SEO ROI NGE?
Published July 1st, 2004 in Web DesignNot Good Enough?
As a web designer working alone, SEO (like hundreds of other areas of knowledge) is of interest to me. Seth Godin, marketing pundit, wrote today about the The Promlem with SEO.
Basically, he says that SEO is:
- potentially shady, and
- may not produce results
The first, I agree with wholeheartedly. SEO buyers need to be made aware that many practices are frowned upon by the search engines. Though these tactics may work today, they could (and likely will) backfire when Google comes up with an algorithm to link the practice to a site.
To the second point I must add a couple thoughts. While Google’s algorithm is not shared with us, the unwashed, there are some practices that fall under the umbrella of SEO that are known to be effective. See Google’s Webmaster Guidlines. This page includes lists of things that you can do to help your ranking and things that they would not recommend. A reading of this page mostly echoes an ethical, common sense approach to optimization. Proper markup including meta tags, descriptive urls, and reciprocated linking with similar or complimentary sites have an effect on pagerank and search results.
So, don’t sell the farm, there are no guarantees in SEO. As Seth says, relying on search results is not a business model, it’s gambling. However, design your site with search engines in mind.
Couldn’t agree with you more. We follow the basic principles of web design. And we literally believe everything that Google says in how to write content on a webpage: for your readers. I am not aware of anyone being consistently successful with SEO though iProceed.com is an example of website that succeeds because we worry about our reader rather than the robot.
I think Seth is overlooking the fact that the fundamentals of SEO that you’ve outlined above are only fundamental once you’re aware of them. Without covering really basic stuff like that, you’re in a sense penalizing your site. Of course, without good content (copy, products, etc) you’ll have a hard time being found.
you raise some interesting points, but while an optimiser can make no guarantees a well executed seo campaign WILL bring more traffic to a site. You and Seth are right though seo can be viewed as a dark art- all smoke and mirrors- so using a firm/individual with a proven track record who report regularly is really important.