DISQUS

cassyput · 1 month ago

I agree with Nick. There's little point in getting irrelevant traffic and good SEO is about getting business not just traffic, so it's about understanding the client's customers and business their 'buying phrases' etc.

Content without traffic and traffic without purpose are both clearly nuts.

It's also true that there are too many 'snake oil salesmen' and poor developers.

Richard Warzecha · 1 month ago

Kristina,

I enjoyed your well-crafted presentation of the recent debate. For someone looking on from the periphery, it gave me an insightful, unbiased view of both sides. (Have you ever considered a career in arbitration?) I also enjoyed your listing of a number of background resources in both disciplines which helps to frame the debate within a wider context.

I agree that Derek's attempt to equate any good SEO technique with simply being good web development was off the mark. Danny and you correctly point out that this is naive and there is a whole range of legitimate SEO activities which would be very difficult to reasonably put under the web development umbrella. Enough said. That part of the debate should be over.

I didn't as strongly agree with your dismissal of some of the points you attribute to Danny's position. Specifically, you leaned on the distinction between whether SEO is "instrumental" versus "important" to an organization's online success. Sorry, that distinction seems just a little too subtle to justify the need to find some sort of common ground. Additionally, you claim for "SEO professionals to promote SEO as one of the primary tactics for online success is equally misleading." Again, I don't agree that the claim that SEO is simply one, of potentially many primary tactics (some of which might involve content strategy) really is strong justification for the immediate need to find a common ground.

Perhaps surprisingly, although I question the details of how you arrived at your conclusion, I do ultimately wholeheartedly agree that "creating and maintaining awesome content that’s optimized for the right people to find it at the right time in the right places" is very--and, yes, I'm comfortable saying this--instrumental to an organization's online success. I also support your dream that the fruits of a well-executed content strategy can lead to this. I will, though, give the usual warning: Be careful what you wish for, girl, it may come true!

And when it does, content strategists can be the ones who will bring the sophistication to our methodologies which we so direly need. For instance, I've lately been on an--arguably Quixotic--quest to develop a framework, method, or just plain ol' set of steps to merging the input of usability testing around nomenclatures, card sorts and an SEO's search volume analysis in order to create a single taxonomy. Throw in marketing, design, and legal concerns and this could get quite messy. Though each camp often has its own approach and concerns, wouldn't it be great to have a systematic, scalable, and repeatable method of determining the best taxonomy given all these inputs? Who better than a content strategist to develop one?

seamuswalsh · 1 month ago

Richard, I agree with much of what you say, with all due respect, your comment about good SEO technique simply not being a part of good design and development was too off the mark. Specifically you say "That part of the debate should be over" No, I think that debate has just begun. SEO should be 80% automated/technical n0t the other way around.

Nick Stamoulis · 1 month ago

I think one very strong point that many people sometimes don't understand is that SEO is probably 15-20% technical. The rest you really need a marketing brain. Yes there are elements of a websites structure that need to be in place for SEO efforts to work properly but acquiring the expertise spread out the keyword phrases with a marketing approach is a very important component.

Jon Marks · 1 month ago

I agree completely with you that both the web developers and the SEO peeps don't place enough emphasis on good content. They'll talk about keyword density, good use of headings and all the rest, but not much about writing interesting stuff.

However, I don't agree with Danny Sullivan's comment. A good developer does understand good semantic markup, the difference between a 301 and a 302, how to expose crawler friendly site maps, URL strategies and all the rest of the tricks things like Google/Bing/Yahoo! WebMaster Tools will teach you. These are all technical, and I'd expect my developers to do all of them.

What the developers do NOT understand, however, is the off-site SEO work. Back link campaigns, page rank shaping, paid for search activity and other items that are nothing to do with the way the site is built but hugely affect your ranking. And you need to do this part right too. Everyone else is doing it - if you don't, you are just being naive.

Jeff Chasin · 1 month ago

First, great post.

Second, there are some very large, complex sites out there that have wonderful, relevant, specific, useful content full of strategic awesome sauce. And you couldn't find that content with a GPS and a bloodhound. Then there are some highly optimized sites where everything gets a once over from an SEO before it goes live. But nobody wants to read it, or forward it to a friend, or tweet about it, etc.

I think your alignment idea is on the money, especially with large-scale sites. There needs to be a serious content strategy, but writers and content strategists, and IA's and everyone else on the team needs that edumacation to make sure the on-page factors are covered and covered well. Then the SEO specialists can spend their time on the more complicated, and time consuming off-page work.

Russ Henneberry · 1 month ago

Any SEO will tell you that there is nothing more important than good content. It drives natural links and is the only thing that will ultimately convert into anything more than eyeballs on your site.

But the big problem with Internet Marketing today lies on the customer side. There are several issues:
1. The customer doesn't get it -- It is very difficult to outsource good content creation. If a business has hired you to write their tweets or post on their blog --- do you really understand their industry? Do you really know enough to create something valuable? This leaves us with requesting content from the customer on a consistent basis. They have to be educated as to why they should create an article rather than have another full page 4 color print ad made up and published -- it is easier for the customer to wrap their head around the value of the print ad.

2. The customer has limited time or money- Creating good content takes time or money. You have to do it yourself or you have to pay someone to do it.

If the content isn't coming in from the client and they don't have the money to pay you to do it --- you are left with very few options.

You can turn down the deal or you can use SEO to get eyeballs to subpar content.

seamuswalsh · 1 month ago

There will always be bandits, name sayers and techno babblists spreading snake oil. Where there is opportunity there are shysters. The simple truth is out there, how complicated we decide to make it is our choice. The fact becomes that search engine optimization is simple with great content and a decent CMS. The hype the spin the jargon is just that. Great content does the SEO for itself.

Jeff Chasin · 1 month ago

I totally agree that selling a position in the SERP's or "guaranteed to raise your ranking" type pitches are snake oil. I also agree that there are many shady characters out there positioning themselves as *experts*. But I have to respectfully disagree that SEO is simple with great content. Ever try to rank a real estate site? Ever try to improve the ambient findability of a GREAT page of content when it's locked in a legacy CMS with no budget for infrastructure development? Your content could be free money and nobody would find it. I think it's really important to make the distinction between shady so-called experts, and the absolutely necessary skills of a real SEO - especially in an enterprise environment. If you're running a personal blog, sure SEO is simple with great content, but if you're looking at a complex site with thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages, not so much.

seamuswalsh · 1 month ago

Jeff, there are caveats of course, my high road was I said a "decent CMS." I also think that "free money" as a search term is a bad representation of a valid b2b (my other caveat) search string.

You mention enterprise environment, which leads me back to legacy content and systems. We can't go backwards, bad legacy practices. i.e. lack of or inferior editorial reference, lack of processes and/or taxonomy exacerbates the current state. There are some things we can do to make it easier, but if the foundation isn't there we need to go back and fix that and build from there. The debate should not be about web development vs. SEO, or UX vs. content strategy or marketing vs.
sales, it should be about identifying and remediating content gaps.

How do you do that? One keyword string at a time.

rosymarshal · 1 month ago

I agree with you. You written really well as in todays scenario SEO and web developers are in the same situation you drawn here. I really liked the topic. Indeed an interesting one.
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