SEO: It's Not Snake Oil

I'm sure by now you know all about Derek Powazek and his temper-tantrum-like rant against SEOs as "evildoers, spammers and opportunists" and the resulting wrist-slap-meets-training article offered up by Danny Sullivan.

While it might seem like adding more peanut butter to an already evenly-spread PBJ sandwich, here are ThinkSEM's thoughts on Derek's extremely distorted view of search engine marketers - and their alleged attempts to con everyone with a website - and our reasons why SEO is not snake oil.

"Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing."
According to Wikipedia, marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities are informed or persuaded that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

In regards to SEO, the communication occurs via a company's website, which offers goods, services, etc. Just like in any type of marketing, shortcuts can be taken, sales people can fenagle and bedazzle, and prices can be inflated. So, SEO is just like other forms of marketing - there are the good, the bad and the ugly. As a consumer looking to hire out for this service, it's up to each business to do their research - as in anything - to determine the best SEO to help them out.

"If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned."
Wow. If A = B and B = C, then this means ThinkSEM (along with every other SEO practitioner in the world) cons people? Odd, since we have plenty of happy clients who've complimented our services and told us what a great job we've done. Doesn't feel like con work...wait, because it's not! It's perfectly normal for businesses to pay for SEO services. Not every company has an in-house online marketer, just like most businesses don't employ their own PR people, their own creative directors, or their own web designers. It's not snake oil; it's just smart business sense.

"The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work."
Is it true that anyone can do search engine optimization, thus negating the need to hire this service out? Absolutely. Yet, do most businesses have someone on their staff who learns SEO and becomes adept at it? It's most likely very rare. The same can be said for web design and development. Is it perfectly reasonable to assume someone can learn the basics of design concepts in PhotoShop and take an HTML course or two to learn how to put together a functioning website? Of course. Again, do most businesses have someone who learns this from scratch to do it full-time? Of course not. So, Derek, while to some people - those adept at search optimization techniques - the advice might be 'obvious,' to the average layperson or business owner it's NOT obvious. Which is why they hire the service out.

"SEO is poisoning the web...the most effective way to game Google's ranking algorithm is to plant links on as many sites as possible, all pointing to your site."
First of all, SEO isn't poisoning anything. The whole premise of SEO is to connect search engine users with the most relevant results possible. It's very simple. If you offer services or products, you use good content to describe them on your site. You build the site to be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easily found by search engines.

Now, about gaming Google's algorithm. I'd say that a) it's going to be very difficult and b) if you're caught, you'll be penalized. What Derek doesn't know is that merely acquiring mass quantities of links from any old website isn't going to work.

There ARE some SEOs out there who try to 'game' the system, sure. Those are the people looking for a quick fix, and they're most likely going to get caught and penalized for what they're doing. That being said, there will always be 'black hat' ways to go about website promotion. Circa 1997, it was the keywords meta tag; soon search engines started ignoring that. Then it was cloaking and white-on-white text, and within the past couple of years it was link farming, which doesn't work, either.

"Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again."
This is the one piece of good advice Derek does have. Thing is, he goes on to further describe how to do this:

Make something you believe in. Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

While it's a method which can prove successful, what he's touting here is marketing via social media sites...which is not website optimization. Then to say it's the only marketing that works proves the lack of cognizance about the search industry. But, that's our opinion. What do you think - is SEO snake oil or legit?