All you SEO fans get ready for a bumpy ride, this is going to be one lean mean rootin’ tootin’ SEO hatin’ post! You don’t really need SEO and you certainly don’t ever really need to pay for it – it’s all just smoke and utterly unconvincing mirrors. When it comes down to it, you need SEO about as much as a man needs nipples.
SEO shouldn’t be an industry, it shouldnt even be a business, it should be a standard. Google should release documentation telling the public what things will help them get ranked, and as such it should be public knowledge. The best sites will always shine through because they are the best sites and deserve to rank highly.
Here are 7 genuine reasons why you don’t need SEO
1. You don’t need ‘link building’, you need great content which people want to link to all by themselves.
Stop creating spam (you know what I’m talking about!) and add to your site with some decent relevant content. Do you honesty think that top ranking sites do so well because they spam links everywhere? Think about that.
2. You don’t need ‘content optimisation’, you need a great writer for all your site’s copy. (a copy writer)
So a user finds your site because your page copy is full of bold keywords, then what? I’ll tell you then what, your bounce rate goes through the roof is what – what’s the use of ranking highly if no one wants to read your spammy content? Write for users not for search engines and chances are that you’ll get linked to (see above) and your content will still be relevant to search engines!
3. You don’t need ‘viral content creation’, you need a head of marketing who’s read Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’
For anyone who hasn’t read Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’ – Go any buy it, it’ll change your entire outlook on running a website and any business. For anyone who’s already read it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
4. You don’t need ‘internal link analysis’, you need a web designer who codes your navigation right the first time.
You shouldn’t need to pay someone to convert your navigation from javascript to html and css… you should have it done right the first time! and if it’s not done right, get your developer to go back and damn well fix it!
5. You don’t need ’server side rewrites for keyword optimisation’, you need a web developer who knows his stuff and understand what will work best for the end user.
Again, server side rewrites are pretty standard these days, they should be implemented up-front during the site build. Not afterwards at double the price by some snooty SEO company who claim to be greater than the earth itself and God’s gift to Google.
6. You don’t need ‘alt attribute and header tag implementation’, you need a web designer who codes semantic markup and adheres to modern web standards.
This is such an easy one! You don’t actually even need a web designer (though it helps) you can pretty easily go through an site an add alt attributes to the images, once again, it isn’t specialist work – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
7. You don’t need ‘landing pages’, you need enough content on all your existing pages to talk about all the different aspects of your industry.
Anyone who tell’s you that you need ‘landing pages’ is talking nonsense – what you need is an in depth website with lots of content! How? Start a blog! Write on it every day and you’ll soon have lots of fresh content for search engines to crawl.. trust me, it’s easy.
What Did I Miss?
Give me more reasons that you don’t need SEO below and if there are enough I’ll put up a follow up post on 7 MORE reasons why you don’t need SEO!
No related posts.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:35pm
New Blog: 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO ( http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v )
October 13th, 2008 at 10:44pm
Awesome post! All those points are so valid – it’s just difficult trying to convince a client that they don’t need to pay for SEO especially as those ‘experts’ have such great marketing spins… perhaps the world one see sense one day.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:45pm
Retweet for @EggManJohn (a great post!) 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO ( http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v )
October 13th, 2008 at 10:48pm
RT @pixeldeath: Retweet for @EggManJohn (a great post!) 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO ( http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v )
October 13th, 2008 at 10:52pm
Exactly. Do it right the first time, and nobody needs to spend extra money after their website is done.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:11pm
Useless wordpress plugin – correct link this time – New blog: 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO! http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 14th, 2008 at 12:00am
What you fail to recognize in your post is that your entire post are reasons why you need GOOD SEO. There’s a spin that some SEO ‘experts’ put on reasons that you need to use their company when they in fact may not be experienced enough.
Good SEO is done from the day the website is born. Your SEO writer is also your copy writer. This is the ideal situation. You write content so that the search engine will find it, and make it attractive enough for users to read it. Bolding keywords/terms will actually increase your response rate over your bounce rate. Why? Because most internet users BROWSE FIRST, then if they are interested they read in depth.
