SEO IS FOR CHUMPS

Geeks Are Not Marketers… Don’t Encourage Them

What a racket… what a racket!

They claim to understand Google’s algorithm. There are some ‘secrets’ to search engine success that only they and a few of the cognoscenti understand. These secrets are constantly changing, so pulling off this SEO black magic takes effort, a lot of it… and everything a company does, let me repeat EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO must aim at this one prize: SEO domination.

Who’s telling you this is either some geek with the creativity of a snail (and the same riveting personality) or a charlatan who makes the famous headline “Lose Weight Overnight While You Sleep” look to be spoken by one of the Apostles.

Yet so many companies fall for this crap… and worse, they let these ‘coders’ direct the marketing with these fake SEO rules in mind. Look, if you change your copy to have 13 magic words in the headline or the menu bar, if you change your web design to suit some formula that’s made up – MADE UP – then you deserve whatever failure the market delivers to your doorstep.

Letting anything other than common sense SEO methods affect your marketing is suicide; letting geeks who claim they understand SEO have any influence on your message, your look, your brand is like letting the referees play for an NBA championship while Kobe and LeBron sell beer in the stands.

Look, I’m not saying SEO isn’t important – more so to some than to others – but to listen to a geek who couldn’t sell you tomorrow’s winner at Santa Anita is lunacy. Is this ‘coder’ a marketer? Has he or she ever sold anything? Can he write a coherent sentence, tell a compelling story or use images and type to build emotion or guide customers to the information they need? No, no, no, no, no... ad infinitum.

Search engine algorithms are unknown and unknowable – start there. Even the guys at Google can’t tell you what drives one site to the top and another to the bottom, other than common sense: key words, a good description, tight code, clear, self-explanatory text, a quick loading site, etc. Get the picture? SEO is what goes on behind the copy, behind the design and after you’ve created your message – it has nothing to do with the message itself -- the look, the feel, the tone NOTHING!

And what do you want: a site that comes up first but looks and reads like crap and confuses the consumer? What good is that?

Here’s a test: Google recently changed its algorithm. How many of your web design geeks, the guys you paid thousands to for SEO, told you about the change and/or suggested new code? I’m waiting.

GEEKS ARE NOT MARKETERS – THEY SHOULD HAVE NO INFLUENCE ON YOUR WORK. PERIOD.