In order to justify an extra expense for SEO, you have to convince your client that they need prominent search engine listings, and that’s not necessarily the case. There are plenty of other ways people get to a website besides Google.

It depends a lot on the client, of course. If your client is an absolute unknown, then the search engine rank is going to be pretty important. But the chances of a literally unknown company achieving success solely through prominent search engine placement is almost zero anyway.

If a company has a niche and knows it well, they’ll know how to leverage it. If it’s local, they’ll promote locally. If it’s B2B, they’ll promote it in trade publications. If they’ve already got an established offline identity, they’ll promote the website through their existing channels. And of course, there’s always networking, both personal and professional. That extends online too — I’m seeing a major trend among the “big” tech bloggers saying that they’re now getting a majority of their traffic not from Google but from Twitter. And I think that trend is just going to continue.

If you don’t believe you can rank for the good stuff (the big keywords) of course you’ll hate it. Because you’re fighting over the scraps. And the majority of people fighting for the scraps aren’t even going to come up with a result.

That’s the nature of search. You have an incredible number of people competing for just a few spots. So unless you are among the top few in your industry of course you will get disgruntled especially if you’re paying someone to deliver that result. But you have to realize that you MUST hire the absolute best people because there are just a handful of spots available that count.

If these SEO haters KNEW beyond the shadow of a doubt that they had the skills or the people to outrank the big boys for the big money terms, would they still be shouting about how evil SEO is?

…probably not.

FWIW, I’d absolutely concur with Tony Krol above: the word you’re looking for might be “findability”.

Just like good web design involves usability and accessibility, at least from a business perpective, findability is just as important. And, just like there are usability specialists and accessibility specialists who don’t ever fire up Photoshop, so is there room for genuine findability specialists. Me, I like to dabble in all of them as best I can.

If there were get-rich-quick schemes to be made out of usability and accessibility, I imagine we’d have similar problems there too.

While I agree with much of what you say (most of the time SEO is fairly straightforward) you’re missing concepts like robots.txt, .htaccess, page rank funneling, keyword research etc etc.

A lot of what I do involves fixing things created by designers, which would probably not be required if the designers had a basic understanding of SEO.

But I think what the SEO industry is basically saying boils down to the following:

1. SEO is not ALWAYS as simple as you are saying it is

2. MOST websites are not ‘out of the box’ optimized as much as they could be due web designers lack of SEO knowledge.

3. If SEO is not as simple as you say it is, and SEO’s can deliver increases in traffic that result in higher revenue for clients – then it is a worthwhile industry.

Unfortunately you don’t have the intelligence or the self control to pull something like that off. Way to piggy back on someone else’s opinion there guy.

I’ve got one for Scott though:
We supply our clients with about 3X more free information than that of what you posted. We, like most of the SEO firms out there (you know, the ones that work with Microsoft, Dell, Expedia, MTV, Sony, Delta etc) work in all facets of online marketing (app creation, smm, paid advert, media buys, mobile, seo etc) as well as web design, web development and offline marketing.

All of these areas I work with on a daily basis, but you know what? I’m an SEO. That’s my job title. Am I going to put that on my business card? No. Are all of those areas part of my job? Yes. That’s why people get upset when mouthbreathers like Derek Powazek spew inane waffle to the masses. His knowledge of SEO is circa 2003 at best and helps perpetuate a negative stereotype that he himself has helped create. I’ve known plenty of web designers and developers who have screwed their fair share of clients over during my many years in the industry, much more so than any SEO company I have come across. You will always get what you pay for. Want eLocal to do good SEO for you for $100 a month. Good luck with that. If you base your opinion on an entire industry off a few bad eggs that populate every single facet of business the world over, I feel extremely sorry for you.