Search Engine friendly and User friendly is the real SEO. I’ve been doing SEO for clients for years and we have proven our techniques to be among the best. http://www.anchormd.com
October 14th, 2008 at 2:17am
You are write, I have telling my SEO Hounds to do your list for a while, but my might know how these little bastards can be
October 14th, 2008 at 2:24am
Shhhh on the link building, I like doing it. lol :)
October 14th, 2008 at 3:28am
Ahh finally someone publicly saying SEO is a bunch of hooey! Good job.
I would add some things about site architecture and the role of an information architect in the site navigation and layout. We are building things for users right?
Though I’m not quite sure what you mean by landing pages. For large sites with lots of different areas, jump or landing pages are needed. Take for an example a university website with lots of different colleges and schools. Not every part of the site can fit into the main or secondary navigation. There are lots of little parts here and there that can’t be linked to. When you have a jump page you can have relevant content about that section of the site then you are able to link to the smaller bits. I hope that makes sense.
But good job!
October 14th, 2008 at 4:29am
Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 14th, 2008 at 8:14am
StillSEO – thanks for the comment, though, if you really are ‘among the best’ then I find it incredibly ironic that you use my blog post criticizing SEO for your own link spam. Classy!
Andrew – completely agree with you, but in those circumstances I wouldn’t call them ‘landing pages’ I’d see those pages as a valuable part of the site and not pages which you would set up just for the sake of ranking for keyphrases which you wouldn’t otherwise rank for.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:17am
All good points. I think, though, that what should be said is not “you don’t need SEO” but more, “you don’t need an SEO firm to ‘fix’ your site if you do it right first time”.
I’d also disagree with your statment that Google should release documentation. They have released enough information for anyone to know what they should, and shouldn’t be doing.
If Google published anything in great detail you’d get a flurry of shysters gaming the Google algo. By keeping specifics to themselves Google are protecting the genuine webmaster and the searcher’s interests. Personally I like Google becuase the results it returns are, by and large, pretty damn good. This is proven by their market share really since people ‘vote with their feet’.
When clients ask me about getting to the top of the rankings or, as one did yesterday, “buying keywords” I tell them that all they need to do is build a good site. Two pages with lots of meaty, interesting and relevant content will win over a dozen pages that say nothing. Everything else is covered by the developer (me) being aware of how search works.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:50pm
So basically you’re saying you don’t need SEO, but then pass the SEO buck down the line to other people. There are lots of SEO snake oil salesmen out there, but all the points you made essentially require other people to be aware of SEO fundamentals to do the job right.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:18pm
Yo! SEO types! http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v What do you think? Does he have a point?
October 14th, 2008 at 3:34pm
funny..
who does the keyword studies for the copywriter and the website developer? Who adjusts the keywords later based on bounce rate and performance?
also.. i assume you will be taking this blog of “SEO Tips” down too right?
October 14th, 2008 at 3:41pm
Whoa. At first I thought I’d soon be out of a job, given the title. But I read on and…right on! Great points.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:04pm
Lol, I can’t believe how many SEO’s have to TELL designers and developers to follow the rules outlined above, so many ignorant people out there…
Like this snippet:
SEO shouldn’t be an industry, it shouldnt even be a business, it should be a standard. Google should release documentation telling the public what things will help them get ranked..
Erm, ever heard of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? Jeez, thats a slap-head moment right there!
October 14th, 2008 at 4:10pm
Wow, all you need to do is go back through almost every site in existence to date and tell them to re-build – then we really won’t need SEO will we?
October 14th, 2008 at 4:22pm
I agree with your points here. However you still need some items such as alt tags on images and titles on links, however I guess you could argue they are for screen readers not seo.
Look at experts exchange. That has to be one of the worst sites for seo (or maybe just for a user) but they still seem to rank semi high. If I were google I would of banned them a long time ago.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:45pm
@John point taken.
If you are going to create another post about reasons you don’t need SEO, you might want add some other things like accessibility in relation to screen readers. Google bot after all is just another screen reader.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:46pm
Of course I would be unpopular among a group bashing SEO. The fact remains that SEO comes in all shapes and forms. This is the point I was trying to make to you.
While your write-up is good and has some valid points, it has the elements of needing SEO, maybe just not in the traditional way you would think of it. I apologize if you believe my link was for link spam, it was meant to direct those who are not fully aware of what SEO is, to a reasonable explanation.
