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The Search Promotion Professional Industry |
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Written by Nathan Holley
March 19, 2007
Challenging SEO Industry Nonsense
I've enjoyed challenging other SEOs here in the past, and I'm gonna take another to task again. Not that my taking them to task is any great thing or even notable - but hey, I've always had a contentious streak about the SEO industry. It's full of nonsense on many levels. Besides, things have been slow around here and it's time for a mix up.
You see, I'm not an SEO. I'm not a usability expert. I'm a business person who makes good money on the Internet. I used to consult, but gave it up (except for a priveledged few, wink) to make more money for myself. There is a lot of money to be made in SEO, but not from serving clients. The dirty little secret in SEO land is that 1% of SEOs generate 99% of the spray ("spray" is a slang word for "lots of talking"); and the majority - 95% - of SEOs serve smaller clients, local specific companies, sole props and the like - not CNN.
So what's my point? My point is, almost everyone writing on SEO and getting cited is in the boys club of that 1%... writing and linking and talking about each other. It's a very small world, a tiny speck really. These Search Promotion Professionals (the new acronym I'm coining) are churning out a remarkable amount of ink talking about minutia and very little of value for the average Web business. They want to retain an air of exclusivity about their approaches and a proventialism about the industry that they are helping to shape. It's driven by vanity, ambition, and greed, not by a desire to really get to know search algorithms.
I'm being widely general in my statements, I realize that. Also, I'm not speaking directly about the author I quote below. There are some good SPPs out there, but even they seem to be breathing their own vapor these days...
Let's look at a latest ClickZ article on "SEO Niches and the Big Picture" -- a statement against niche marketers who get lost in their niches. The conclusion is:
"Moral of the story? Look at the big picture. Take a holistic view of the entire search optimization process. An SEO niche is a great USP, but that one piece won't solve the entire puzzle."
The bulk of the article describes how SEO niches get on the author's nerves, especially link development and search usability experts. The link devs get slammed for relying on PageRank (I don't know anyone who cares about PageRank, but I'm obviously out of it), and there's even a "special squirt gun saved" for some guy named Rand (yeah, I know who he is). At this point you're saying, uhm okay so what?, and this is where we move on to the intendment of the article. Eye tracking studies. Yup, that's it - eye tracking.
Eye tracking studies are skewered for being just a single piece of the picture, because as our SP points out, "eye-tracking tests used in isolation yield limited information," and that's where the straw man gets his due.
Well, good reading. But what's the point here? Nothing in the article illuminates a deeper nuance to SEO than using a varied approach... taking a wide view... acknowledging diverse tactics. More than open any eyes about SEO, this article reveals the little squibbling that tends to permeate incestual conference circuits like those familiar to search and marketing. Thanks for the reminder why I have no need to attend the next SES.
But I don't want to leave you with nothing, LEDers. So... without further exposure to my typepad, here is my opinion about SEO Niches and the Big Picture:
The SEO Big Picture
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Build a website with solid site architecture (directory layout, file names, internal linking, etc). Use flat HTML files if at possible. If not, mod_rewrite.
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Write relevant, keyword optimized copy. Make it unique and compelling.
- Optimize your title tags for SEs and humans, likewise your description (mostly for humans). A few keywords don't hurt.
- Redirect your non-www domain to the www version (or vice versa).
- Rock a Google sitemap, ditto for Yahoo.
- Set up sitewide footers with keyword optimized anchor text. Ditto for a human site map.
- Make sure your anchor text is optimized sitewide (no "click here" stuff).
- Get some backlinks. Then get some more.
The SEO Niche
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Get granular on any of the points above.
Nothing revolutionary there, nothing pedantic. And certainly nothing that will ever get published on ClickZ. (dude, what's up with all those internal links? how about linking about more than twice per page)
Nathan Holley
 this post appeared in LED Digest 2370: The Big Picture in SEO
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