“SEO” has an image problem - that can’t be good for business

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I was out and about in the blogosphere and I happened along a website where a few bloggers were giving their opinions about SEO and their opinions were largely, if not wholely, negative. That cannot be good for people marketing this type of product to individuals. In fact, it shows how something has gone desperately wrong, when blogger, who should be natural allies of SEOs (if not the same people), hate your industry. It’s not hard to understand why.

Blog spam affects websites in a very negative way. The biggest problem, of course, for the image of SEOs is blog spam. Blog spam is legal and extremely easy to do. It may even be “slightly effective” in gaining results, depending on the type of website you’re promoting. Nofollow hasn’t been the promised cure-all it could be, so now the blog community is writing Anti-Spam filters to combat their cousins in the “Search Engine Optimization” business. This cannot be good for the long term image and health of this activity.

“SEOs” have also set themselves upon all good and holy sites like WikiPedia, as well as the social bookmarking sights in order to “spam backlinks” in an attempt to gain results in the rankings. Each time a newbie learns that “SEO” means “Selfish Egotisical Oaf” and see their beloved community projects besmirched by drive-by commenting scripts, the whole value of the term and the goodwill built by industry professionals declines.

The self-interests of certain promoters are bound to tie the industry to their actions. Perhaps a re-branding is in order. I sort of like the term “SEM” better, and might even suggest dropping the “SE” as so much traffic is now coming from Web 2.0. That leaves the “M”. At the end of the day, all we really have is our image, our track record, and the current good work we’re doing. I guess in that respect, SEO is just like every other business.

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