Stop bitching about SEO and make better websites
Lots of very good web designers don’t get SEO.*
They think it’s a “snake oil” sales technique designed to trick Google into placing bad sites artificially high.
Sorry to break it to you guys, but that’s just crazy talk.
There are snake oil salesmen in SEO, but there are in web design as well.
The problem isn’t dodgy SEO companies .. the problem is dodgy web designers who produce sites that need SEO because they don’t do well in Google, due to the fact they’ve got rubbish content.
*Note: Paul Boag is a extremely good web designer who I have a hell of a lot of respect for. I’m not saying for a second that Paul’s sites need to be better. However, I do think he misunderstands what SEO is. This isn’t a personal rant against Paul or a criticism of his post. He was asking a legitimate question. It’s more aimed at large number of web designers who write SEO consultants off as snake oil salesmen, scum or anything similar.
Good SEO and snake oil salesmen
I define SEO as:
“Any technique designed to help your site appear higher in Google and other search engines”
Now, some of these techniques are common sense. For example, writing good content, using semantic markup and having friendly URLs.
Other techniques aren’t common sense and can actually make a site worse. Keyword stuffing, link farms, hidden text, etc etc.
Anyone who’s using black hat techniques like these is a charlatan .. but that doesn’t mean that anyone who does any SEO is a snake oil salesman.
Snake oil web designers
What most web designers don’t seem to get - and I’m a web designer, first and foremost - is that many business people view web designers as the snake oil salesmen.
I regularly speak at Business Link events run for small and medium sized businesses, and business owners time and time again tell me how they were “let down” and “ripped off” by a web designer who “didn’t know their stuff” and “didn’t get the site top on Google”.
This meant that they had paid out money - usually thousands of pounds - for a website that hadn’t produced a return.
These people don’t see SEO companies as snake oil salesmen - they see us, the web designers, as the snake oil salesmen. Selling them a product that promises much but delivers very little.
It’s your fault there’s a market for SEO companies - good ones and bad ones
If you produce websites which cost more to make than they bring in in revenue, then you’re not a very good web designer.
It doesn’t matter how nicely your XHTML validates or how beautiful your comps.
If you produce sites that cost more than they make, then you’re not a very good web designer.
SEO companies only exist because web designers - not all web designers, but some - create websites that don’t get enough visitors and don’t produce a return on investment.
If you don’t like SEO companies, make sure your sites don’t need SEO!!
But I’m a good web designer, my sites do make money!
Great. Well, then you need to tell your clients that.
Even if you don’t think you do SEO .. even if you think all you’re doing is just “good web design” then you need to answer the “SEO Question”.
Why not say something like this in your FAQs?
Do you do SEO?
We create sites that your customers will love and will want to visit and link to. Our sites do tend to do well in Google, but actually, we believe it’s more important to optimize for users than search engines.
Because we do things right in the first place, you shouldn’t need to pay a separate “SEO Consultant”.
Don’t judge what you don’t understand
Lots of web designers who criticize SEO don’t actually really know much about it.
That’s no better than some looney condemning a film or TV program they haven’t even seen.
Web designers should learn about SEO and what’s involved. Feel free to ignore things that you disagree with, but you might find there’s some good information among the dross which will actually make your
Alun Rowe commented on Paul Boag’s post don’t get SEO
Up until a few weeks ago I’d have agreed with you wholeheartedly placing SEO experts somewhere between snake oil vendors and just plain fraudsters. But I was given the opportunity to speak at an SEO conference called ThinkVisibility (http://www.thinkvisibility.com/) last weekend and to be honest I was amazed at the quality of information I received from the day.
That, to me, says it all.
How can you judge something you don’t understand?
Note: It’s really good that Alun has revised his opinion of SEO. It’s just a shame that lots of really good web designers and developers, like Alun, see fit to dismiss something as snake oil that they haven’t really taken the time to understand.
A lot of SEO work is correcting mistakes made by web designers
Web designers commonly create websites that don’t have friendly URLs. They create sites that contain no keywords and use “Welcome to COMPANY NAME” as the title tag and H1 on the homepage.
They create sites that have dull content that focuses on how wonderful the website owner is - because they abdicate responsibility for creating content to clients with no advice on how to do it well.
SEO consultants then get paid to offer useful advice like “had you though of having something interesting on your site?” and “had you thought of having friendly URLs” and “perhaps we should add a blog”.
And then web designers have the cheek to criticize SEO companies.
Now, I’m not saying ALL web designers produce bad sites .. but lots do .. and it’s these morons who create work for SEO agencies and consultants.
There are good SEO consultants and dodgy people who try to game Google .. but the market for SEO has been created by web designers who produce websites which cost more than they make for the website owners.
Stop bitching and make better websites
If you don’t like SEO companies .. create better websites and encourage your competitors to create better sites.
