March 21, 2006
“top 10 SEO lies told by ad agencies”
1.You really need metatags.
18 Responses to ““top 10 SEO lies told by ad agencies””
Hugh MacLeod
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BS. That guy is a SEO consultant, most of which are purveyors of snake oil to the unwary. And that’s putting it politely. Traffic comes from content, from passion and from something, anything that actually means something to people. If you haven’t got something worth talking, nobody will be talking about it, SEO optimized or not.
I know it’s the fashionable thing to do to knock ad agencies, but I’d like to see which agency has been telling these ‘lies’.
http://www.search-engine-optimization-info4u.blogspot.com/
>purveyors of snake oil to the unwary
Sarcasm and friendly chiding can sometimes be difficult to pick up in a blog post…this is both a cautionary tale and the truth. Saying that MOST SEO consultants are snake oil pedalers is very much the equivalent of saying ALL advertising agencies suck at SEO, which I’m sure they ALL don’t, but I can show you several examples of no thought given whatsoever to search engines with very large brand websites, and some horribly missed opportunties nearly to the magnitude of not putting a url in a superbowl commercial.
I try to be about education, and not snake oil, but I think some folks don’t bother to dig deeper into the people who are behind the services they are buying. I also often times find myself with a lack of respect for ad agencies, as I have never been shown mutual respect in the instances that I’ve approached and educated agencies. Definitely hoping that will chane one day.
I do get on ad agencies (who I’m sure are often not so fond of SEO companies telling their clients how horrendous flash intros are)…mainly because I’ve been given a bit of a soapbox where people have chosen to listen. I like ideas too, and I will even concede that even flash designers do have SOME use.
>Traffic comes from content, from passion and from something, anything that actually means something to people
Yes it does. Did I ever say otherwise? Creativity is not always in the form of fruity curved lines, imac design, and ultra high resolution in a fancy magazine with four articles and four hundreds ads — it sometimes DOES come in the form of brilliant technology or the application of it. Folks that don’t think it was brilliant because they just didn’t think of it first are only hating on the creative process.
It’s all in good fun mate…no reason to hate on me personally. It is fashionable and fun…but it is also sensationalized in the same light that SEO’s face from traditional media and marketing.
I actually really like ad agencies and many folks that run them, and many are not so much different than SEO folks, they just work in a little different medium.
Andreas, you make a good point, but shouldn’t good content get the exposure it deserves? I can tell you first hand that SEO only works for sites with great content since building link popularity is nearly impossible for sites without great content. And buying ads for a marginal site is very challenging since ads only work if the site is valuable.
Fun w/ SEO firms…
They email me. I do a search for “SEO” and related terms.
I write back to tell them what page of Google results they end up in.
Often, I’m clicking past page 20 with no luck.
Andres you know your content is all hidden in a flash application which the search engines can’t get at. Since your site only has 17 pages in Googles index
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abiganideacompany.com
and Todd has 10,000 pages
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astuntdubl.com
I think he might know just a little bit more about what he’s talking about than you give him credit for.
»I can tell you first hand that SEO only works for sites with great content since building link popularity is nearly impossible for sites without great content.«
Obviously, you don’t know much about SEO as that statement is deeply inaccurate.
>If you haven’t got something worth talking, nobody will be talking about it, SEO optimized or not.
People often talk about things they know nothing about Andreas. Take yourself, for example.
So you’d prefer to hire one of the SEO companies on the 1st page Phil?
Now they really are likely to be the companies that practice ‘snake and oil’ tactics.
Find out what SEO involves, and about some of the people involved in it before slagging them all off Andreas. At the moment you just seem like someone who doesn’t understand the way it all fits together else.
The number of people still touting meta tags as an important part of SEO is amusing though
I wonder if some of them say it, because they expect potential clients who’ve done 5 minutes reading to want them to say it.
>So you’d prefer to hire one of the SEO companies on the 1st page Phil? Now they really are likely to be the companies that practice ‘snake and oil’ tactics.
I hope my rankings fall a bit so I don’t have to worry about what I am selling.
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