Another rant from David where he talks about how "SEO is dead, ranking is useless and other fairy tales".
In his usual style David goes through gripes about SEO in a step by step, methodical way.
"Well peeps, it seems it’s that time again and peeps are shovelling cr*p once more. Not that it’s anything new, but worth me taking time away from my sabbatical to rant off a bit."
6 Comments
In his usual style David goes through gripes about SEO in a step by step, methodical way.
"Well peeps, it seems it’s that time again and peeps are shovelling cr*p once more. Not that it’s anything new, but worth me taking time away from my sabbatical to rant off a bit."
6 Comments
Comments
Wow.I usually like his post’s, but I think that he burned himself on this one. My two main issues are as follows:1) He says that ranking matter, but uses keyword research as the main foundation for his assertion. There’s a big difference between performing keyword research - a key SEO element - and using rankings as a basis for SEO analytics (the latter is what most people are referring to when they say that rankings don’t matter)2) He says that worrying about conversions is not a key aspect of what SEO’s should be worrying about. That screams SEO circa 2001. The most successful SEOs understand that SEO is really just part of an overall marketing effort, and that most of the time, good SEO goes hand in hand with analytics, creative, development, usability, etc...David lost big points in my book. I hope that he comes on here and clarifies his stance, in case I misinterperted (I’m still suffering from a little leftover SES jetlag).
I think he has something of a point about the conversions, though I still consider conversions to be a success metric for SEO.As an SEO, you might be able to control the sales copy and the way the offer is presented on the site, but if it’s a crappy product, conversions are going to be few and far between. At that point I would consider it the responsibility of the SEO to suggest that the offer be tweaked or improved. It is also the duty of the SEO to make sure that he is focusing his efforts on keywords that are most likely to capture quality traffic and conversions.Bottom line: If an SEO gets your website to rank highly for the best search terms in your industry, but you’re still not making sales, it isn’t necessarily due to a deficiency on the part of the SEO. You can drive all the quality traffic in the world but if your offer is weak it’s useless.
@DarkMatter - I hear what you’re saying, but I find that clients (especially in the Fortune 1000 realm) are looking for an SEO provider that can look at analytics data, specifically pertaining to conversion, and then deliver recommendations that will help improve conversion.They’re also looking for education on all of the factors that might potentially affect conversion for terms that rank well and deliver significant referral traffic.Adopting the "I’m an SEO so it’s not my job" standpoint won’t really cut it. What we usually do is deliver analytics data/insight and then deliver a POV on what they need to do to improve conversion.The good news is that this leads to upsell/cross-sell opportunities for creative/dev/etc...Now if you’re an SEO-only shop, I suppose that there’s no benefit (although you could work with design/dev shops on a referral basis) but if you’re a full-service firm, it’s fairly obvious that making conversion a key focal point is necessary.In the end, I feel that the job of an SEO is to understand that their discipline is just one of several key facets of online marketing. And if you’re client facing, that means that one of your top goals should be to use SEO to educate your client and give them a road map on how to ultimiately improve conversion and ROI.
@hugoguzman I agree 100%. Is is our job to guide clients towards increasing conversions. For this reason, it’s also important that clients realize that their SEO does not stand alone and actually needs support and cooperation from them.
Nice job rebutting this article, hugoguzman! (And nice finally meeting you in SJ!)
It is simply amazing how many people still cannot tell the difference between SEO and SEM.