The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

In Defense of SEO

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I’m not a search engine optimization (SEO) professional, but I know a lot of them. I’ve been lucky enough to attend dozens of search-related conferences (from Search Engine Strategies back in the day to SMX more recently), and, in the course of this, I’ve met some very talented, well-spoken, down-to-earth good people.

If you’re wondering why SEO (the practice) and SEOs (the people) are in need of defense, you probably haven’t read the Verge article posted a few days ago. Or Danny Sullivan’s reaction. To be honest, I haven’t read either of them in full, but after a few paragraphs like those I’ve pasted below, I was moved to write. This hasn’t happened to me in a long time, so I thought I’d express some of that passion (and reason) here.

A few choice phrases from the piece in question:

The links that pop up when they go looking for answers online, they say, are “absolutely unusable”; “garbage”; and “a nightmare” because “a lot of the content doesn’t feel authentic.” Some blame Google itself, asserting that an all-powerful, all-seeing, trillion-dollar corporation with a 90 percent market share for online search is corrupting our access to the truth. But others blame the people I wanted to see in Florida, the ones who engage in the mysterious art of search engine optimization, or SEO.

Doing SEO is less straightforward than buying the advertising space labeled “Sponsored” above organic search results; it’s more like the Wizard of Oz projecting his voice to magnify his authority. The goal is to tell the algorithm whatever it needs to hear for a site to appear as high up as possible in search results, leveraging Google’s supposed objectivity to lure people in and then, usually, show them some kind of advertising.

Perhaps this is why nearly everyone hates SEO and the people who do it for a living: the practice seems to have successfully destroyed the illusion that the internet was ever about anything other than selling stuff.

Everyone hates SEO and the people who do it for a living?

I certainly don’t, and my viewpoint on these folks and their profession is much more well-informed than one could possibly gain by observing things from afar and then attending a single conference. Sure, there are bad actors, but to tar the whole profession would be like saying all lawyers are bad because some are unethical. (Bad example?)

Most people who do SEO are just looking to get their business, or their client’s business, visibility on the internet. They work with retailers or pediatric dentists or farm-to-table restaurants or mom-and-pop run car washes. They work with everyone. If you’re publishing on the internet and you’re not doing SEO, you’re doing something wrong. Because SEO is just following best practices — and the best practice of all is creating good, useful content that interests and benefits your target audience — to help Google discover (and therefore rank) your content high when people are looking for what you offer.

As you might imagine, those who publish on the internet are also no strangers to SEO. Since I’ve worked in internet publishing ever since it’s been a thing (I launched this site in 1995), I’ve gotten a behind-the-scenes look at what people do to improve their rankings and it’s not mumbo jumbo. Amanda Chicago Lewis, in the Verge article, compares SEO to doing a rain dance or ritual sacrifice. It’s not that. As many people told her for the piece, it’s a lot of hard work. It takes time and effort to develop great content, make sure your site is organized in a logical way and get pages to load as quickly as possible. Especially when you’ve got years of content online.

Is business always bad?

Here’s what it comes down to, though — your fundamental perspective on the nature of business. Why do I think this? Another line from the article:

And as much as I might hate the way the SEOs who don’t follow Google’s rules have altered my online experience, the reality is that most people running a company will break whatever rules they are able to get away with breaking.

To me, that’s crazy talk. Let me say that again.

…Most people running a company will break whatever rules they are able to get away with breaking.

Really? Just because someone’s trying to make a buck — or even lots of bucks — that doesn’t mean they are evil. If you believe it does, there’s really nothing I can say to change your mind. Call me a Pollyanna, but I’ve met lots of smart, honest, well-intended SEOs. Even the article admits that the days of easy money in the space are over, and the sleaziest of the lot have moved on to easier, more lucrative pursuits.

I also believe Google does a good job in an increasingly complex environment, though it will need to be continually working to deliver better results. No, it’s not perfect, and the challenges facing it are only growing in a generative AI-powered world, but I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on. Others will disagree.

The Digital Home Hub – Family Calendar

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If your family is anything like mine, every day is aflutter with activities — Cub Scouts, Football Practice, Soccer Practice, Parkour Class, etc. And as our eldest enters Junior High next year, the number of goings-on is only likely to increase.

With all this hubbub, we’ve experienced mornings when we’ve started hustling the kids out the door to get to school, only to realize that today is School Picture Day or Field Trip Day or Crazy Socks Day or whatever the school has cooked up. And, of course, we simultaneously realize that our child is woefully unprepared for the occasion — dressed all wrong for picture day, failing to have the correct accouterments for field day, and with socks that are unmatched, but not exactly “crazy”. [Read more…] about The Digital Home Hub – Family Calendar

Alexa as a part of the family: We got Skills

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Since we added the Amazon Echo to the household last year, it’s been fascinating to see how my children (now 7 and 10) have adapted to “her” presence. The youngest delighted in asking Alexa to tell him corny jokes and, more practically, used the device to time himself when doing his homework. The oldest learned quickly how one needed to ask her questions to yield useful answers. Digital natives, to be sure.

Since then, Alexa has become an integral part of our lives. I use her to entertain me and answer questions while my hands are occupied with cooking or washing dishes. She’s set to remind us of when we should be headed out the door every school day, and we’ve set up a Friday playlist on Spotify — which, of course, include two versions of Rebecca Black’s classic — to cheer us and get us moving on the last day of the work/school-week. I even replaced my bedside alarm clock with a Dot.

So when I started to investigate the idea of Alexa Skills, it was natural that I involved my kids — well, one kid in particular who happens to love trains.

[Read more…] about Alexa as a part of the family: We got Skills

How I made my drip irrigation system “smart” and automatic

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X-Post from my other personal site, Free-Range.org

garden-irrigation-planThough this site mostly chronicles my adventures in the natural domain, astute readers may have guessed what a tech dork I actually am. If you haven’t, you’ll be certain after this post.

In my work life, I’m online all the time and I’ve seen software developers make great strides recently toward automating formerly mundane tasks. For example, when someone fills out a form online, I used to be emailed the output and that’s all. Now I can have it auto-imported into a contact management database and sent to a spreadsheet at the same time, so I can sort it, update it and refer to it super easily. Previously, this would have required me to do data entry in a variety of different places — and each time there was the potential for me to make an error.

Of course, I’m eager to apply these time-saving shortcuts in my non-work life, as well. Hence, the project I’ll outline here. [Read more…] about How I made my drip irrigation system “smart” and automatic

On Apple: “Branding” Is More Than Just Marketing

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Apple iPhone 6

The Apple phone unlocking issue hit the Republican debate last night, with candidate Marco Rubio accusing the technology company of putting branding before patriotism.

“They think it hurts their brand,” Rubio said. “Well, let me tell you, their brand is not superior to the United States of America.”

It seems the presidential candidates have a mistaken idea of what a brand really is. Branding isn’t just marketing — advertising, email marketing, etc. Branding is about everything that your company and product are about.

You express your brand through all of your formal communications, yes. But the design of your store, the demeanor of the person at the call center, the expertise of the kid behind the counter — not to mention what your top executives say in unguarded moments — all combine to make up your brand. If there is dissonance between elements, people notice, and it affects your business.

So Apple standing up to the U.S. government isn’t about a trifling attempt to protect its “image.” It’s really about Apple doing what it, as a company, believes to be the right thing. The right thing for its business, yes. But also the right thing for the country and its people.

Others may disagree, but I hate the idea of people diminishing the importance of Apple’s stance by dismissing it as mere branding. If you want to put it in those terms, one might say that the U.S. is hurting its own brand by chipping away at the personal freedoms that it purports to be protecting.

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