And BTW Powazek, D. Sullivan fucking OWNED you:
http://searchengineland.com/seo-faq-thats-not-from-the-land-of-un

However, I do have a bit of trouble grasping the concept of someone specializing in SEO, to the exclusion of any other skills. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I am dealing mostly with small- to mid-sized clients who do not have the budget to hire a roomful of consultants at a collective rate of thousands of dollars per hour, each offering their own narrowly-specialized skill set. I’m dealing with clients who, for the most part, are working with me for the whole shebang. I’m often collaborating with another designer, but in most cases I’m doing everything else: HTML/CSS build-out (which inherently incorporates so-called “white hat” SEO), functional development, server admin, DNS configuration, Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools set-up. And, of course, project management.

I wear many hats in my daily interactions with my clients and their projects. SEO is in there, but it’s just a small part of what I do. Because I’m used to dealing with projects of this scale, it’s almost impossible for me to fathom being in a situation where SEO would be a full-time job. And, frankly, I find it a depressing thought, but that’s mostly because I like my work to be varied, and I like to be involved in the full scope of a project. I like working on my own and being able to take on whatever the client needs, rather than parceling out specific tasks to a group of people who each just work in their one narrow area of expertise.

At least, that’s how I perceive it, because that’s how it would feel to me if I were the one doing it. I disparage it because I would personally find it an unpleasant way to work, but I realize that I am probably different from a lot of people who work in the field, and that’s OK.

But guess what: there is no information conspiracy here. The information is free and available anywhere. I first got interested in SEO when I bought a used “SEO for Dummies” book on Half.com, but even that was $8 more than I needed to pay as I’ve since found most of it online.

But just like the gym trainer who uses common sense and general info, there are honest SEO consultants whose job it is to keep you on track and offer common sense advice. They’re not selling keys to some secret kingdom, they’re assisting and consulting.

Keep in mind that when you’re working on a website larger than a blog, other SEO strategies and issues come into play. Sometimes entire sites have to be moved to new platforms, and a redirect strategy is required. Sometimes business partners ask design teams to do something that isn’t search-engine friendly and you need an SEO specialist to devise a workable solution. Right now, I’m trying to find fix the problem of my company’s multiple geo-specific URLs so that our content doesn’t get indexed multiple times.

You and Derek have spent a lot of energy attacking what you rightly see as the bad side of SEO — the salepeople who are out for a quick buck. But there really is more to the industry than that, I promise you, and you’d do well not to tar everyone with the same thick brush.

Derek… I agree, you should have written this first :-p (ha ha). I read your article and I was upset at first until I started reading further and then into your comments…

I personally like to look at SEO as a intricate part of SEM. Marketing is how we help our clients increase leads and sales. In order to do that optimally we need to have our clients as high up in the SERPs as possible, all while implementing White Hat Techniques such as the ones you have listed in your proposals. I think where things get a little sketchy is when you have clients that are hounding you to rank for 50 or 100 different terms that all rank page 1 in the SERPs… not gonna happen with Short Tail Keywords! Do the keyword research and locate the top 2-3 keywords that have the highest Search Volume… target those while implementing White Hat Techniques and let the chips fall where they may!

Great Article!!
- Ed

We have been throwing around new copy for our own site, which is going to be redesigned this month to include these best practices in “SEO”. (I started a company in February, and rushed to get something up, but now have to compete with the web design companies who don’t do their jobs well, but get all of the jobs, because my site as it stands is invisible, so we are pushing to make it “findable”).

I stick with calling this service “findability” or “improving findability”… I think its catchy, and makes sense to clients.
I’d like to see it adapted more outward from ALA, even though it was just a made up word from this article.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findabilityorphan/

For others directed to your post from Derek’s and by your well written article, I recommend Aaron’s Walters book:
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Findable-Websites-Standards-Beyond/dp/0321526287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255502872&sr=8-1

Thanks for your feedback. A few things I’m thinking about now as I reread this:

1) The standard bit from my proposals probably needs sone updating. It was written in a pre-Bing, pre-HTML 5 (at least pre-HTML 5-being-relevant) era.

2) I should clarify that I charge clients for this SEO work only when I’m renovating an existing website. On a new project, it’s simply a given that these principles will be incorporated into how I design and build the website.

I especially like the way you’re educating your clients on what “SEO” really is. Well done.