Your link building point is probably your strongest. It is mullarky. The only benefit to hiring a company to do link building (which we rarely do), is so you dont’ have to go find those relevant links on your own. You are only going to increase your pagerank by adding relevant inbound links.
Some other important elements of SEO that you don’t mention is the heirarchy of words. It is important to put your keywords/terms towards the beginning. Use them in your H1 tag. It is more important for Search Engines (over users) to see the following: Meta Tags, Title Tags (make sure it’s still relevant for users), Alt, and H tags. As long as you can get them to wrap up together, you can create some great pages that are optimized for search engines and you can still write for users!
Your posts have inspired me to re-write some content on our website so people can better understand these elements.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:19pm
hey – good post. but i agree and disagree in equal measures. if copywriters, web designers and marketing managers understood all this stuff, then you’re right – zero need for content optimization, seo and wotnot. the answer is in great content and great marketers.
unfortunately, i don’t live in that world. most folks need to unlearn or relearn things – so we need seo, content optimization and seth godin to help them think differently and to give tactical guidance on how to write a good page title, how to structure pages, how to link, etc.
so, my friend, don’t diss seo – its just a necessary little ape on the evolutionary scale…
October 14th, 2008 at 7:32pm
Wow I’ve really pissed off some SEO junkies with this post! You can tell that some of you aren’t just posting your opinion, but defending your careers!
Fair points made above by everyone and I agree with a lot of you – do bare in mind that this is an SEO blog! I’m knocking it, but I actively work in this industry and yes I do charge for SEO and I do make money off it.
I was trying to convey 7 pretty relevant points, and a lot of you are right in saying that if we ‘SEOs’ didn’t pick up the slack then no one would, but then is what we’re doing actually SEO? or just filling the gap for another department’s shortcomings?
As for Google releasing sufficient documentation… if that were true then the ‘SEO’ industry wouldn’t exist! I think most of you knew exactly what point I was making there.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:36pm
I’ve created some serious intense debate on my ‘7 Reasons You Don’t Need SEO’ post! Shocker! http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 14th, 2008 at 7:50pm
@paisley “who does the keyword studies for the copywriter and the website developer? Who adjusts the keywords later based on bounce rate and performance?”
You don’t need all that keyword nonsense if you have well written, relevant copy and content to start with.
Make quality sites for people, not messed up sites for search engines.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:54pm
retweet for @EggManJohn: ‘7 Reasons You Don’t Need SEO’ post! Shocker! http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v – go join in the debate, it’s a good one.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:00pm
7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO – http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 14th, 2008 at 9:43pm
Hi Folks!
Interesting discussion, amazing how differing points of view can generate an argument in which both sides are saying the same thing.
I think everyone pretty much agrees that there are best practices to follow in getting web pages elevated to useful positions in the SERPs, whether they are applied during a site’s initial construction or afterwards to fix the owner’s dissatisfaction with the amount of traffic/revenue the web site is generating.
Do web site owners “need” SEO? Of course not! What they need is their web site to hit the goals (whatever they may be) they have set for it. If their totally FLASH animation site has been up 2 years and Google hasn’t indexed it yet because it has no idea what the site is about since it has no text, Keyword, Description or ALT tags that a spider can see, that may be totally OK, if the owner doesn’t care about organic SE traffic. If the owner is disappointed in his traffic levels or revenues or whatever, then SEO may be something he would want to invest time, resource or money in, to make sure he gets the changes right. In this case SEO does have some value to the site owner, however it gets delivered.
Some site owners will actually learn what needs to be done and do it themselves. Others prefer to focus on building their core business and would rather have someone come in and provide this service for them.
Arguing about whether or not SEO adds value to the Internet ecosystem is pointless, since each individual web site owner makes their own determination of the opportunity cost of using their resources for “SEO” versus something else.
If I may use an analogy, if we all knew how to fix our own cars and were willing to get dirty and allocate the time, we wouldn’t need mechanics. Apparently most of us don’t/aren’t since there are plenty of mechanics out there.
The same holds true for SEO companies… apparently there are a lot of people out there who own web sites who don’t know how to optimize or aren’t willing to spend the time to do it themselves. To these folks a good SEO company adds excellent value …..
