The inconvenient truth about SEO

Merry Christmas to all ... no. Hold on a second ... this is not a very good title to start wishing a Merry Christmas, and that's, in fact, the reason I got so upset when a friend of mine pointed me to this article after I had wished him the same.

I will cut a long story very short, as I don't want to lay too much blame. After all, today is still Christmas Day.

However, I really am wondering what on earth Mr Boag was thinking when he wrote his article on Smashing Magazine on the 11th of December. I’ve been reading Smashing Magazine for years, and I’ve always found it an invaluable source of inspiration and a good source of new technologies, but this time I am very surprised they decided to publish such an article without a proper editorial review (consider the inaccuracies it contains).

If I had to use two words to describe this article - though I'm very late - I would probably use: absolute nonsense! And that's not because I'm defending myself, my job or the profession, but because there is clearly very little understanding of what SEO is.

At a certain point in the article Paul said ... "Yes, there are some technical considerations when it comes to search engines."

And that's just the beginning. People, companies, front-end web designers and webmasters more often than not have a limited understanding of what the technical implications of very good SEO are. I personally have to fight daily with various blue-chip companies to make them understand the value of SEO, which doesn't lie only beneath simple earnings, and with their appointed IT departments to explain how - for instance - a trailing slash can harm their site if not managed properly.

And do you know what the result is? A challenge!

Those people think holistically, but only within their own discipline. They don't care what is outside their box, and the result is a site that may, for instance, work from a technical perspective but lose opportunities somewhere else. When it comes to the content, the editorial team challenges it again, because they can't understand how important a structured yet useful strategy is to make sure a site engages with users as Google suggests.

For sure, there is no hidden secret behind SEO other than the professionalism to be expected from SEOers to make sure all the wheels of this complex gear are oiled.

So I hope that the reply given some days later by some of the world's best-known SEOs gets this clarified, and that the article won't generate more scepticism than necessary.

And that's everything for today .... so now have a

MERRY CHRISTMAS