10 Reasons Why SEO Haters Are Plainly Wrong
It happened again! A verbal attack because of what I do for a living or others assume I do.
Yeah, someone hates me because I have SEO in the title of my blog.
This time it happened on a social media site where I did not expect it as people get personalized news there.
Thus I was caught off guard and engaged in some kind of futile “debate”. You know how feeding trolls can quickly spiral out of control.
In future I won’t feed the trolls anymore. I will explain why they are wrong once and for all time.
When You Hate it Don’t Read it
People who dislike SEO do not have to read about it. Just ignore the topic! It’s not like on the early Reddit where everybody saw an article once it became popular and ended up on the front page.
You can choose your fields of interest and follow your favorite topics. When you choose
- Internet
- search
- social media
you have to deal with people who – like me – help others to learn how to build websites and make them popular.
How Actual Trolling Looks Like
You might think I exaggerate. Why would someone hate SEO with the fervor needed to actually experience such negative emotions. Decide yourself:
An Internet troll infamous for verbally abusive behavior “reviewed” my article about the pros of social media traffic with the words:
Fuck SEO, fuck you and your shitty blog, fuck creating content just to get traffic, and fuck sandspurs.
In case you though I made that “hate” up he literally uses the word hate himself in the next sentence:
I hate those things. I can’t even take out the garbage anymore without putting on shoes.
He closed his review by saying “get some AIDS”. This is not the SEO is bullshit kind of point of view, no, this is actual hate speech.
When I was new to social media I did not know if or how you can inform the staff of such a violation. Also it was a very difficult process.
Cyberbullying is a common problem these days. Journalists even visited actual trolls to find out what kind of people would spread hate online.
One of the oldest rules of online communications is still often the best solution: do not feed the troll. Trolls usually crave people’s attention.
Dealing with Verbal Attacks Once and For All Times
Anyway, as this kind of verbal attack is not new to me and I did fight such SEO haters in German I will also do in English but more efficiently.
I want to repel those spurious arguments once so I can link back to it every time a vigilante like that wants to offend me or the whole trade.
Also offenders like him are plainly wrong but many people who do not know much about SEO do still believe such accusations.
Inform yourself. Do not believe rumors or generalized prejudice. Please check out the 10 reasons why SEO haters are plainly wrong.
As this person offers only offers one excuse for their outlandish behavior and the rest is pure hate I have to add some common stereotypes about search engine optimization myself. SEO…
1. is “creating content just to get traffic“: No, SEO is creating traffic for your content, creating more content for your users and creating great content for your users and/or clients.
SEO is about guessing what the people want and giving it to them. SEO is assisting website owners to create content not just for themselves and their egos but also for the people out there.
2. is purely commercial: No, SEO is about empowering website owners of any type and budget, even those with no budget at all to optimize their blogs or websites.
They do it to reach their audience, whether they want to sell something, create a religious site or work for a non profit organization.
Especially SEO blogs like mine enable people to employ DIY optimization not only in the sense of SEO, but also design, usability, writing so that their websites are useful for their potential audience.
3. is selfish: SEO can be selfish but as stated above SEO can also be used for any type of website and goal – even altruistic ones.
It not only can, it is widely used for different purposes. SEOs assist others in their blogs so that they can master SEO themselves.
4. pollutes social networks and news: Well no, there might have been some spectacular cases where early social sites have been manipulated but that’s not necessarily or automatically SEO.
Most respected and well known SEOs are power users and valuable contributors to all kinds of social sites.
In many cases they even help to create the social sphere of such sites in the first place as early adopters.
5. is about manipulating Google results or other services: Well, no, it isn’t. You can manipulate the results in the sense that’s it is technically possible.
The Google algorithm is a bit flawed. Robots just can not determine what’s best for humans. The search engine still relies mostly on incoming links.
A widely used gray hat technique was that of “paid links”. It depended on the Google vulnerability to count inbound links as the main factor for rating a site.
People bribed website owners to get links to their properties.
I noticed that especially non-SEO people still tend to use this or even wackier methods as they think “you should do it”.
I sometimes encountered clients who said something like “I already optimized with some hidden text”. Even web developers suggested such “optimization” more than once.
Most good SEOs do not need such shady techniques as, like myself, they get enough link love just for creating content as in 1.
6. is SPAM: No, SEO is search engine optimization, in short making a site crawlable and indexable for search engine spiders, creating content for the users and making it known on the Web.
At the end of the day it’s supporting Google to do its job. Spam on the contrary in the case of search engines is tricking search engines.
SPAM makes Google “believe” a particular site offers content that is worth to be ranked high in the search results whereas it is not.
Although Spamdexing is likened to (black hat) SEO it’s almost like saying that shoppers and shoplifters are the same because they both go to the supermarket and take away groceries.
