Why traditional SEO is a myth

Websites have many objectives, but one prevailing one is simple: Get more visitors. The obvious way to do this is to get on the top levels of a Google search. So how do you do that? You could use relevant terms often on your page, but that, no matter how subtle or discreet, will add content to your page that is unnecessary and repetitive. Visitors to your website want clear, concise information, and their attention span tends not to last long. Therefore it is imperative that you get them to where they want to be immediately, whether that be on your website or another's. Adding unnecessary content increases the time they spend looking at your site, and whether they know it or not, they are less and less interested the more they have to look at it. So traditional methods of SEO defeat their own purpose. There are effective ways to get on search engines, but they do not involve altering your website's text. I'm not going to go into those right now; that's not the point of this post. Of the many basic rules to follow for virtually all websites, a couple apply here: keep it clear, concise, and to the point, and remember that you are writing for humans, not robots.

 

Your post makes quite a few uninformed assumptions.

You make it sound like all SEO is just adding keywords to the page over and over again. If that's what you think SEO is, then you might want to brush up on the subject before addressing it.

SEO involves a diverse, wide scope of topics and techniques. Everything from proper key phrase analysis and selection, to proper internal link structure making it easier for search engines to crawl your entire stie, to proper meta title and description tags, to proper care given to other on page factors that contribute to search engine positioning, to strategies for quality link development.

Telling people to ignore all of that and to just write 'clear, concise, and to the point' content is very, very poor advice.

 

SEO is just a small part of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) which covers all marketing activity to do with your site and is not limited to just the normal on-page content or links. There is so much more at play.

 

While I agree with your overall sentiment, I do not agree that SEO is a part of SEM. I know that some enthusiasts will say that, but SEO has to do with improving organic rankings in search engines, while SEM has to do with advertising (ppc, etc) directly with the search engines.

They are two distinctly different techniques for improving traffic.

 

We will have to agree to disagree there then. Search Engine Marketing includes SEO - SEO is all basically about marketing your website. SEO has just been given this 'tag' that it is something different over the last 18 months by many people that generalise. In truth, it is a part of it, the same way that SMM is a part of any SEM strategy and not a 'thing' in its own right.

 

I suppose your'e right about agreeing to disagree then. Although often both are under the same umbrella, the official definition of SEM is most often thought of as "the practice of buying paid search listings".

SEO is pretty diverse in techniques employed, but buying paid search listings is not included among them.

That's why I feel it's important to make the distinction between the two.

 

are you doing Black Hat now by starting a pointless forum topic and state something and hope people answer you?

 

"The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes search engine optimization (SEO) within its reporting, and SEO is also included in the industry definitions of SEM by Forrester Research, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, and industry expert Danny Sullivan"

 

Yes, as I said there are a few that lump them together. Mostly people who's audiences already understand the difference.

I think both of us would have enough quotes to go around the table for a few months, and neither of us would be a clear cut winner in this debate.

In truth, no marketing campaign would be complete without BOTH.

I'll just say that there is a definite difference between buying advertisements ON search engines, and doing things to improve your organic rankings IN search engines. You and I understand that difference. Most clients don't. That's why make sure I always explain that they are different techniques, wtih different results.

For example, using SEM, you can get your your advertisement on the right column of Google, using Adwords. Of, it your budget is big enough, you can get your ad above all of the organic listings on the first page of Google, with a lightly shaded backgroud.

However, with SEO, you attempt to improve you position in the organic, non-paid results.

That's a pretty important distinction.

Especially when the client starts asking questions like "Why is my ad in the right column when I already appear in position 4 of the organic listings?"

Of course the answer is becuase SEM and SEO is two different things.

 

I agree 100% - SEO is exactly that

I would never quote "SEM" if I am talking about paid advertising and just use "PPC", just because more recognise that, but I will use SEM if talking about the whole project.

But I think a lot of this is down to personal preference and how you wish to put this forward when talking to anyone

 

Perhaps. I think I could make a strong case for how it should be distinguished industry wide, but I do tend to be a bit ambitious.

 

That's not 'traditional seo'. That's 'traditional spamming'
Unfortunately there are a lot of dodgy characters who do the latter while trying to sell it as the former, but it's not seo.

 

Someone who is good at SEO will have clear, concise, to the point and relevant information on their site as that is what google is looking for.

Clear, concise, to the point and relevant information is part of good on page SEO. How can you say that it is not?

 

Nothing wrong with that - being ambitious is good when you want to go against what the industry is already behind

Being serious, I think that 18 months to 2 years ago, SEM was understood differently to how it is now and this is just down to some of those who are considered industry experts putting SEO under the SEM heading now.

I will continue doing the same until they change their minds again, or you win your lobbying

 

There are very few things this industry is holistically behind. I would not count this as one of them

Anyways, thanks for the civil debate.

+rep added.

 

Thanks dude I have also done the same - nice to have a debate that doesn't dissolve into a slanging match!

 

The fact that you have written in such a large text block tells me immediately you are contradicting one of your points in your post Sir

That was really hard to read, so how is that writing for your readers please tell?