Stuntdubl Business Search Marketing Consulting

*Note to new readers…this post may contain heavy doses of sarcasm.

“Whole areas of knowledge and information have been defined into nonexistence because the system cannot know, understand, control, or measure them.”
- Anne Wilson Schaef

There’s no such thing as sandbox (besides the Google keyword tool) - and there’s no such thing as SEO. Search engine optimization is the figment of the collective imagination of thousands of ambitious marketers chasing the new media dollars. It is based on the hype of search engine’s who are overvalued *ahem* leeches pimping aggregate content of others on a bad day. It is a cottage industry that has sprung up due to market inefficiencies created by a marketing industry who hasn’t yet stopped to figure out how new media works.

If some can say that the sandbox doesn’t exist, then I can say search engine optimization does not exist. Search engine marketing, and search engine manipulation certainly exist though. Sometimes there is no forest and there is no trees, and there is no sound in the woods. There’s no such thing as SEO! It’s a term that is only endearing to the folks who consider themselves to be an “SEO”, the same way that “geek” is endearing to those that fit the role, while to others it’s just a “quality indicator” of social retardation. It is a nice fun catchphrase that was used to label a bunch of early adopters who found market inefficiences in the world of new media marketing. The term has been used and abused in the same ways that “blackhat/ whitehat”, “spam”, and “sandbox” have been abused by being adopted by incredibly diverse audiences.

When I hear the word “spam” or “sandbox” on a general news site, I don’t give it the same level of credibility as I do when hearing the words from one of my favorite SEO bloggers that eat and breath this vocabulary on a daily basis. While there is certainly valid news in businessweek to a general reader, has a specific audience that they write to (they know their audience), and it is generally not the 5 year SEO veteran. When I hear a 10 year veteran of the search space chuckling about “search spam” at 1 AM in a pub, I don’t vilify those actions the same way that someone hearing “spam” on the street associating it with e-mail would. I understand the major differences, and that to search marketer’s “spam” is often a laughing matter, whereas to consumers (who associate it with e-mail) it is not. The definition of these words is broadly defined by different audiences. To most, SEO is some magic hoodoo voodoo, and we’re a bunch of shady, worthless criminals. While within the industry SEO is an endearing term used to say, “you are one of us”, outside the industry, it is used to say, “Oh…you are one of THEM”. Rather than fight the negative connotations any further, I hereby vow to deny the existence of SEO as much as possible in the future, and swear myself to be a member of the “marketing industry”.

So what is this space of “non-existence” that we work in?

Marketing -
The marketing department doesn’t get it yet. How could search be marketing? I don’t like the people who do search marketing. SEO is snakeoil. We’ll stick with paid search and PPC.

Science/Tech/Programming - We’ll just work on the computer part. You don’t want other programmers or techies hacking you do you? We don’t like suits or people, so how could we think like normal people? Just set the mountain dew down and we’ll fix your computer in a little while, now leave us alone.

Language -
We’ve been writing persuasive copy for years. If we just talk to people they will read it all understand everything perfectly. Hey, I’ve got a journalism degree, of course people will listen and buy when I brilliantly elegant writing.

Design -
It’s the visual draw of a website that makes it successful. If we make it appeal to their eyes they will listen to what we’re saying visually. Why do we need search engines? This site should be on display…and what do you mean Quark is no good for designing websites?

Business
You can grow money on the web. So if we give you ten grand, will you magically triple that for us? Model…whaaa?

So…there’s really no SEO industry. There is a bunch of internet people searching for the related terms, but it is marketing, design, science, business, or language applied. SEO is a team sport. It’s like hearding cats that all enjoy a different cuisine. Even if you do it by yourself you have to get the different areas yourself to cordinate for a value proposition that works. There is a whole bunch of folks filling a marketplace with quality information and horrible disinformation about how to grab a piece of the organic search traffic that is available through search engines. This traffic isn’t going away anytime soon. Users of search engines want quality relevant results, and while PPC results are good, the bias introduced by accepting money for advertising still discourages some search engine users from using those listings.

SEO is the mythological hydra that has spread its tentacles to all areas of business that benefit from search and the internet. You don’t LEARN SEO. You learn about the different disciplines associated with ranking a website and developing it into a profitable proposition in order claim to be in pursuit of the fictitious title of “being an SEO”. Kinda like being a Zen master ya know? There’s no such thing as Zen either.

Every Zen master knows though that the answer is “in” the question. There is no such thing as an impossible problem or enigma. The only thing that makes a solution “impossible” is the route used to find it. If you’re going off on circuitous paths that lead nowhere, then nowhere is where you’ll end up.
- EnchantedMind

*Note to self - perhaps late night Spike TV Kung-fu binges are not a great idea.

More reading:

• The difficulty of hiring good SEM staff
• SEO PR is wrong
• Long live SEO
• SEO Myths
• More SEO Myths
• There is no sandbox only trustbox
• SEO contradictions
• More SEO contradictions
• Seperating SEO myth from reality
• More on social bookmarking