An article published in InformationWeek earlier today, Fear the Google Blacklist, was emailed to me because it appeared to contradict the post I wrote yesterday, Debunking the “Over-SEO” Myth. The piece, written by Thomas Claburn (who is usually accurate – imho), uses a phrase in the first sentence that makes me cringe regarding the dangers of , “… excessive search engine optimization“.
There is NO SUCH THING as excessive search engine optimization. There are foolish SEO practitioners applying SEO techniques in dangerous ways but that doesn’t equate to “excessive SEO”. That sounds more like stupid SEO to me.
For the broken-record: SEO is all about making websites better for users and simpler for search spiders. SEO is about driving pre-qualified traffic. SEO is about being an extraordinary webmaster. SEO is NOT about cheating the search engines for better positioning.
Perhaps I am naive. Though I know there are cheaters in every sector of life, I still believe in the beauty of baseball. I also believe in fair business practices and the tendency of the vast majority of humans to live within the social contract. Similarly, I strongly believe the vast majority of search engine optimization specialists are practicing clean, penalty-free techniques. I know the team I work with here at Metamend does, as do the teams at the two other SEO firms my career has been associated with.
Actually, scratch the naive part… I am also a card-carrying member of the media and therefore rather cynical. I fully understand how bad or scandalous news pushes its way up above good-news stories. To tell the truth, it’s what the readers tend to read the most of.
In the SEO sector, there are always more stories of misbehaviour than of clean and legal victories. That’s because A) we expect the good stuff and tend to filter it out as it was supposed to be that way and B) obsess on the bad stuff because it gives us a “there for the grace of… go I”, ego-boost. I think that is unfortunate because we as a sector are in a breakthrough year in building our industry and getting the real information out about best practice SEO technique is, in my mind, essential for building a style and tone of the sector that makes us proud to be SEOs.
After reading the entire piece, I think it fully supports what I wrote yesterday.
“… according to Hitwise U.K. research director Robin Goad, the site got blacklisted by Google, presumably because the SEO techniques it used violated Google’s rules.”
That aside, I have enormous problems with the way the writer goes about making his point.
Sorry Thomas but I think your piece was a bit off-base. Better to warn readers to avoid fly-by-night, fast-buck artists than avoiding legitimate SEOs. Most of us are highly beneficial to our clients, a far leap from the hugely dangerous pretenders who too often define the lay-person’s understandings of our industry.
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