Danny Sullivan saves the day, speaking on behalf of the good and clean side of SEO, the kind that gets up to work every morning, that works hard for thier clients and gets the work done, that thinks and works within an ethical mindset and executes only when he or she are sure that its got real value to it.
Bravo to Sullivan, that took his time and sat down to write a solid clear answer to that “rant”, even though I am sure he had enough better things to do, and could have easily ignored that post.As long as we will have people such as Danny Sullivan on our side SEO will be a real and serious trade, one to be proud of.
I usually don’t post other people text here, but this I think should not be ignored, so I am copy+pasting some of the things, the rest you can find on Danny Sullivan post on Search Engine Land.
Derek Powazek launched an attack on SEO yesterday that really said nothing that others haven’t ranted about before. I’ve responded to many of these attacks over the years in hopes of educating people about mistaken assumptions. I’ve largely given up. But I figured this time I’d give it another go with some personal illustrations I’ve encountered recently.
In particular, rather than do an article to counterbalance Derek’s post, I started to write him a private email. But as I composed that, I felt it might better illustrate to everyone why SEO is indeed a legitimate form of marketing and those who provide the service are not all “scammers” who are out to “con” you.
So Derek, I saw your rant, and it was disappointing. Your post was based on “14 years of hits and misses.” Well, my response come from my own 14 years of covering search engines. Of having answered feedback from hundreds of people. Of having talked with hundreds of people personally. Of understanding that the “you just build it; you just put it out there” approach to search engines, sadly, doesn’t always cut it.
Let me be clear. I totally agree with your core advice. Build a site for visitors. Have great content. These are the keys to success, not just with SEO but with anything you want to do. In fact, we just had an article on our site here reinforcing this.
SEO Fights Back
