Why the Internet Needs SEO
I often get asked, normally by other SEO’s or journalists that are writing about search, what is SEO? What is Search Engine Optimisation? I often struggle to give a one line answer other than “we are the strange breed of people that makes websites like yours appeal to websites like Google and Bing”
So why the Internet needs SEO specialists like me in the words of John MU (Googler)
(did you know that serving a 503 HTTP result code for the robots.txt will block crawling of your site completely?).
I wonder how many people may have read that statement and thought nothing more than that’s not my problem? Or that if you 301 redirect a page 5 times it’s classed has a 404? Wonder how many web design companies check the 301s or even know what a bloody 301 is?
I wonder how many NON SEO’s have read these papers:
http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/robots_meta_tag.html
http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/robots_txt.html
http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started.html
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html
What saddens me is I also wonder how many SEO’s have read those papers, or even know what http status codes are, or the fact that our industry is Google crazy. For me if it doesn’t work in Bing, it doesn’t work in Google and Bing has some smart tools :
Bing Webmaster tools:

also check out Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit another great product
So why the Internet Needs SEO’s is because we are the breed of people that actually help get your website in order so that you have the best possible chance of getting fully indexed and ranking, SEO are the people that monitor and watch the changes that the search companies apply to their properties. We are not to be mistaken for SEO sales people who will promise you the world and untold wealth for £500 a month, (let face facts if it was that easy they wouldn’t be selling it they would be doing it), or businesses that see SEO as a quick bolt on to web design but still let your homepage have title tags like, homepage !
Dave
29 Comments
LordManley - http://twitter.com/?status=@LordManley
That was an excellent piece. Who ghost wrote it?
Richard B.
LOL Manley.
No seriously, SEO is necessary, but there’s more than one way to reach out to customers. Look at social media and sites like GetMorePopular I think social media is the wave of the future and how businesses can best reach out to customers. Businesses do need smart people running these campaigns and using these resources to the best of their ability. I think that’s the smart thing.
David Naylor
@manley I’m taking more time over what I do these days instead of banging on the keyboard not reading what I’ve just typed and hitting publish, I read the artilce send to to be proofed and then re-read it again then publish it ๐
Dave ( unlike comments :~)
LordManley - http://twitter.com/?status=@LordManley
๐
Harvey Mason - http://www.domains.co.uk
The problem is working out whether the SEO sales person does actually know what they are talking about. Some questions organisations can ask would be really handy ๐
Dan - http://www.keywordshack.com
A workaround could be asking a presentation of previous projects/campaigns.
LordManley - http://twitter.com/?status=@LordManley
To be fair, it goes deeper than that – the salesman’s relative knowledge, when compared to other salesmen, is not a good indicator of the technical capability of those who will do the actual work, merely a reflection of the level of technical knowledge within the sales team.
Richard Astley is a great account manager with superb technical knowledge, but I still would want to know that there was some much more technical geek in a back room somewhere.
David Naylor
@Harvey Personally I feel that anyone asking for Seo services should have basically 5 – 10 key questions for the sales person and of course the sales person should be able to answer, and not fuckard questions like how many links a month will I get and when will I be number one for all my keywords.
hobo - http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/
I thought you were being more professional there…. is fucktard a new server response? Maybe it should be….. ๐
Alan L - http://twitter.com/rouninmedia
The way I explain SEO to non-specialists is:
“Imagine a librarian enters a huge, empty library filled with empty (but labelled) shelves and sees, on the floor, a huge pile of books which they have to place on the shelves. Now they could just put the books on the shelves in a random order and be done. But then none of the library visitors would be able to find the kinds of books they were looking for. So instead, the librarian looks at each book for clues as to which part of the library they should shelve the book.
The book can give the librarian all sorts of clues as to where it needs to be shelved in the library. The picture on the cover; the title of the book; the recommendations on the back of the book; who the recommendations are by; the index of the book; the contents of the book; the introduction of the book; whether the books pages are filled with text or are mostly illustrations etc.
