So, let me just throw something out there for those of you who don’t have anything better to do this long weekend.
Ever since I first heard about SEO, my BS detectors told me it was, well, basically BS.
Nothing I’ve discovered since then has changed my mind.
What do you say?
AnnBrocklehurst.com 
Your credibility is on the wane…
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It’s on the rise with me.SEO advice is like diet advice.Eat less and be more active.Write good content and get noticed.End of story.
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getaclue is half right, and half asshole.It is remarkably easy to create really good websites that don’t rank. “Write good content and get noticed” is a pretty shallow tidbit for someone who has a 10 year old e-com catalog losing market share as they’re swarmed by competitors in the SERPs.If SEO was all bullshit, there wouldn’t be so many of them doing so well and being so busy at it.SEO consultants help those who really don’t have a clue, those whose sites need modernizing and marketing help, and also those whose product (or written content) is so bad that they wouldn’t stand a chance at search popularity if it weren’t for SEO techniques. Whether you have empathy for those people is not the issue – SEO is a valued skill to them all.The service an SEO consultant sells is so nebulous and unguaranteeable that many people perceive it as a bullshit service. But when you’ve seen good SEO turn your site’s profit from $2/day into $20/day within a few weeks, your skepticism will wane.an SEO consultant is like… a wedding planner.In some respects, “wedding planner” is a bullshit service. Anyone can plan a wedding. But not everyone wants to, has the time to, or has the good taste to do it nicely and within budget.Not everyone needs a wedding planner – fine… Not everyone needs SEO either. But those that do need it and use it and gain from it.SEO advice *is* like diet advice. It’s simple on the surface, but quite complex when you delve below. You can toss off a one-liner like getaclue and portray anyone with weight problems like they’re an imbecile, or you can acknowledge that real problems aren’t solved by flippant jerks with a dismissive attitude.asshole.
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If SEO is total bullshit then you might find it interesting that Yahoo and Microsoft are both actively trying to hire someone to help SEO their websites, Yahoo.com and Microsoft.com.A good SEO should be able to recreate a search engine in all aspects, that allows them to understand what it takes to get traffic to websites, but the really good SEO’s not only know how search engines work but how users work as while getting traffic to a website is one thing, converting the traffic into an action/sale is the normally the goal of the SEO process.SEO is so complex when done properly that even Yahoo and Microsoft that created the search engines need help. SEO job at Microsoft:http://jobview.monster.com/getjob.asp?JobID=62960437&JobTitle;=Director%2c+Search+Engine+Optimization&q;=search+engine+optimization+microsoft&brd;=1&cy;=us&vw;=b&AVSDM;=2007-09-26+09%3a53%3a00&pg;=1&seq;=16SEO job at Yahoo:http://jobview.monster.com/getjob.asp?JobID=61769345&JobTitle;=SEO+Manager+-+News+%26+Information&q;=seo+yahoo+news+sports&brd;=1&cy;=us&vw;=b&AVSDM;=2007-08-28+18%3a00%3a00&pg;=1&seq;=1SEO job at Lycos:http://jobview.monster.com/getjob.asp?JobID=63078286&JobTitle;=Internet+Search+Marketing+Analyst&q;=search+engine+optimization+yahoo&brd;=1&cy;=us&vw;=b&AVSDM;=2007-09-28+10%3a08%3a00&pg;=1&seq;=16
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Thanks for those last two thoughtful comments. I will come back with more on the subject later this week.
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