Why People Hate Ads and Love SEO
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I hate ads. I’m not the only one.
Most people hate annoying ads.
People hate ads on the Web and block them using a plethora of tools.
They also hate outdoor ads and TV ads. They hate them
- for the interruption
- for the blatant lies
- for the selling of fake lifestyles
we are meant to aspire to and we can never reach in most cases.
They hate ads for shouting at them.
People hate ads for selling them something they don’t want when they don’t want to be sold to.
That’s also the reason why people love SEO.
People love SEO? This guy must be joking you think.
Isn’t SEO the most detested pariah on the Internet? No.
People Only Hate Things that Annoy
People don’t hate web hosting or web design.
Likewise people don’t hate SEO.
- People hate bad web hosting, bad web design and they hate bad SEO.
- People hate servers that go down and sites they can’t access.
- People hate awful user experience on cluttered portal like sites.
That’s why Google succeeded with a clean interface.
Also people hate spammy low-quality SEO!
It’s “SEO” implemented by people who have barely an understanding of search and user experience.
I’ve said it before:
Good SEO is invisible.
People only hate SEO they can see and recognize as such.
People hate SEO that looks like advertising. People hate ads.
When people see SEO that appears to be advertising they hate it.
When people read the NYT or the Chicago Tribune they don’t hate these publications inspite of them having dedicated inhouse SEO teams.
People love SEO because we, the SEO practicioners provide them what they want when they want it.
Nobody ever complains about finding the exact product, service or resource he has been searching for on top of Google.
You want to buy an iPad? I will sell you an iPad. I don’t tell you to search for it.
That’s exactly what SEO specialists do: They make the most relevant pages show up on top.
Now you’d say: No, it’s the holy Google that does it!
Evil SEOs only meddle with it! Well, no.
Who Makes Relevant Websites Visible?
Google has so many requirements a site has to fulfill to rank!
It’s very hard “position” a web page above others.
It’s not Google that makes relevant websites appear on top.
It’s the SEO experts who make the pages as relevant and Google friendly as the search giant needs them to appear on top.
No site matches Google’s expectations by itself. It takes people who work hard to make it relevant.
That’s why people love SEO.
SEO ensures quality of search results in order to fulfill people’s wishes.
The people get what they want when they want it because of SEO.
Google only responds to what webmasters and SEOs do.
Some people argue that SEO is bad because any website can get optimized to rank on top.
What about the other webmasters? Isn’t that unfair?
Well, who forbids them to practice SEO or hire an SEO company themselves?
Why would you want a website owner who spends lots of time and/or money to provide a valuable resource via SEO not to rank on top?
Most people won’t admit it but they love SEO. They hate ads.
So don’t make your SEO look like ads.
Btw. that’s one of the main reasons why I don’t do PPC.
* Creative Commons image by JM Scott
Wow, that is so true, I’ve never thought of it like that. The main problem is that “Good SEO” is very labour intensive and as a result cost a lot more that “Bad SEO”. When you were talking about people hating bad SEO, all I could think of was how much I hate comment bots’.
Agree most of us hate fake ads but not everybody love SEO.
I think that the reputation came of some SEO folks sending spam emails and/or not doing “accepted” social norms leading to this misconception.
At social sites that are more technical like Shpinn is ok but not in social sites like e.g. Stumbleupon (only if at your profile you love SEO themes) because if you don’t like these topics and you receive “hey stumble my SEO services” probably you will report him as a spammer.
Who does not want top rankings? All and a good SEO is the answer.
Cheers,
Gera
I think of SEO is trying to help google give people the best answer to the question they are asking.
It just depends what ads you have on your site. If you have ads everywhere and pop-ups then yes, it can be annoying. Having just a few at the side/top of a website is not really that bad and loads of webmasters have them.
I have a t-shirt that says “PPC is the lazy man’s SEO” :-)
Really good content can be some of the best ads you can produce.
Wow ! Apart from the content, the style was mesmeric Jim. Do you also take classes for article writing?
Great post :)
I have a love/hate relationship with SEO personally, I hate it when I get customers who want to optimise their site for seriously competitive phrases and areas and spend hours optimising the site. But I love it when it all pays off and you get to see their site on page one of the search engines!
As for adverts… nothing to say on that subject! PPC is a waste of money, use that money to pay an SEO consultant to optimise your website and get to page one that way, hardly anyone clicks on PPC ads nowerdays because usually it is not the information they want.
Good content and other organic SEO practices is all it needs, no banners on other sites etc.
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I love SEO because it can bring me IPS.
This is very true “Bad SEO” gives SEO a reputation, where as SEO done well is discrete yet effective and doesn’t appear like a poor advert.
