5 Myths About the SEO Business

By Chris Thoren, Product Specialist, Natural Search

Being a part of the SEO industry, keeping your ear to the ground on cutting-edge technology, methods, and other information could be the difference between an effective and unemployed marketer. But, as opposed to throwing down some insider info, I would like to take this opportunity to go in the opposite direction. Below are some random musings about the SEO industry that you may or may not have known. Trying to think from an outsider’s perspective or from a client’s point-of-view, these would be the things that come to mind.

1. Matt Cutts' Blog is the SEO Voice of Google – Yeah reading Matt Cutts is one thing, but did you know Google now has a YouTube Channel dedicated to SEO wherein Matt discusses some direct SEO opportunities? That's where the cool kids are nowadays!
2. Blogging for fun and profit (but mostly profit) – Anyone who runs a blog can hopefully relate to this point. These are the emails (spam) that you receive on a consistent basis from people wanting to link to your site. This in and of itself is not a bad practice; however, the devil is in the details. These are usually other ‘webmasters’ or such in broken English, chatting up your site (which may or may not be accurate) wanting very much to link to your Wordpress site. Nothing against Wordpress, but it seems to gravitate towards this particular tool.
3. Little Effort Required – I’m not sure if most companies realize most of the costs associated with running an effective search marketing campaign, especially from the SEO side. With paid search, it’s pretty black and white as to costs, ROI, etc. But with SEO, there’s a lot more to it. From my experience, some companies think that very little effort is needed to put into it, internal resources may not be taxed, and will be able to implement a majority of recommendations with ease. Once getting into it though, it could turn out to be a different story. A wide range of things could pop up like difficulty re-writing URLs because of a conflict with their CMS to not having enough bandwidth internally to change a title tag.
4. SEO is dead (or will die eventually) – There’s a school of thought out there that is, or has been, preaching that SEO will go by the way side in years to come. But I’m saying it’s here to stay, and not just because my job depends on it. Ok, maybe a little. But the theory is that spiders, in the future like Terminator style, will be ultra-efficient and be able to crawl everything so there’s no need to optimize for them. Also, they’ll be able to discern artificial optimization techniques and display web sites accordingly. This could happen, or maybe not. I will let you decide.
5. SEO is a super secretive art form – This is not really the case and there are plenty of places to learn the craft with a little due diligence and some Internet acumen. You would be surprised what you would be able to find. Also, any reputable search firm will be very up front in disclosing their methodologies. Just like the saying goes: "BEWARE THE NAKED MAN TRYING TO SELL YOU HIS SHIRT"