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July 02, 2004
On Search Engine Optimization
Seth Godin, guru of brilliant posts and effective marketing, talks today about the problems of Search Egine Optimization and his opinion is that most SEO these days is not worth the money. I have to say that I am very glad that the ideas presented in his post are almost the same as the ones we have posted here in the Rugles weblog numerous times ever since it first started six months ago. Search engine optimization is not a panacea. It is just one part in your many efforts.
It is a fact that search engine optimization, has received very bad reputation due to SEO professionals that either use unethical SEO tricks or simply do nothing at all for their customers. (As we all know and we discussed in the past submitting your site to millions of search engines is not the key to your success).
It is also a fact that the search engine rules may change at random times and at with random results (as it happened with the Google algorithm change last November). As we had commented back then
the other hand the internet is a dynamic, living organism with new site changing sites, new ideas, new SEO attempts and new spam attempts to beat the house.
and
the search engine substratum (whether Google or any other Search engine) are part of the SEO game and, fortunately or unfortunately, they demonstrate a strong reason why SEO will keep people busy (and frustrated) for the times to come, and part of their daily changing world.
Under these circumstances, are these grounds on which one can grow a business? The answer is a definite... maybe. Business and marketing is a science of many degrees of freedom so it is not easy to give a straight forward NO answer as Seth Godin gives and this establishes the disagreement that we have with him.
Search engine optimization is a definite fact of business life today and it will be hard to remove it at this stage. Many small and large companies are making large profits out of the simple advantageous position they have in Google for just a few keywords (we are happy enough to have helped some of them achieve these ranks).
However, under no circumstances do we consider SEO as the main element of the success of these businesses and under no circumstances would we ever advise anyone to base their full marketing efforts on SEO.
Success in business is a matter of many degrees of freedom (yet again). Figuring out the mechanics for turning strangers to friends, and friends to customers is not the easiest of things, and to be frank, ranking high in search engines often comes as a result of being able to turn strangers to friends and not as a cause.
SEO (either as a cause or effect) these days is unavoidably part of your marketing. But do not forget that marketing is only a part of your business.
Basil Drolias @ Rugles Website Marketing
Posted by Basileios at July 2, 2004 03:40 AM
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