Wait. When Did ‘SEO’ Become Synonymous with ‘Promoter’?

Jibber Jabber - You Can Skip This Part
Two weeks ago, I think I wrote approximately 27,000 blog comments. Of the 27k, I think about 26,974 were on The Van Blog on two posts:
- SEO Coders are dying a slow and painful death at the hands of their cooler, more sociable, and better looking counterparts - the ’social mediators’
(I hereby claim the phrase “social mediator”). - SEO Coders are alive, well, and watching old episodes of Star Trek. So live long and shut it.
During this flurry, no, Artic Blizzard of comments, I tried desperately to explain that SEO code was not dead, and that social mediating was not pushing it aside, but rather, we were witnessing the confusion over what an SEO actually does…
SEO’s think that EVERYTHING is SEO
Ask your average SEO on sphinn and they’ll tell you:
- Writing a Blog? That’s SEO
- Networking on Twitter? That’s SEO
- Social Bookmarking / Link Baiting? That’s SEO
- Visiting Grandma and playing Gin Rummy? You guessed it. SEO
Are any of these really SEO? I submit: no. But let me explain why…
The Complete History of Link Building (Abridged)
A little more than 3 years ago, things started to shift in our industry. Whereas once we could place our clients in a few free directories, or exchange links with a bevvy of unrelated websites, Google pulled the carpet out from under us rendering our feet cold and uncushioned, and our old methodologies for gaining links, and ultimately rankings for our clients, useless.
But there was a glimmer of hope shining in the night sky like like a beam of light pouring out of the lighthouse on blog island. And, a month later, we had ‘link baiting‘. And herein began the demise of clearly defined SEO.
So, in an effort to keep our clients from running and telling the world that SEO was a scam, and Google was too smart for us, SEOs began to embrace the idea that promoting a site in order to acquire links, however arbitrary that link text might be, was going to be part of our job description. And that. Was dumb.
Since that time, every new marketing technique which could be used to acquire links in any way, shape, or form has been tacked on to the ever-expanding SEO job description.
So, Uncle Peppers, if that is your real name (it’s not), What do SEOs Do?
An SEO’s core expertise lies not in promotion, as I opinionated over a year ago in my article ‘why PR and SEO should become best buds‘; it is in advising. As SEO’s we should be:
- Working with Market Researchers to select keywords with high ROI
- Advising site designers on SEO-necessary site content and organization
- Working with developers/user interface on page content and best practices
- Writing title tags & description tags
- Optimizing link-bait’s internal links, and making sure it maintains search engine traffic well after it ‘goes viral’
- Buying links, or otherwise procuring OPTIMIZED links for specific pages
- Advising where clients can get cheap, easy, yet strong links (associations, partners, friends)
- Getting the most out of Public Relations, RSS, Blogs, Social Media, and Networking where it applies to Search engine visibility.
What’s the harm in calling it SEO?
Nothing really, I just think defining your service offerings and expertise in more diverse terms is better for business. Think of it as if it were a website. If you sold 10 different, but complimentary great pieces of software, would you want to put each on the same page? No, you would want to build each its own page so that you could give proper attention to each product.
The same is true for SEO. Site promotion via link baiting, blogging, networking, and playing a rousing game of Yoker with Granny, all have their positive effects on search engine traffic. However, they have the same if not better effects on branding, overall traffic, RSS, email and many other pieces of the internet marketing mix. So why frame it as SEO when you could be marketing all of its value?
Wrap it up already!
It is my belief that…
- SEOs think promotion is part of SEO. It’s not.
- SEOs should be acquiring optimized links (you know, ones that contain specific keywords and point to specific pages that you have a degree of control over) for their clients.
- Framing promotion as SEO diminishes the value of promotion from the client’s perspective
- Old ladies are card sharks
See you next time!




