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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

#51

Post by nl »

randfish wrote: post #24
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…

I agree that the name is a huge problem. SEO is off putting in itself, but then appending "moz" makes it seem like you are trying to have some association with Mozilla too.

I know you guys are well established, and I've read some of your stuff with interest, but that name is terrible.

You should try setting up a separate entity called "Search Analytics & Research" or something that does the actual engineering, and try A/B testing job ads. I bet you'd get a hugely different response.

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

#52

Post by smanek »

CyberFonic wrote: post #42
throwaway123 wrote: post #39

Let me explain why I have learned to hate SEO over the years. I'm writing this from a throwaway HN account. I work for a 4-year old company, where I was one of the first 3 employees. We have a very popular website that gets over 400 million page views per month. We get lots of traffic from Google. When I started, our priority was making a great, simple user interface. But we were also very aware of SEO, and paid much…

Did you try A-B testing to verify that the SEO tweaks actually did produce improvements? Seems to me that the absence of testing makes it difficult to verify the improvements that any specific SEO attempt might make. Unfortunately, there are too many SEO 'hand-wavers' trying to cash in on the widespread ignorance. From what I've seen genuine SEO results are a lot harder work than the SEO-oil salesmen would admit.

How would you possibly A/B Test SEO improvements?

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

#53

Post by mikesimonsen »

Rand - It sure seems like you're recruiting sophisticated application engineers, you're not recruiting SEO engineers. That is, this is a recruiting problem (yours) not a perception problem (theirs).

Focus your headline on the sexy work you're recruiting the engineers for, not the market your customers are in. Why mention SEO at all in your recruiting?

Oo turn it on it's head and address the fear in your recruiting efforts. Like, "how can a gig as awesome as this possibly be found in the slimy, shady underworld of search engine optimization? mwahaha."

Maybe I'm biased because I'm an SEOmoz client, but I'd imagine that once they get past the initial hurdle that your firm doesn't fit a preconception about SEO anyway. So get em over that initial bump.

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

#54

Post by sjs382 »

briandoll wrote: post #10

Here 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…

It isn't about keyword-stuffing (and hiding these keywords from users) anymore. It's about optimizing a site for organic traffic and having a true focus on who the customer is.

Use the Betty Ford Center, a residential drug and alcohol treatment center, as an example. You want to optimize for "private" and "recovery" rather than dilute your site with keywords like "clinic" which don't serve your target audience.* _This_ is what effective SEO is about.

It's only "gaming the system" in the same way that traditional advertising is--you want to do your best to get your message in front of the right eyes.

* "Clinic" is often associated with "cheap" or "free" by customers who are a better fit for the Betty Ford Center.

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

#55

Post by anthonyb »

patio11 wrote: post #17
mquander wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inters…

Good programming is mostly easy, common-sense techniques that don't change very often. At least, if you want to ship your product. Also, answering questions as far as getting your users to create and share is largely a UI/product issue, nothing to do with SEO.

I think the main issue is that most developers/business owners have seen SEO companies charge enormous sums for adding very little value, or using dubious ethical means such as link farming, keyword stuffing, invisible keywords and so on. It's going to take a long time for all of that to wear off.

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

#56

Post by clueless »

nostrademons wrote: post #48
CyberFonic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try A-B testing to verify that the SEO tweaks actually did produce improvements? Seems to me that the absence of testing makes it difficult to verify the improvements that any specific SEO attempt might make. Unfortunately, there are too many SEO 'hand-wavers' trying to cash in on the widespread ignorance. From what I've seen genuine SEO results are a lot harder work than the SEO-oil salesmen would admit.

I'm kinda curious how A/B testing for SEO works. You can't show one version of your site to half of Google and another to...er, the other half of Google? I suppose you could measure your search referers one month, make the change, and then measure it the next month, but your data will be very noisy. You're likely to get more searchers coming later simply because of additional word-of-mouth, traction within the market…

Google Website Optimizer: A free website testing and optimization tool, which can be used to find out what site content and designs which best resonates with the visitors, by letting Website Optimizer to show different versions of website to visitors while tracking the performance of each version.

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

#57

Post by ktsmith »

randfish wrote: post #24
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…

Your transparency has probably generated more good will than you know. My wife and I are planning on relocating some time in the next year, probably to the Seattle area. As part of this I've already started to take a look at what jobs are available and just yesterday I came across your craigslist postings. While having spent the last three years working for a marketing company and dealing with some sleazy SEO people I would have normally just bypassed any ad with SEO anywhere in it, but seeing that it was seomoz I actually took the time to read it.

You are probably fighting an uphill battle. Last year I had to do a technical integration with another company and it turned out they were actively paying something like $30k per month to an SEO company to keep them in the top five results on the big three search engines. All of that money was going to black hat methods such as link farms, paid links, cloaking etc. These tactics were all working and for a very long time their sites were the number one and two links for dozens of relevant terms with the big search engines. As those tactics worked, my employer very much wanted us to start employing them, ignoring the objections of the design and engineering team. About six months later we were heavily involved in a project for another company that was supposedly run by an SEO expert. His expertise turned out to be having read a three year old E-book on the topic. While I've provided two anecdotal examples, from everyone I've talked to these types of examples seem to be the most prevalent. Or maybe people only talk about their negative SEO experiences. It's not even cut and dry for those companies that appear to be doing things right. Look at some of the backlash on reddit when people figured out that oatmeal used to work at seomoz.

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

#58

Post by dedward »

ronnoch wrote: post #29
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.

Except, just as with SPAM, clever SEO strategy can be far more than just best practices. The right ad-buys and keywords at the right time in certain businesses can generate extremely attractive CPA numbers compared to other methods of marketing.

Yes, it's a bit of evil mixed in with good - what marketing isn't, but but it can be extremely effective, especially if your business depends heavily on search engine ranking.

Convince the client you can bring them converted, spending customers at a CPA they'll like, without tarnishing their overall reputation, and you've got a winner.

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

#59

Post by InclinedPlane »

Sadly, SEO is a loaded and abused term. A lot of SEO is helpful, making your site friendlier to search engine tools. But the term also tends to include less above-board efforts, such as search engine exploitation, gaming the system, all the way to web spam, link farms, content scraping, etc. At this point it's probably better to just come up with a different term than attempt to reclaim SEO from the exploiters.

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

#60

Post by eavc »

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…

And spamming Digg, paying people for links, baiting links with bogus lists--it still happens. I know because I was hired to do it for a while and quit when I realized what it was about.
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