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Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

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Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#21

Post by randfish »

trey wrote: post #15

As 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.

I completely agree Trey - I'd say that over the last 5 years, I've almost never (maybe once) seen a case where SEO had to interfere with or detract from good user experience. The engines have actually done a great job making this an extreme edge case.

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#23

Post by modoc »

mquander wrote: post #13
modoc wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

In my experience with several large-ish companies (ymmv with smaller shops), they paid outside SEO firms good money to provide "good" SEO and tell them what we (the technical folks) already knew. However, the value was that then we were given budget/time to go make the changes/cleanup the pages/etc... And it gave weight to our suggesting that maybe not all the content should only be showing in fancy JS driven modals, etc... They also had some metrics and advice regarding the most useful keywords/content we should be utilizing (helpful stuff) that the internal marketing folks had no ideas on.

Thankfully, I haven't worked at a company that hired a "bad" SEO firm, yet.

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#24

Post by randfish »

mitchellhislop wrote: post #2

As a coder, I would enjoy those problems. Maybe its a framing issue-if you frame the jobs as you did here, rather than "work for an SEO company", maybe that would help?

Yeah, we've generally tried to position ourselves in this fashion, but with SEO in our name (SEOmoz) and with core values of transparency and authenticity, we'd prefer not to try to hide who we are or what we do. We believe whole-heartedly in our mission: To simplify the promotion of ideas on the web. SEO is the first part of that puzzle.

Also - if you're interested and are in Seattle (or could be talked into moving here) please drop me a line - rand@seomoz.org

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#25

Post by modoc »

randfish wrote: post #21
trey wrote: post #15

As 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.

I completely agree Trey - I'd say that over the last 5 years, I've almost never (maybe once) seen a case where SEO had to interfere with or detract from good user experience. The engines have actually done a great job making this an extreme edge case.

I've seen several instances where in order to make really nice JS/AJAX UI interactions and flows also SEO friendly we had to do a lot of extra work. However that work also makes us accessible, so it's not the end of the world....

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#26

Post by thetrumanshow »

randfish wrote: post #18
thetrumanshow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abov…

I didn't mean to get hung up on the term 'black magic' as it pertains to things that are purely evil and mysterious in nature, but rather things that are generally useful but (socially) in poor taste. Also, it feels a little dirty.

But this raises a valid point that we should address. If there are, as Matt Cutts points out, more than 100 attributes that can affect your search engine rankings, and you are purposefully attempting to manipulate a decent subset of them, then you have likely fallen from grace in that you are no longer just using 'creative marketing, accessibility and best practices'.

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#28

Post by webwright »

smallblacksun wrote: post #4

SEO 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.

Really? So, say tomorrow you build a better Wikipedia. How long before you're on page 1 of ANYTHING? If you're 1000% better than Wikipedia, maybe it's only 12 months. But if you're only 15% better than Wikipedia... It could be years or never.

SEO allows small/smart companies to compete against established behemoths in search engine results.

Your statement is true of ALL marketing and ALL sales. The truth is that marketing and sales efforts are a success multiplier to the quality of your product. Yes, that means that good companies can get beaten by crappy companies who out-execute them in the arena of sales and marketing.

You can ignore sales and marketing in the hopes that your product is SO much better than the competition that it will win anyway... But that's almost never the case (note the $ that Apple spends on marketing, bizdev, and branding).

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#29

Post by ronnoch »

modoc wrote: post #7

The biggest issue is the difference between: SEO=link farming, spamming blogs, generated blogs/sites, etc... SEO=building accessible standards compliant markup, making it easy for people to find content they were actually looking for, etc... My gut reaction to hearing "SEO Company" makes me think of #1, even though I know "good" SEO is really just good page development, good content, good use of keywords, etc... As a…

You're exactly right about the difference, and I'd add that bias against SEO is dangerous in the second case because the good kind of SEO is absolutely critical to the success of most sites.

Catering to the user and offering content / services that people want should be the #1 priority, but if Google doesn't index your site properly then the people who want it will never see it.

Re: Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO

#30

Post by webwright »

whughes wrote: post #19
patio11 wrote: post #5

I 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 i…

Good sales teams crowd out great products with crappy sales teams (no no sales at all). Great marketing destroys great products that have no marketing.

The best developers take their head out of the code and realize that it's not a true product meritocracy-- in Google search results, in the App Store, or in any marketplace you care to name. AND they realize that really freakin' awesome things happen when you combine a great product with great marketing.

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