Why I am not quitting SEO

The world of SEO seems to be developing a bad reputation,  the spam and blackhat rubbish that doesn’t contribute to a great experience for netizens and “keyword stuffed pages” that don’t quite read as well to most people. It is well worth reading Martin Macdonalds post on SEO – here – “Why I am quitting SEO” I have had a lot of ABC ecommerce experiences (from Martins post),

It seems to be that this spam is what people think SEO is, whereas good SEO is invisible to the untrained eye, most users never see it, never know it is there, to the trained eye it is beutiful, it is the page that has the right metadata, the right content, on the right website that encourages “people” to share.

Typically it is focused on users, focused not on the search engines but on what users really want the experiece to be, but with a technical edge that works with search engines, talking to them to ensure they understood where the content is, what it is about and whether it is still relevant and upto date.

So when you seee comment spam, or badly written articles about payday loans on a fashion blog with “keyword” linked to another website  – this isn’t good SEO, this is lazy, frequently automated rubbish that won’t work, at least it shouldn’t and won’t long term, Google is actually getting clever and it may do more damage than good!

So the millions of people working hard behind the scenes, actively working with Google to ensure you get to see the best results invisibly is undermined by the worst of course this isn’t exclusive to the SEO industry, its just it seems to be more obvious here. (Google Cheat sheet for friends and family)

Lawyers, bankers, used car salesmen, every industry you can think of has its share of nice people who work damn hard trying to keep its own industry honourable, the online world is no exception, its just that the visibilty of the good stuff, is drowned by the visible spam.

Personally I am never quitting SEO – I know it is one of the most exciting fast moving industries, it is user focused, creative and incredibly technical, I can’t imagine another industry similar. Oddly for the vary same reasons Matt Hall is leaving SEO – http://marketermatt.com/why-i-hate-seo/ is why I love it!

Please, never call me a “inbound marketer” or a “growth hacker”  … I want to go with “SEO & technical marketing bloke ”  I am resisted the temptation to include the word ninja in somewhere- it is just too geeky.