7. destroys the Internet: Again, SEO helps you to find relevant content on the Web. It allows webmasters to create sites not just for themselves but for their audiences.
SEO allows users to find the best and most relevant content on the best sites as in the long run only those can establish themselves as authorities and will be ranked high in Google and elsewhere.
8. Only bad spammy sites do SEO: You will only recognize bad SEO on bad sites. You won’t even notice good SEO on good sites. You will find those and enjoy the user experience.
Every webmaster, every online news outlet, almost every corporation that has not stopped evolving in 2001 does SEO.
The New York Times does it, Yahoo does it, ebay does it, every Web standards aficionado does it. WordPress is already search engine optimized by default.
9. Only rich people can afford it: Well no, SEO 2.0 and other blogs make it possible for every webmaster to learn how to optimize their sites.
That’s the purpose of SEO blogs like this one. SEO empowers the people to compete with newspapers and corporations. You can outrank the New York Times, Yahoo or ebay.
10. is sneaky and shady: No, every webmaster does it or should if he still does not. Representatives of large newspapers or corporations approach SEOs and want to do it.
Your neighbor does it and everybody who is not crazy enough to believe that he is the only person to decide what’s good for the rest of the world.
You Are Not Responsible for the Hate of Others
I practice search engine optimization and I stand for what I do with my real name unlike many people who offend me.
In case you do SEO yourself, you can send people this link. In case you did not know what SEO is about, now I hope I could clarify some points.
When you are a hater: never mind, you will always find someone to hate! Either the search engine optimizers or the
- Jews
- Muslims
- homosexuals
or whomever. Finding a scapegoat is easy. Just look for a minority that is not widely accepted due to prejudice.
It’s not about “protecting the Web” or something. It’s your problem. It’s your hate. It’s you. You destroy the Web.
I guess the good person of SU, who I’m sure isn’t indicative of SUs general opinion, has forgotten about real suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world and is going to right the worlds ills and make SU pure. Where to start to educate such people…
SEO and proud – the link is a finger towards non-believers!
I really liked this part: “Anyway, yeah, have some AIDS, etc.”
Very impressive reaction. But, to be fair, lots of low grade SEOs have pissed off a lot of people.
Good post. There will always be those that have nothing to say but negative things.
“to be fair, lots of low grade SEOs have pissed off a lot of people.”
Also to be fair, there are low grade people in every profession that piss a lot of people off (ambulance chasing lawyers, paparazzi journalists, athletes who abuse drugs, crazy astronauts, etc). I wouldn’t single out SEOs for the garbage on the internet.
Defending SEO’s by saying that hating us is similar to anti-semitism or bigotry is a stretch.
Thanks, as I agree with all of you I can’t add much. Besides you brian: As you did not experience it yourself you might suspect it but unfortunately you err. The same people that insult me for being a SEO on German Digg-clone YiGG, offend me by “telling” Polish jokes or calling me “subhuman” and other names the Nazi regime propagated.
This is the same mentality looking for a scape goat. We call it structural anti-semitism in social anthropology. If there are no jews to bash, find the next minority that is most suitable to be attacked.
That’s the “logic” behind it.
Read also the Wikpedia definition of hate speech, it encloses “profession”.
Btw.: I am user #2 at YiGG where I contribute just for fun and have over 350 front page postings. I submitted more or less 5 of mine own stories until now.
I appreciate you standing up for the seo profession. I’m going to guess that the haters don’t have commercial sites and businesses that rely on quality traffic.
I know the clients i provide seo services to are more than appreciative of my work. They outrank their competitors and they are capturing the lion’s share of targeted search traffic!
Isn’t that whay all site owners want?
Quality traffic you say? What and who is that exactly? Someone else who is trying to sell you something, or another blogger who had to voluntarily self-censor themself? Oh, sorry, I just must not believe enough or something. BTW, awesome job with the list, thar. I HEARD THAT’S WHAT YOUR READERS WANT, HUR.
Spam is spam. And if it’s SEO spam, then it’s bad. But I agree that SEO isn’t spam. :P
And there are companies out there getting people to write SEO pieces for only $4 a pop, so you don’t apparently have to be rich either. (You should do a piece on those SEO groups–the ones who underpay writers and whatnot. Just an idea.)
SEO is SPAM. Wow, I never heard that one. I will have to google it. I would love to write a piece about that. If anyone can share any links or stories, please do.
[…] more responses to SEO resistance, check out these links: http://seo2.0.onreact.com/10-reasons-why-seo-haters-are-plainly-wrong […]
The very basis of SEO is screwing over the user to push revenue-generating content over useful free content.
It is okay because the real SEO professionals do not need to explain themselves to the haters. The process of SEO is a mindset and there are right ways and wrong ways to going about it.