Warmest Greetings,

:: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 ::

Are we not men? We are DEVO.

Ok. So I'm showing my age. But that song is ringing in my head right now as I ponder what an SEO person is.

We are men and women who help websites come up in searches on the Internet. To do that, we've been accused of tricking, manipulating, and spamming search engines. Yep. Some search engine optimizers did just that. Please know they are the black sheep of the family. They need to be sent on a very long Outreach quest into the wilderness with no laptop or access to email and must leave all their porn site passwords at home too.

The rest of us who HELP web site owners do something entirely different, without the use of crummy stupid dog tricks that foul up search results and create havoc for engine software technology (i.e. algorithms). We teach web site owners how to enhance their web sites for both the user and the search portal so that both can find what they're looking for.

It's that simple. I'll repeat it.

We help users and search engines find what they are looking for. Our magical trick consists of building web pages that have a clear purpose, offer value, directly relate to what the user is looking for and is found by legitimate means via algorithms designed to find them quickly. We get our hands into the code itself, which means we must know how to read it and know how to structure it so that it performs well. Many of us are experienced programmers, user interface engineers, or marketing specialists who bring those skills to the table when you hire us.

We do try to read minds. We can't help it. There's a hundred ways to ask a question and we wish our clients' sites came up everytime you asked for it. But, unless some of us are new age SEO masters, we'll likely not know how everyone on the planet is going to search for something. Yes, I've seen some SEO aliens try some pretty crazy stunts to try and outwit engines. They give me a headache. They may be main reason search engines ended free submissions.

Now a song by the Talking Heads is in my head. Instead of "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!" I hear Google saying "This is not by beautiful search engine!" or Yahoo! saying "This is not my beautiful new idea to drive more revenue!"

(The truest measure of a real SEO/SEM professional is that we listen to good music and think we sound great in the shower. You can find me under the keyword "bubbles".)

Competitive words are just too expensive these days and unless my site reaches a PR10 in just under 60 seconds upon submission, my time and money are better spent building a web site that users like and return to. Let's return to the days when the Internet was fun, shall we?

Kim

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 11/06/2002 12:19:51 PM

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