A very good bookmaker will know EXACTLY how to produce a book so as to give the librarian the best possible chance of placing the book on the most relevant library shelf where the maximum number of library visitors looking for it will find it.
That’s what SEO is.”
David Naylor
@alan so basically we are shelve stacker’s, great
Jim Rudnick - http://www.canuckseo.com
a B-I-G cancuk head nod to this rant, David….spot-on!
I’m gonna send this URL to a couple of clients too….they NEED to understand this as well, eh!
๐
Jim
Martin - SEO Australia - http://www.mitash.com
I had expected some in-depth analysis kind of content here! Yet, you gave something in a new way. Like your style ๐
David Naylor
@Jim it’s one of the reasons I keep telling people I hate this industry I love my job and what I do but the industry jeez…
can you imagine the guy that promotes the company that created heated double glazing units they are really expensive but the they keep the heating bills down they also convert natural sunlight into stored energy and they are coated in a special product to stop heat leaking via the windows these are the future… that guy is amazing or just a double glazing sales man
Richard Boyd - http://www.realoasis.com
Hey Dave!
Keep banging on about the basics, then perhaps one day designers will actually wake up to the fact the websites are not just built and then forgotten. The lack of 301 usage on redesigned websites drives me mad, don’t they get how many links they will loose? Oh and I’m talking about public sector sites loads of cash and employing companies who should really know what they are doing. Anyway rant over…
As for fuckard questions, who writes these SEO sales scripts…? ๐
Flash Banners - http://www.kooldesignmaker.com
good work dave!
you have tried to create awareness to the people that are confused with SEO concept.
SEO is not single function or simply a product to be sold.it is a diverse concept but the purpose is very simple
geir - http://geir.me
Excellent post Dave. Not sure I’m getting max value of Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit, a guide for noobs would be cool ๐
I will translate this line an steal it, “we are the breed of people that actually help get your website in order so that you have the best possible chance of getting fully indexed and ranking”… ๐
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Jeorge Peter - http://www.wickedinnovations.com/
without them maybe google will not upgrade every now and then in terms of how they rank websites.
Rahul Batra - http://www.aspireinfosys.com
This is really great, finally some one got the answer of this question. Now we can give this answer t those who will ask us this question again?
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Adam Heaton - http://www.weblinx.co.uk
Great post David, always enjoy reading your posts as they are more from a personal point of view rather than a “I have to write something so here goes nothing.”
Jason Hendricks - http://www.verticalmeasures.com
@Alan L – great way to sum up what we do for a living. Too many uninformed individuals feel that SEO is simply the implementation of obvious solutions while hyping up the work in order to charge a premium. If it were all so obvious and easy, we wouldn’t have so many clients and websites needing help.
Thomas Kupracz
Great post. An SEO ‘guy’ is sort of like a middleman for any product. You can spend your days going door to door, or find one middleman that will give you distribution. That’s how I see SEO.
Thanks again for the insights!
Alan L - http://twitter.com/rouninmedia
@Jason – Thanks – I’ve always found it useful to explain online stuff in offline terms to laypeople.
Dave quipped: “[…] so basically we’re just shelf-stackers”
Hoho. But of course it’s Google who is the grand “shelf-stacker”…
… whereas WE are book-binding craftsmen par excellence. >;->
Srinivas Kumar - http://www.internetsearchoptimizer.in
Very nice post.. most people think seo is very easy.. and just as you pointed many web design companies are not aware of status codes and dont create proper site structure etc
Also i too think that Bing is very important and we need to give importance to bing too.. people are too much concerned about google.. bing did a remarkable job last year and bing this is their best search product till date.. i hope much better improvements will be there from bing.
Craig Addyman
What else would you call the home page?
Only kidding ๐
Peter
Can someone please point me to the URL from Google where they say they will 404 a link if there are more than 5 x 303’s , or a url that says a 503 HTTP result code for the robots.txt will block crawling of your site completely?.