by growth hacker, in reference to SPAM i would agree.
The thing with SEO = bad, it's as much ill-informed as saying Hacker = bad.
SEOs are Growth Hackers
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Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#32Growth Marketers? Sure. Growth Hackers? Very rarely. I love your posts John, but "Hacker" implies a level of coding in my opinion, and I think most here on HN would agree. As someone who talks to a few dozen SEOs a week, 99% of them cannot code in a fashion needed to be a "Growth Hacker". It's not that they can't contribute to growth, it's just that the traditional methods SEOs use (content, technical fixes, social)…
I think people need to start breaking out of their current modes of thinking, and this article represents that. SEOs and Developers have more goals in common than people realize, and the approach is very similar. As long as we're talking about real SEOs, not these "guaranteed spots on Google" jokers, but people like John. SEOs are there to solve a problem. The problem of course is much deeper than getting your site n…
You're overloading the term to the point of it being meaningless.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#33Growth hackers need to be inbound marketers, but most inbound marketers are not growth hackers.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% of the SEO's you talk to can't code? As a marketer, deeply entrenched in the SEO space, I can assure you that MOST TOP SEO's are first and foremost developers...More importantly, the coders that understand marketing are the ones that thrived and continue to thrive in the SEO world. Growth hacking is a bedrock of the best SEO practices out there. The best SEO is inherently viral to compel and force people to link…
I would totally agree that the best SEOs can code. But still stand by my 99% number : ) Most SEOs are not coders (knowing how to customize a Thesis is not coding in my view)
I take it that you have either really high CS-culture standards even for 'coders', let alone 'hackers' (which is probably good), or really low standards for SEOs (which seems sad to me). I too am against slapping a 'hacker!' badge to every guy who knows how to write a fizzbuzz in Haskell, but I definitely wouldn't even consider calling someone a SEO if he can't code (and by coding I don't mean ability to tell HTML from CSS).
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#35Growth Marketers? Sure. Growth Hackers? Very rarely. I love your posts John, but "Hacker" implies a level of coding in my opinion, and I think most here on HN would agree. As someone who talks to a few dozen SEOs a week, 99% of them cannot code in a fashion needed to be a "Growth Hacker". It's not that they can't contribute to growth, it's just that the traditional methods SEOs use (content, technical fixes, social)…
To go along with this point, SEO is just another tool in your marketing toolkit. To claim that SEO is the sole reason you're going to grow would be a mistake in my opinion. What about the branding decisions made long before? Or the work put into the marketing framework? The work that went into creatives? And I'm not even getting into the coding that goes into bringing everything together. SEO can provide growth, but…
> SEO can provide growth, but only after you've used everything else in your arsenal to get the platform to the point that you are ready to start optimizing.
Oh, how many times have I seen this mistake! SEO is one of your marketing tools, but (done right) it is not a premature optimization.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#36I love the information in the post - some valuable marketing strategies are in there. But the main point the author is making? I don't get it.
As a marketer I love the idea of "growth hacking" - manipulating existing systems for the purpose of growth and customer acquisition. But I'm confused by the new mantra growth hackers are using to define themselves. "Growth hacking is, at its essence, data driven marketing..." Seriously? Who the hell has been marketing without data?
There are some really cool hacks that SEOs can use. .GOV and .EDU links are valued much more highly than normal sites - how can you get those links? I've seen some dirty yet beautiful tricks. Building out blog networks with DNS's linked to different IPs in order to manipulate Google - though rarely worth it (trying to out-engineer Google isn't my cup of tea), it's also impressive, and definitely hacking. Creative and unique ways to get press from out-of-your-league sources? Sure, that's a form of social hacking.
But A/B testing? Using proper markup? "Hooking your app into a network like Facebook?" Call it proficiency if you like, you can define it as expertise, I'll even give you savvy, but it's not hacking. Calling it hacking turns into a giant "we're hackers too!" circle-jerk.
Again, I reiterate that there is some solid stuff in the post. But using that information as evidence that SEO is growth hacking just doesn't make sense.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#37Aw, cute. People in performance marketing want to be called "hackers" now.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
To go along with this point, SEO is just another tool in your marketing toolkit. To claim that SEO is the sole reason you're going to grow would be a mistake in my opinion. What about the branding decisions made long before? Or the work put into the marketing framework? The work that went into creatives? And I'm not even getting into the coding that goes into bringing everything together. SEO can provide growth, but…
> SEO can provide growth, but only after you've used everything else in your arsenal to get the platform to the point that you are ready to start optimizing. Oh, how many times have I seen this mistake! SEO is one of your marketing tools, but (done right) it is not a premature optimization.
Spot on. Definitely not any more of a premature optimization than usability, since SEO is usability for bots.
So unless you really do not care about the crawlability and understandability of your site/app, you should be optimizing for bots in parallel with human usability.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#39I think the biggest difference is that Growth Hackers aim to hit much less saturated verticals that are completely disjoint from traditional search engine optimization and marketing.
Re: SEOs are Growth Hackers
#40Read in a french accent, it becomes, "SEOs are gross hackers", which is certainly what comes to mind when you have to muddle through a page of w3schools or some other SEO pumped spam-sites results on your way to some actual content. Some have said that SEOs were not hackers because they could not code, I would argue they are not hackers because their work is all about decreasing the signal/noise ratio for the sake of…
Perhaps you focus too much on the bad apples? Anyone can call himself/herself an SEO, just like the barrier to entry for programming jobs is low. Not every programmer writes malware, just like not every SEO creates spam sites.
At least two major things you gloss over, don't give SEO's enough credit for is: 1) Analytics and market research 2) Accessibility.
Improving quality of content and on-page SEO follows well established accessibility guidelines. SEO's can make sites better for all users: humans AND search bots. With a fine SEO'd site, you'd be able to navigate it and consume it, while being blind, drunk or using noscript.
If you have a good (online) product or service, it would be a crime against the efforts that went into creating them, to forget SEO and online marketing. You'd be decreasing the perceived value. You'd give the edge to your competition.
The grossness from SEO comes from people that know just enough SEO techniques, but not how to properly implement them. They hear: Links increase ranking, so they start blog spamming links. Or they hear: fresh content does well in search engines, so they article spin some RSS feeds.
Search engines are for the most part black boxes, even to white hat SEO's. To play it safe you have to align yourself with the vision of Google. To study their papers and patents. To follow their engineers every word. To predict their next moves. To test out your hypothesis. Familiarize yourself with new (sometimes undocumented) mark-up etc.
Yet good SEO practice hasn't changed all that much in the recent years. Adhere to the Google Webmaster Guidelines [1] and the Stanford Credibility Guidelines [2] and you'll get mighty far. Both sets of guidelines increase the quality and the profit part is indirect.
[1] http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... [2] http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html