“Good SEO is invisible.” – Well said. People have caught onto PPC ads. At one point they worked well, now it seems to get no more than 2% of the total page’s clicks. That is completely a poor investment for most small businesses. They bid high and then they end up going bankrupt.
However, I don’t exactly agree with your statement on how everyone hates adverts. Maybe I’m just biased (because of my background in Advertising), but I love well-done adverts. If they don’t annoy me or interrupt whatever I’m doing… I see nothing wrong with a catchy ad. But if we’re simply referring to annoying pop-ups that like to take up your entire screen, or self-playing video ads you can’t turn off, in that case I will say everyone dislikes adverts. ;)
I love SEO. It helps me a lot! :)
Love it or hate it, SEO is hear as long as it works. I hate ads as much as the next person. I’ve trained myself to not look at ads that popup and only look for the “exit” button in it :-) That’s skill baby!
Interesting post. I was looking for such post from long term. You know it’s really good discussion topic. Today’s we are habituated to see ads ads ads and ads everywhere…I hate it..I am agree that people hate bad SEO or you can say black hat SEO, even crawler hate it. Good SEO takes time to give you desired result but for such long time..SEO is natural and you will have to make effort and new ideas to get desired result..All interesting..I think we all love SEO…Isn’t it??
I love seo because it is fact that it takes time but gives a good result for long time and I also want to go with long time result but if your website is new so you can apply for ads then we can say that ads are also useful as seo.
As long as the user finds what they want when they click on the link in the serps, even if there are pop ups and the site has poor content, the user will still get some user experience out of it
I also love SEO because i love mathematics and numeric sequences
People hate bad SEO (Cloaking, Spamming (Keyword Stuffing), Hidden Text, Doorway Pages, Redirect Pages, Duplicate Content or Websites, Linking to Unrelated Sites or Bad Neighborhoods, Link Farms etc)
People like organic SEO which does not show on page, organic seo takes time but it provides you long term benefits and makes your clients happy
I really love SEO because you can explore everything about in internet marketing and earn you money as well. There’s many things that you can do in SEO in order to promote once sites.
It’s definitely true! I also hate whatever kind of ads especially the pop-up ads. It just so annoying! I’m just thankful there’s always a blocking software for those ads.
I’m also annoyed with those pop-up ads, very disturbing. I like SEO.
This is so true. I love this blog. Personally I also hate those ads that keeps on popping when I am attempting to open different websites.
i love seo but I’m still learning because seo proved to be more difficult than advertising.
Have to agree with Carl Barlett after working in SEO for 18 months with over 300 clients – GOOD SEO is extremely labor intensive (and repetitive ). With out a dedicated team (including someone researching search engines algorithms ) – monitoring results anything else will result in BAD SEO – there’s no in between…organic or PPC – other wise you will be simply chasing your own tail and delivering Clients the best service.
I agree with Jim, Carl and Adrian. what it boils down to is people hate poor work efforts and therefore the poor work that is utimately delivered to us as content (or PPC or SEO). Most people I think take “some” level of pride in what they do and when they get home and are trying to relax the last thing they want to see or deal with is BAD content, bad PPC and bad SEO. Fortunately, there are still a few out there that actually care about those things and are working to make it better for everyone…
There is no accountability with advertising either. Every business can blatantly say they have the lowest prices, best quality, or the notoriously famous quote “World Famous Wings”! I find it very interesting.
I am having troubles catching your drift with the love/hate good/bad thing. I am also having troubles understanding your point that “people love SEO”. I think people end up loving the result of SEO – I doubt that the shopper finding what she wants at the top of Google search even knows what SEO is! On the point about advertising, many things would not exist without advertising – free network TV, (mostly) free Google services, free Google search. Give people the options 1) you can pay for cable programs without advertising or 2) you can watch free TV with commercials.
David: Exactly! Likewise most people don’t love the streets they drive on and they take their car for granted. Still they apreciate to get quickly to the place they want by car. So without knowing they depend on the men who actually build the roads and the ones who fix them.
Of course I exaggerate here to get the point across. Most people don’t know what SEO is at all.
Great article! It really explains the difference between ads and SEO and how SEO actually does help get the good sites get on the first pages of google, yahoo, etc.
I hate advertising so much, that I canceled Geico insurance, because of their annoying gecko and foreign accent.
I never buy, what is forced in my face and don’t understand why would all those lies convince anyone to do so. Why do they push all those drugs and more than half of the message is the negative effect, what the drug can do to you? Are people that dumb?
I also canceled paid TV and watch mostly PBS.
On the web, when you search for something, unless you close cookies, ads will follow you to all other websites. Pointless, since I already researched that particular item.
Ads are really annoying but they are also the source of information for new products.
if relevant ads on a post are used they may not feel annoying
agreed