Is SEO doomed? My Crystal Ball says “No Way!”

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You here it every where you go. It’s on the tip of everyone’s lips. Rumors are circulating, tongues are wagging, and pundits are guessing. What’s this thing they’re all talking about in such hushed tones? SEO, baby. Those 3 words excite the minds and passions of anti-social nerds everwhere (oops, I’m sure everyone isn’t exactly like me). But SEO has taken on a sinister meaning in an otherwise sedate milieu? It has to some people, but there’s no reason for this negative connotation to stick.

SEO is a legitimate method of helping websites be spidered and ranked. There’s no reason to think Google or any other search engine hates SEO and wants to see the industry destroyed. Yes, they work on means of not allowing spam into their indexes, but spam and SEO are not equal. Sometimes they are, but that’s not the fault of the sector, but rather the individual practioner. Painting with a wide brush tends to darken everyone’s image, so you need to consider that many “SEO” techniques existed before search engines were popular, and are in now way sinister enough to get you banned from any search engine. As a matter of fact, you can check the guidelines of any of the engines quickly and see exactly what they “consider spam”.

Basic SEO, IMHO, can be thought of as SEF. Search-engine friendliness is not only a benign discipline, it’s also one that is rationally sound. Since search engines are a great provider of traffic to a “well-optimized” website, then it’s my duty to present the information to that search engine in the most optimized and compliant manner. That’s right, SEO is a duty. People are often concerned with the motive behind search engines. It’s fun to speculate, but there’s no reason to doubt that a search engine is interested in indexing your pages. If they crawl them, they’ve already used bandwith. At that point, they’d be happy to show them to visitors. The more search engine friendly you can make your website, the better it is for everyone involved.

For people who are concerned with “search engine spam”, it’s important to define your terms before arguing with them. Certainly tactics like invisible text and keyword stuffing are not methods to engage in, but to use keyword-based URLs, sitemaps, and intelligent site navigation is just part of a good website design. It’s important to educate people on what SEO really is, and what it’s not. To say someone spammed a search engine using “SEO” is akin to blaming Henry Ford for the death of every person killed in a car accident. Sure bad SEO tactics exist, but that doesn’t make SEO bad as a practice. I just looked at my Crystal Ball again while pondering about SEO. I can make out the words very clearly: “Very Bright!”. By promoting the positive merits of SEO we can all hope to reap a greater windfall.

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