You heard it right.  Fuck SEO all over the place.

I don’t like SEO anymore. “SEO” the term has been vilified and bludgeoned to death because of its constant redefinitions and wacko interpretations.  I’m constantly amazed  at some of the utter tripe I am exposed to in my daily internet meanderings, that I’m not surprised when so many of the general audience think that “SEO” is synonymous with sleaze and snake oil.  When SEO companies are marketing themselves as an ETHICAL firm, you know there is somebody pissing in the industry coca-cola.  Although there are fantastic internet marketing shops and experts out there, the rise in the dufus firms is frightening, if not downright dangerous for the site owners who parlay with them.

My gripe is not new and I am not the first person in the online field to rant about “the state of SEO.” or “SEO is dead.”  For the record, I don’t think that Search Engine Optimization is dead, in fact my business requires my understanding and implementation of it.  I’m a fan of search optimization.  But the “SEO” brand in and of itself is something I’m just not interested in anymore.  How can I care about an acronym that’s completely misused and misunderstood by people who are more interested in the “SEO fame game” than anything else?  In the interest of becoming famous, those partaking  will blog, speak and holler the most bombastically fruity information in their ever-expanding attempts at getting a landing on sphinn.  I’ve got some mad respect for badass Sugarrae, and on an interview on seobook, she hit the nail on the head.

SEO Bloggers are like reality TV stars… Most don’t have the talent, they just have the platform to pretend they do.

Kinda like, “I’m  not real SEO, I just play one on the internet.”

In a sense, I’m glad that more and more people understand and respect the need for a proper search optimization initiative, and that’s due to the awesome work  of some respected authorities in the field informing the rest of us on good practices.  However, the proliferation of get rich quick, adsense millions, easy money scams has enamored a set of misled individuals into believing that they are SEO super heroes.  It’s incredible to me that one can get a blog and a twitter account and suddenly brand themselves as  “expert” SEO and Social Media Consultants who wouldn’t know what qualified traffic is if it came and sat on their face and wiggled.  This flood of inaccuracy is part and parcel to my estrangement from the term.

A few weeks ago I read a post called “7 Red Flags that Reveal to Google You’re an SEO Criminal – Avoid These!“  Now, I think Gyutae Park is a competent search advocate, but this post in particular, in my opinion, completely misfires.  This conversation, in this framework, is all wrong, i.e., aligning search optimization with criminal behavior.

I’m sorry, but WTF?  Spamming the search engines is what one should avoid (unless you have ten thousand urls you can burn, but that’s another blog post).  In my opinion, the whole premise for this post is improper, let alone some of the points made.

While Google’s business is to return highly relevant search results that provide value to users, SEOs seek to reverse engineer the algorithm and manipulate rankings for their own gain.

Not a fair statement, and a little lacking in a correlation to facts.  Although Google indeed might be targeting seo’s, I would trust Michael Gray or Outspoken Media with any of my sites, and I know for a fact that they get awesome results for their clients.  These trusted experts are hired as advocates for websites where the owners know that they have what it takes to responsibly make the argument to the algorithm that their site is authoritative for a set of related keywords.   Or take this analogy, I wouldn’t even dare to go to court and represent myself, so I hire a good lawyer.  C’mon dude?!?  Link bait is one thing, but polluting the conversation is not right.  And there is more of this SEO criminality in the rest of the post, and the ensuing comments did not make matters any better.  When Todd Malicoat, another expert I’d trust with any site I own, makes the following comments on sphinn;

It’s discussions like this, why I decided it was probably best if I didn’t write things for the “seo community” much anymore.  Topics like this really make me want to rebrand “what I do”, even though I’ve always been PROUD to be an seo (little less so, when I read things like this).

I’ve got to agree.  It’s disheartening for this kind of karma to be out there.

A recent series of events has also attributed to my hatred of the term “SEO”.  I attended a local meet-up of search and internet people.  At first, I was really excited about hopefully meeting some interesting people and seeing who is out there in the Miami search and internet industry, and for the most part, it was cool.   Except that I had these two conversations that emphasized my belief that it is becoming too easy for a person to think they are an expert at Super Deluxe Super Hero Rockstar SEO.

