza (by eating it), and/or burn some incense we call 'tobacco'.

[peter_d]

incense we call 'tobacco'

We call it something else....

[rustybrick]

Does Seth not understand how SEO is practiced? I have spoken to many people who feel SEO is all one big gimmick. In that case, is Seth to blame for his post or are we to blame for not stepping up and doing something more about those who make this profession look bad?

Anyway, SEO is far from black magic or even luck. Amazing that someone at his level would say something like this.

It is late here, but after reading Ammon's post, I was under the impression that you feel that general marketing is more luck then seo. Advertising in a newspaper has less of a conversion rate then seo or ppc. Actually, there are very few advertising venues as ROI centric as seo and ppc.

So this whole luck and black magic thing really confuses me.

[Black_Knight]

after reading Ammon's post, I was under the impression that you feel that general marketing is more luck then seo.

There's a certain element of luck in all undertakings. Skill comes in making allowances for bad luck, and being in a strong and versatile position to take advantage of good luck (or a competitor's bad luck).

However, if Seth thinks I've just had an amazing run of luck with over 500 clients during the past ten years then I think he may need to redefine 'luck'.

[DianeV]

Sounds fairly medieval to me: if I don't understand something, it must be a black art. Please.

Properly explained, SEO is not that hard to understand. But I'm with gravelsack. Let them revel in their "the world is flat" belief.

[cline]

That's not quite the classic interpretation of a 'black art' though, Cline.  

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Ablack+art gives us  
Quote:  
the belief in magical spells that harness occult forces or evil spirits to produce unnatural effects in the world  
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/we...&word=black+art  

Black Arts always imply evil or dark powers.  

It's all a matter of perspective. To insiders the subject is illuminated. To outsiders it is dark. What is done in SEO seems like magic to outsiders, and the techniques of it seem like harnessing occult forces. Add to this the massive disinformation produced by some SEO firms, the constantly changing ranking systems, and the references to things that normal human beings never see, and you end up with what is perceived as a black art.

[bragadocchio]

Good points, cline.

I was a little disappointed to read Seth's post because he often does such a good job of undercutting perceptions like that one -- of illuminating areas that are unclear and filled with misinformation.

[Black_Knight]

The problem is simply that Seth just doesn't understand what SEO actually is. Not even the difference between SEO and pay-per-click.

This is underlined very swiftly and conclusively. Seth's post is supposedly all about SEO and is titled "The problem with search engine optimization". Yet Seth is obviously confused about what is SEO and what is SEM.

Because it's a black art, it's really hard to tell who's good and who's not. Andrew Goodman is good, there are people who are less reputable...

That's a nice plug for Andrew Goodman, and I'm delighted for him. But Andrew might be horrified. Andrew himself would far rather deal with SEM and PPC than with SEO, as he stated outright in the \"PPC Masterclass\" roundtable discussion we shared for Search Engine Blog.

If the question were \"why should an SEO do PPC,\" my answer would of course be \"they shouldn't - they should leave it to me and I'll send them my SEO business.\"

It seems to me that Seth simply hasn't done 'due dilligence' on researching this particular topic. That may come back to haunt him. It only takes a couple of poorly researched articles to diminish a reputation.

[Ron Carnell]

Danny Sullivan apparently emailed Seth about the article, as reported at SEW, and a follow-up piece with more clarifications will likely be out today or tomorrow.

[Advisor]

I think it's really just another example of the seedier side of SEO giving us all a bad name.

Pretty amazing in this day and age that it still happens, but until we are rid of all the scammers and spammers in SEO it's going to be an uphill battle for us to be rid of our dastardly reputation.

Jill :evil:

[glengara]

* the seedier side of SEO*

FWIW, no surprises, but Doug has something to say about this, seems aimed particularly at SEO forum owners...