Ask HN: Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by throwaway321 » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 9:52 AM UTC

Here's why I loathe SEO (the term and the industry):

It shouldn't exist. There's "good" and "bad" SEO. "Bad" SEO is snake oil, it's cheating, it's gaming the system for commercial purposes. It's a race to the bottom to see who can screw up their UX and the Internet in general the most to get the most clicks from Google. It's evil.

"Good" SEO, though, is nothing but common sense. Search engines emphasise good structure, semantics, accessibility and practises, and this is what "good" SEO takes advantage of. But good developers know if you're doing your job in the first place, there's no need for "good" SEO. That's why we don't like SEO; it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If you can somehow stealthily introduce good practises in the guise of SEO, then I guess that's good, but we cringe at the thought of having to label it like that to get acceptance.

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

#72

Post by plinkplonk » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 10:02 AM UTC

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…

"they would be a hired assassin prior to doing SEO consulting. "

Fwiw I would still choose to be a hired assassin vs being an SEO consultant. ;-)

I would rather starve than work for companies like SEOMoz. If I am a typical good engineer (and I think I am a good engineer , not a great one - yet ;-)), then I guess that confirms the poster's anecdote of good engineers not choosing to work for SEO firms. Really why should they?

My focus is Machine Learning so if I wanted to work for someone else on interesting problems in ML, I'd work for NASA/Google/NSA whoever - NSA being as "slimy" as I'd like to get. I wouldn't choose to work for SEO companies/Spam Companies/Porn companies /criminal enterprises etc if they had problems ten times as interesting/sexy (and I am sure at least some of them do).

Why should a good engineer choose to work for a company in a shady industry, given she has any choice in the matter?

If you are running your own web app startup, knowing when and how (much) SEO works (and when and how it doesn't work) on the other hand, could be very useful (as patio11 correctly points out), depending on whether you think it is the best way to spend your time.

If I were running a startup (I am not, presently) and if Search Engine based marketing were an important part of my marketing strategy, sure I'd spend some time on it (again patio11 has written some incredible posts on how to do this, thanks much!). But I'd still see it as a necessary evil rather than something intrinsically good, and I'd never work on this stuff for other people.

Getting muddy on the way to some place important is one thing, making a career of jumping into slime pits for random strangers every day is another.

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

#73

Post by billswift » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 4:38 PM UTC

randfish wrote: post #20

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.

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.

You are (purposely?) mis-stating what he claimed:

He wrote "good SEO" meaning ethical or non-sleazy and "bad SEO (gaming the system)" as sleazy SEO.

Not your re-defining them as "good" as "effective" and "bad" as "incompetent".

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

#74

Post by Sujan » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 8:30 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #72

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…

"they would be a hired assassin prior to doing SEO consulting. " Fwiw I would still choose to be a hired assassin vs being an SEO consultant. ;-) I would rather starve than work for companies like SEOMoz. If I am a typical good engineer (and I think I am a good engineer , not a great one - yet ;-)), then I guess that confirms the poster's anecdote of good engineers not choosing to work for SEO firms. Really why shoul…

That's what I don't get: Where do you get the "shady industry" stuff from?

SEO is just one more tool in you toolbox. Easy to learn, hard to master, but massively effective.

And yes, there are lots of (very vocal) idiots out there. But this type of people is in every industry. So I don't get it why so many people see them as "the industry".

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

#75

Post by Sujan » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 8:35 PM UTC

Isofarro wrote: post #62

randfish wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rand, I'm pleasantly surprised to see you mention accessibility in the context of modern SEO. For quite some time I've felt that a certain group of SEO people would make great accessibility consultants (as in hands on experts rather than armchair critics) because what they advocate goes a long way to helping accessibility (as in making sites more amenable to people with disabilities) - it puts in place a great founda…

Perfect reply. Thanks!

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

#76

Post by Sujan » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 8:42 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #65

clueless wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, that's describing ordinary A/B testing on visitors, where you show half of your users one version and half a different version and then measure their behavior. That's pretty well understood. What I don't understand is how you would apply A/B testing to SEO . There's only one Google; you can't show half of Google one version and half another Google. How do you get data on which version is better for search engi…

There is no real A/B testing for SEO, sorry. As you say, there is only one Google.

You can try to simulate a 'test' with two equal throwaway sites, but this will never give you the same insight as using it on a big site with real content and real visitors. But it can help you find problems in linking structures, tweak the (really small) benefits of using one or another html tag.

The success of SEO can't be isolated. But, increased crawling of the page and disproportionate visitor growth from Google are good signs.

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

#77

Post by Sujan » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 8:45 PM UTC

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…

I think you already learned your lesson, but I want to repeat for all the others: SEO and non-programmer doesn't really fit.

Think about what the job of a SEO is: Make Google like the site more. How does it work? Make a better site, that gets more links. Okay, the "get more links" part is possible without any technical knowledge. But if the site is crap, this won't help. So how could anybody make a html site better without being a web programmer? Yeah, right....

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

#78

Post by Sujan » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 8:52 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #68

I'm a software engineer, and I've been browsing seattle.craigslist.org recently looking for something new. Your ads hit enough of my keywords to pop up in my search, but I move right past as soon as I see the letters "SEO". Maybe your company actually is awesome and totally working for the betterment of the world, but you've chosen a label for yourselves that was invented to describe the bad guys. Your ad could hold…

Okay, here we found an interesting bit:

> [...] but you've chosen a label for yourselves that was invented to describe the bad guys.

For me, probably randfish and lots of other people, some of them working in this industry, the word SEO just doesn't mean this.

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

#79

Post by ajdecon » Sat, Jun 05, 2010, 5:37 AM UTC

Sometimes a term becomes so strongly associated with unethical behavior that it can't be used in a more positive context. I think this is true for "SEO". In theory there should be no cognitive bias against the idea of optimizing a site design to make it easily searchable; but historically this term is associated with shady practices.

One of your comments states that you want to make "SEO" a brand people respect. I don't think this is going to happen in the short term, when the experienced engineers you want to hire remember cursing the unethical behavior of other SEO practitioners.

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

#80

Post by webwright » Sat, Jun 05, 2010, 5:12 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #72

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…

"they would be a hired assassin prior to doing SEO consulting. " Fwiw I would still choose to be a hired assassin vs being an SEO consultant. ;-) I would rather starve than work for companies like SEOMoz. If I am a typical good engineer (and I think I am a good engineer , not a great one - yet ;-)), then I guess that confirms the poster's anecdote of good engineers not choosing to work for SEO firms. Really why shoul…

This is the first time in a long time I wish I could downvote multiple times. SEO is not intrinsically good or bad-- it's a tool (and a powerful one). Like sales. Like TV advertisement. Like PPC marketing. Like display ads. Like PR professionals.

Sure, asshats can use tools for evil. People get killed by kitchen knives all the time-- but that doesn't make the tool intrinsically evil.