Comments on: Defending SEO, Yet Again!

By: Fionn

Fionn — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:01:22 +0000

Here is the latest in the saga http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/search-marketing/39751.html I believe a better response from the DMA would have been to intervew an organic SEO specialist or Danny instead. Now he has even more publciity for his outdated view of SEO which he has not been a part of for 6 years. The industry has changed so much in 6 years it insane for the DMA to give this guy any credibility.

By: diditcom

diditcom — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:42:17 +0000

Perhaps, part 2 of the column, published Friday will continue to clarify. Interestingly, I used similar analogies about professions that thrive without a need to maintain “rocket science” status. As to what prompted Dave’s initial article, he is very involved in client conversations and has been hearing over and over of SEMs charging for annual retainers, and only working for first month or two to do the basics then sitting back and waiting for the changes to have a material impact on rankings (or not). Both the SEMPO and Marketing Sherpa studies indicate that the industry is getting an image problem. Over-Charge and Under-Deliver. Clearly some SEOs charge fairly and deliver their services as promised, but take a moment and call ten active online marekters you know and ask if they have any SEO war-stories. You may be shocked at what you hear from at least some marketers I was.

By: Kalena

Kalena — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 02:55:29 +0000

I find this whole argument so amusing. It’s SEO snobbery at it’s finest. Of course SEO is rocket science to many, many people. To those of us who’ve been plugging away at it for over 10 years, it’s child’s play. It’s all about perspective. Why do you think I started a SEO agony aunt column? I get the same questions from people who are totally clueless about search engine marketing. It’s not a crime. But when you claim to be an SEO expert and then moan about the “uneducated masses” or fail to educate your client about the process, you are propogating SEO myth and legend. That’s the worst kind of SEO snobbery, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve seen quite a few SEO commentators making snide comments about the lack of complexity within our SEO courses at Search Engine College, but that is the whole point! We deliberately dumb-down the entire SEO process down to the most basic level so that anyone can understand it, grasp it and integrate it quickly. Most people don’t want to become rocket scientists, they just want their sites to be found.

By: Vu

Vu — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:32:29 +0000

I see both of these postings from these partners about SEO nothing more than an attempt to gain some SEO/SMO exposure in the market. I believe anybody who reads these already know the facts and how SEO can not be simplified into a one-time event. Maybe Did-it partners have agreed on creating a viral campaign to bring-in some natural traffic. :)

By: Halfdeck

Halfdeck — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:04:20 +0000

SEO 101 is easy to learn: build a spider-friendly site, build “good content”, and advertise.

Executing SEO, on the other hand, is a never-ending rat-race against competitors who may rack up hundreds of new inbounds a day. Your job as an SEO is never done because there is no finish line.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:32:21 +0000

SEO isn’t rocket science – but most things in life aren’t. Changing the oil in my car isn’t rocket science, but it’s something that I don’t have the time to do. Painting the exterior of my home is not rocket science, I could do it, but I would rather hire it out to a professional. After tearing my ACL I hired a physical therapist to aid in the rehabilitation of my knee. The exercises the PT put me through didn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with, but it did help the results of my knee.

Search engine optimization, like anything else, can be learned by anyone who is willing to put forth the time and effort to learn and then do it. There are many things we choose to learn and then do on our own and then there are many other things that we decide are worth hiring someone else, someone to do the job that we simply choose not to.

Tonight I think I will order a pizza, I don’t feel like cooking…

By: searchenginefriend

searchenginefriend — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:21:50 +0000

Danny-You hit the nail on the head here. Sometimes I begin to talk about SEO and suddenly, friends and colleagues who are not anywhere near the web business- eyes glaze over. I used to be an ‘in house’ person who studied a lot and went to conventions to learn SEO-yes you can learn it, it’s not rocket science, but the amount of info is overwhelming. It takes time, energy and several conventions to really learn how do do this properly and efficiently. SEOs cut to the chase for many companies who do not have full time webmasters or web teams.

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:37:07 +0000

Danny, using Sussie’s widely voice complaints as an example of how SEO is rocket science (and I’ll firmly come in on the side of it’s NOT rocket science) hurts your cause considerably. She’s been offered plenty of good free advice and took none of it.

Nor does her site even have so much as an HTML site map, so she has not followed the advice on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Most practicing SEOs today don’t go very far beyond a handful of principles anyway. It works for them well enough to keep their clients happy, so why devote more words to a topic that isn’t relevant to reality?

SEO has been declared dead many times. So what?

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:42:18 +0000

“digging a hole even deeper for himself”. That is exactly what I was thinking. I’m glad you wrote a post about this Danny so I now I don’t need to. :)

As much as I respect Kevin, I think his attempt to veil SEM elitism within the “rocket science” theme is an insult to the intelligence of the people reading it. But then, maybe that’s the point.

By: mad4

mad4 — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:49:03 +0000

Danny I just found this via the SEO feed from Google News. Pretty quick to be in there already. Nice one. :)