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Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
11–20 of 85 posts
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#12I think HN is gradually, gradually warming to SEO. I remember way back when I was lurking here someone had a comment along the lines of they would be a hired assassin prior to doing SEO consulting. These days folks discuss SEO strategy here with some regularity, and it generally doesn't cause vitriolic reactions when it is perceived as non-manipulative. I think it is a matter of continuing to demonstrate very basic t…
I don't think I've warmed to SEO, necessarily. I just realize that unless the good guys start using the black magic, then the victory belongs only to the spammers.
Wait, I wonder if the spammers think of themselves as good guys too...
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#13SEO makes it harder for people to find useful information on the web instead of what someone spent time and money to "optimize" for Google. Developers know this, and so generally dislike SEO.
Bad SEO does that. Good SEO makes it easier for people to find the information they were looking for. It's a race.
But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. Bad SEO (gaming the system) is the hard part, and I have to imagine it's mostly the part people are willing to pay a lot of money for.
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#14At our last weekly meeting, we were discussing implementing SEO. My gut reaction was to question the decision to work with snake oil salesmen. Luckily, I thought before I spoke.
I think SEO needs a new acronym to differentiate between spammy abuse SEO and site structure/good practices. Maybe Search Engine Readability? Search Engine Compatibility?
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#15As a programmer at a fairly high traffic site, SEO is a way of life for us and we always think of SEO implications. The more difficult problem we have lately is the SEO vs user experience trade off. We dislike whenever SEO is chosen over the user experience.
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#16Here is why I would never personally work for an SEO company: (Obviously just my opinion, with all the bias that carries) Search engines are very interesting, technologically. Optimizing a search engine would be extremely interesting. Optimizing websites to keep up with the changes of somebody else's business (the search engine) is not interesting. You're playing catch-up. You essentially attempting to reverse engine…
Fair points.
We're working to figure out what works and provide software to message that and help businesses optimize. It's not just for search engines (we try to help with, for example, how/why people retweet, link, share content, "like" on FB, etc), but the point is a reasonable one; optimizing against existing systems vs. creating something new may be part of the issue.
Thanks for sharing, Brian.
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad SEO does that. Good SEO makes it easier for people to find the information they were looking for. It's a race.
But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. Bad SEO (gaming the system) is the hard part, and I have to imagine it's mostly the part people are willing to pay a lot of money for.
But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often
This is sort of like saying "good programming is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often", and since programming is a solved problem, anybody willing to pay a lot of money for programmers is clearly getting something hinky done.
Programming is not a solved problem. Neither is marketing. SEO exists at the intersection of programming and marketing. Every site and every business brings their own unique challenges to the mix, and they're not all addressable with "Slap some alt tags on those images and you're good to go", any more than you can solve any programming problem with "Rewrite it... with more AJAX!"
SEO for many startups will involve, among other considerations, "How do we convince our users to create? How do we convince our users to share?" Those are core product/marketing questions for many startups, but they're equally core to the SEO strategy, and they're tricky to get right. For that sort of startup, you could imagine someone looking over their widget's viral activity with the amount of intensity that Zynga spends on its viral channels, because sharing via the widget creates several types of value for the company (via direct traffic, branding, and ranking effects).
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#18I think HN is gradually, gradually warming to SEO. I remember way back when I was lurking here someone had a comment along the lines of they would be a hired assassin prior to doing SEO consulting. These days folks discuss SEO strategy here with some regularity, and it generally doesn't cause vitriolic reactions when it is perceived as non-manipulative. I think it is a matter of continuing to demonstrate very basic t…
I don't think I've warmed to SEO, necessarily. I just realize that unless the good guys start using the black magic, then the victory belongs only to the spammers. Wait, I wonder if the spammers think of themselves as good guys too...
Hmm... I think maybe this is where a big part of the problem lies. SEO hasn't been "black magic" for a long time now, and most of the "black magic" that worked from 1997-2003 is dead and gone, replaced by creative marketing, accessibility and best practices.
But perhaps that message has been drowned out by the ongoing perception from those early years of SEO?
BTW - this might be good material to explain my point above - http://ycombinator.posterous.com/the-first-yc-conference
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#19I think HN is gradually, gradually warming to SEO. I remember way back when I was lurking here someone had a comment along the lines of they would be a hired assassin prior to doing SEO consulting. These days folks discuss SEO strategy here with some regularity, and it generally doesn't cause vitriolic reactions when it is perceived as non-manipulative. I think it is a matter of continuing to demonstrate very basic t…
The points you make are disturbing. As far as I can tell, the reason why people shy away from SEO is not that it doesn't work. Indeed, it seems like people shy away from SEO because it works too well. At least for me, there's a perception that SEO is evil and crowds out legitimate content. I would hope that these startups are not going over to SEO just because it works; I would hope that SEO is trying to show that it works legitimately.
Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad SEO does that. Good SEO makes it easier for people to find the information they were looking for. It's a race.
But good SEO is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. Bad SEO (gaming the system) is the hard part, and I have to imagine it's mostly the part people are willing to pay a lot of money for.
Working in the SEO world for a long time on a huge number and variety of projects, I'd have to say that despite my respect for the people who visit and comment here, this comment is entirely false.
Bad SEO is easy, good SEO is hard. Just like anything else in life; nothing worth having comes easy.