October 14th, 2008 at 9:56pm
Jim – SUPERB comment and I agree with you completely!
October 14th, 2008 at 10:40pm
Egg, Great post. It really got some blood boiling and a great conversation started. I agree and disagree but dinner’s on the table. I’ll comment later.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:53pm
http://bit.ly/bm shr 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO | EggRage.co.uk http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 14th, 2008 at 11:56pm
Amen Brother.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:21am
no need for SEO? http://is.gd/454Q
October 15th, 2008 at 1:01am
Great article! It’s about time someone pulled the curtains on this scam. SEO “experts” are con-artists. Parasitic vultures who need to quit trying to enrich themselves at the expense of small business and designers/developers. They promise all, deliver nothing, and have no reputable metrics to back up their wild claims. It’s just another “sucker” trend of the day.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:10am
This is why you don’t need BAD SEO. It is impossible to rank for competitive keywords with great content alone. Hundreds of sites have great content AND strong SEO. And it is hard to overcome the age benefit Google gives.
This is like saying you don’t need shoes to run marathons. Technically, no, but good luck dude.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:03am
I see it plainly as three people
- developer
- designer
- SEO Engineer
October 15th, 2008 at 4:50am
pure rubbish! What are you trying to put me out of business? Haha great post John!
Although I have to say the purpose of SEO people existing is to optimize a site that was not made correctly. In a perfect world it would be done right the first time, but it usually never is.
And a lot of sites are older so they are designed with tables and frames; this is when SEO experts should have business but sadly like many of my clients for SEO it’s because their web designer didn’t do their job. So seo experts are kinda like the clean up crew.
October 15th, 2008 at 6:57am
“You need good content” You need a good copywriter” You need a good designer” “You need a good developer”
Where do you find all these “good” people? Are you going to teach yourself all these skills? I doubt that!
There are some individuals that is able to do all this themselves, and I say good for you, you don’t need anyone, but some of us out there don’t have these skills!
I’ll tell you where you find them….at a great Internet Marketing Company!
October 15th, 2008 at 7:50am
All valid points – especially the core notion that SEO is a concept that should be implemented from the day your website is born.
I run a web design company rather than an SEO (although obviously we get involved, though as part of the overall package), and the one thing that I would argue against in your post is that not all companies have either enough content to write about or enough time to commit to writing about it. Most of my clients are small businesses and they are stretched enough as it is without trying to find time to create compelling content and then write about it.
So spare a thought for the small business trying to fight its way in the big busy internet superhighway. For them, SEO as a high-minded concept is necessary, although in practical terms a lot of things you’ve mentioned in this post are indeed phooey.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:07am
7 duvodu, proc nepotrebujete SEO! / 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 15th, 2008 at 10:25am
Awesome Point Bro…Hats off to you..
Brilliant!!!
October 15th, 2008 at 12:27pm
@midmodesign – The google domain age thing is so 3 years ago, it’s extremely overhyped and has actually never affected me. As for the shoes comment, I’m not suggesting you run the marathon without shoes, but if I tell you that I can make your shoes go faster for £1000 and then tie your shoelaces differently because the manufacturer did it wrong.. wouldnt you be annoyed? I would.
@rajesh – and what’s the SEO guy doing if the designer and the developer have done their jobs?
@evsoul – good comparison, one that had been made by others too and one that I certainly agree with. but in that situation how does one justify the prices of SEO given that they are just a cleanup crew?
@joe – I did, I don’t see why anyone else can’t do the same. You won’t find great writers at an internet marketing company, you won’t find great developers or designers either.. you’ll find people who are mediocre at a bit of everything.
@alterity – any company that ‘doesn’t have enough to write about’ shouldn’t be a company in the first place – as they aren’t going anywhere! If they can’t think of what to write about, then that’s a different matter altogether and is why I suggested hiring a copywriter.
@justin – thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed the post :)
October 15th, 2008 at 1:42pm
Would be fine if you didn’t assume in every point that the person needed for that section of work has an understanding of SEO.
