Time for a different acronym? Had you asked, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Site Optimization With Helpful Access Tactics” were suggested :-)

You’ve just earned yourself one more subscriber/reader.

Is the SEO word turning to be a “bad word” like viagra, pharmacy, etc.,?

“I’d actually joked with someone that if I wanted to really try and educate many on Digg about mistaken notions of SEO”

Maybe is time for us to question ourselves, as much as we think others need to be educated on what SEO is, we need to reeducate ourselves too.

Thanks for taking up the SEO Flag.

…touchy little blighters arent they… :), and for those of you interested (please move along if you’re not), my humble take on all this is – SEO is bloody hard work. SEO has been given a bad rep by the x% of spammers, there are a LOT of us who DON’T spam, have legitimate clients, who fork out a lot of money on SEO (millions – actually billions according to latest Outsell research) because – shock – it DOES work, – it DOES provide for branding exposure – and careful application of white hat seo methodology does drive targeted, qualified traffic to websites which convert – which is the point of having a website .. so yes, good design, easy navigation, content of interest to visiors – all very NB – , but if they can’t find you among the however many billion webpages out there, you’re a bit stuffed really….

hence… WHITE-HAT SEO people who know their shit, get results and contribute positively towards the SERPS because they know that maintaining quality sites and listings is what makes the search engines and the searchers (who actually are relatively important) happy…

..And I’m a woman too – (yes, yes there are some *relatively* successful female seo-ers… why would that be playing on the female thingey?) i assume there are these days women in most industries… we can multitask you know – like have babies, cook barefoot in the kitchen with the cell phone in one hand, baby on the apron strings and free left pinkie finger tapping away on the laptop…what the hell did women have to do with the price of eggs and how was your (Danny’s) comment so misinterpreted… *sigh* – I’m done now… back to the pinkie finger typing and I’ll put some socks on – its bloody cold on my bare stone floor – jeez

It’s very hard to defend the ‘good’ SEO and to make the distinctions between the creative work of good SEOs and the contemptuous crap otherwise know as SPAM.

Spam affects so many people that you can hardly blame the average folk when they think that SEO = spamming?

At least you’re creating a dialogue on the issue. Please keep shouting because I’m quite sure people are listening.

Now is that 13 year old logic? Being proud of being bad? Well of course it is. But at the same time it has it’s place. I personally go on digg almost every day for the pure hilarity of it. I have seen some of the greatest one-liner comebacks and responses ever seen anywhere and I firmly believe that some of those guys need to be doing stand up.

But hey, it is what it is, and some people you can’t make feel bad about something they’re truly proud of no matter how hard you try.

Your post yesterday was phenomenal. I am fairly new to the SEO world and I printed it out as a solid piece of reference.

This is coming from a high school teacher:

I commend you on this post as a follow up – hopefully some of the diggers who didn’t ‘dig’ yesterday’s post will be aware enough to seek you out in the future. Obviously you are very passionate and very educated about what you do and that speaks volumes in and of itself.

I have two quotes to relay:

As far as the the critical diggers go:

“Children have to be educated, but they also have to be left to educate themselves.”

In relation to the insightful post:

“Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”

Keep up the excellent work

You’ll know that 10% of the users are responsible for more than 50% of all popular stories. Digg is nothing more than a playground for 15 year olds and an ego trip par excellence.

Now maybe if your comments were in the form of top 10 lists, they might have had a better chance there :)