Are SEOs Members of 'The Dark Side'?

There are a few blog posts making the rounds on how SEOs are spammers, evil, snake oil salesmen, etc. Certain individuals claim that there is no such thing as SEO; there is only ‘building good websites’ – and all the stuff called SEO is just ‘building a good website’.

Lets look at a well built website. A well built website will have:

• A clean, uncluttered appearance
• Easy navigation
• Good information
• Links to other good resources

It may also have:

• A good sitemap
• Different names for each page
• Proper tagging

These are facets of what a lot of people call SEO, but lots of ‘good website’ developers don’t know to do this. Many also won’t know that:

• An H1 tag is better than bold
• How to use keywords appropriately (using keywords correctly is NOT spamming!!!)
• How to make sure the snippet you want shows up on the SERPs’
• How to get a secondary, or indented listing on Google
• Why you shouldn’t bury links in Javascript

… and much more!

The insistence that SEO is (A) bad, spammy, or downright lies or (B) really just a fancy name invented by unscrupulous people for ‘good website building’ is kind of off base.

Are there bad SEOs out there? Yes. We call them black hatters. Do they give the rest of us a bad name? Yes. SHould you assume all SEOs are out to swindle you, or that you don’t need to SEO your site? No and no.

Read about SEO, and ask your website developer if he or she does all of the above. If so, they are doing SEO! if not, you need an SEO to help make sure your ‘good website’ is found by search engines and their users.