Good link bait though ;)
October 15th, 2008 at 2:26pm
So you’re basically saying you need someone do it right the first time, so you need an seo expert then.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:01pm
7 reasons why you don’t need SEO http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
October 15th, 2008 at 3:07pm
rly interesting post http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v found by @daehee
October 15th, 2008 at 4:37pm
While I agree with all the points you make above. I don’t think it’s just that simple to say “You Don’t Need SEO”
You’re right, in that there are some shady SEO’s out there. But it’s simple Web Development 101 to understand how to fundamentally setup a website the correct way. But, I also think that if you are able to understand HOW search engines work, HOW they rank sites, then it’s very wise to use that to your advantage.
Of course, the content on your page is essential, The content is what will keep somebody on your page, and ultimately convert. But how are people going to find that great content and link to that great content, if it’s ranked on page 7 of Google’s index?
There are so many little things you can do to help your site. Hopefully, it will just come to the point where web developers as a whole will start to have a better understanding of search engines, and can put that into the design from the beginning… Then you wouldn’t need shady SEO firms.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:43pm
Here, Here … Always do things right the first time.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:27am
is reading 7 reasons why you dont need seo http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v not entirely sure I agree!
October 17th, 2008 at 7:13pm
@John
No I completely agree.
When I take on an SEO job I give very fair pricing. Because I know the results may vary.
You cannot control where you will end up on the SRP but if you do your job in SEO you can have a good idea where you will end up.
It is not expected that every web designer will be the best copy writer, but that designer should know such about him/herself and tell the client that either a)your content lacks unique substance and you need to rewrite it or b)you need to hire someone who is very good at copywriting.
@Joe
“You need good content” You need a good copywriter” You need a good designer” “You need a good developer”
A good designer should go hand in hand with being a good developer. and good content goes hand in hand with having a good copywriter.
I tell all of my clients that it’s my job to design the house, its not my job to do the interior decorating.
So with that said I will design the site, and they should have well written information about their product/service to provide me with for content. If they cannot come up with good, unique and specific content then perhaps they need to go back to square one of marketing and restructure their product or service.
I do marketing in the real world and my experience tells me “if you do not have many things to say on your site about your product or service then your product or service sucks” period.
you need to start from square one and restructure your position with your product/service.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:20am
Nice post! It’s great to hear someone speak the truth like this! I know clients who have spent $500+ a month on constant SEO where the changes only take a few hours over the entire course of the month, and they are common sense to any web designer.
[Admin] Removed link spam – leave it out pls.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:28am
yes Good post, but good content is a part of seo only..and besides of those, we cant ignore link building work. Sorry, I am not agreed with your comment completely …
November 18th, 2008 at 10:05pm
SEO is rubbish? http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
November 18th, 2008 at 11:31pm
RT @PatrickTulskie: SEO is rubbish? http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
November 29th, 2008 at 7:46pm
7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
November 29th, 2008 at 7:48pm
7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need SEO http://tinyurl.com/3umc3v
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:00pm
agreed with at least 90%. I would just go with a web development team which is owned by an SEO ;)
DaveN
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:22pm
Agreed Dave, that’s the way to go really!
December 28th, 2008 at 1:04am
I really liked this article! I´m working with this myself, but I agree the words “search engine optimization” often is just a big part of selling nothing. I´m not quite sure about the part “You don’t need ‘internal link analysis’” though – as it´s often very hard to know the right words to use in front of releasing a website. Also the optimization part of a site is a process which you could only know is right after you read the statistics. Another thing is the “You don´t need landing pages” part. If you run a mail or AdWords campaign and want people do call a specific action, you have to give them the exact information immediately if you don´t want people to be confused. For search engines (regular indexing) I totally agree this should be unnecessary.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:18pm
Google did release a guide on how to help your site get ranked
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
January 4th, 2009 at 6:13pm
They did – but that was released after I wrote this post
January 7th, 2009 at 3:09pm
All fair enough. I feel like I’ve been reading this post every 6 months for the last 5 years. The trouble is, like all these kinds of post, that it makes the hard stuff sound trivial. “Hire a good developer” is easy only if you know enough about development to make an informed decision. “Get great content”, ditto. Real “SEO” going forward will all be about advising on those things and therefore just become a subset of marketing, with a little more technical nous thrown into the bargain…
January 25th, 2009 at 10:38pm
SEO creates jobs, just like adding 2.0 to the web, it fills a gap that was never empty.