SEO – It’s Optimization NOT manipulation, trickery or abuse

I’m reminded over and over by business people from within the search industry and from outside the search industry that SEO is a shady business.  How do I beat Google?  How do I get my site up tomorrow?  If I do x will I get hurt by Google?

 I’d like to take this time to remind everyone that it’s search engine optimization and not manipulation.  The whole point of learning, reading and doing search engine optimization is to clearly understand the details in a site that really make a difference and then execute on the guidelines given by the search engines to make your site as relevant and valuable as it can be.  When you do that, you will be rewarded by the search powers that be and given top placements on a variety of terms.  If you aren’t ranking, maybe you should evaluate the purpose of your site and make sure that you actually adding value to the world wide web and aren’t simply abusing the world wide web and hoping the crap you throw on the wall will be construed as art, and thus rewarded with value.

 The great reason Local search engine marketing is so wonderful and especially the search engine optimization piece is because too many small businesses don’t do the little things to stand out online.  Their title tag is index.html and their sites are images or flash with no content.  They never tell anyone about their site because it’s so bad AND thus never receive link love from customer reviews etc.  Sad but true.

The simple message needs to be and this is a great reminder from anyone involved with search engine optimization.  It’s about optimization, not manipulation!  Happy holidays.