In the first one, I meet a young and energetic dude who introduces himself to me enthusiastically to proclaim his prowess and seo stylings.  Telling me he’s been doing SEO for 5 years, he is really experienced at all this badass seo stuff and I should read his blogspot blog to see all the people he’s helped.

Blogspot blog, check.

The conversation turns to research and practices, wherein I mention a cool article by Danny Sullivan on Twitter and business cards.  The response.  “Who’s Danny Sullivan?’  Taking a step back so I could catch up with my shoes, I realize that it is entirely possible for someone to work in the search industry and NOT know who Danny Sullivan is, though if you are interested in expanding your skills past the sandbox, start knowing who he is ..now.  But to work in the search field, supposedly for five years, and not know who he just doesn’t make sense to me.

As a follow up, I also met up with another online expert, this time in website usability factors..  Again, as the conversation progressed, I found a blank stare for the words A/B testing, and an even blanker stare when I mentioned Kim Krause Berg, and a straight admission that she’s (NOT KIM KRAUSE BERG, the girl I was speaking too) never heard of eye tracking or heat map testing.  The usability expertise she proclaimed might actually be effective, but the value of it, in my eyes, went down.

Story time.  When I was a kid, about 14, I picked up the bass guitar.  I actually got pretty good; played in bands, jammed with some stars, got signed to a label on Tuesday, dropped the following Friday, all that stuff.  But when I had just picked up my bass, about a month later I knew who Stanley Clark, Bootsy Collins, Charles Mingus, and this up and coming badass Jaco Pastorius was.  I was intrigued with my instrument and the environment of it best practitioners.  This enthusiasm for the  professional bass – playing community was something I shared when I first started trying to get sites ranked, and I followed forums and articles.  My experience “coming up” was definitely during the internet wild west days,  when industry experts were first making names for themselves, but to be a professional in any industry and not know who the top players are just doesn’t imply validity to me.

Let’s put this out on the table; I don’t consider myself an seo expert, always more of a student and fan.  Search optimization is not something you learn in one sitting.  I’m learning something new everyday, and relearning something every other day.  I’ll even venture to bet that most of the seo rock-star set, those who earned their reputation from years of hard work, learn something new everyday as well.  Search is a shifting art form, with the rules being changed, sometimes on a daily basis.   But it seems that all of a  sudden, one wordpress installation makes someone the chief SEO bigshit at NASA.

And sometimes, people who should know better are the cause of the maligning of search.  I think these individuals have a perceived authority entitlement to either scream out their mistreatment at the hands of search suggestions (IMO because their intelligence suddenly ran out on them), or a whorish attempt to create link bait by outing a technique, pointing out a loophole beneficiary, or discussing in public that which is private.

Other times, it’s booger snot moves from the search engines themselves which makes a rumblepup do a double take.  The “nofollow” debate is over and Google does what it does because it can, and we deal with it and move on, but no one can tell me that the whole thing wasn’t an “Ahhh fuck this shit” situation.

So the acronym SEO has lost it’s luster for me.  I’ve had to correct so many completely backwards programs lately, that it’s no wonder those who need to hire a search advocate feel that the industry is full of badness and idiocy.  Adding in brand spanking new “social media tards”  who further muddy the conversation doesn’t help either.  There is a full, big picture here, that requires a conversation along all lines, search, social and offline, that’s not being heard.

The big picture is lost on some small eyes I guess.

Sitting there at lunch at this neat little Cuban/ Argentinian restaurant in Coral Gable’s, Florida, I actually experienced someone look me straight in the eye, and poo poo search.

“The Search Engines are a thing of the past” he says to me as he waves the thought away like some bothersome fly blowing little fly kisses in his ear.

“Google is non-consequential, they are part of the past, we won’t need search.” he continues to say as he looks at me like I’m some lowly waterboy learning the secrets of the universe from him. His community building technology will attract an audience because, like a stormtrooper, it will enforce it’s authoritah.

Yes, this conversation actually happened.

At first, I thought that he meant that he didn’t need search to attract an audience, basing his search marketing on viral methodologies. A link here, some buzz there, a good news article, and a viral thing happens. Hey, it works. Most of the major social community sites didn’t attack search at all, they just created a little buzz on the web about what they are doing, and why, and we are off to the races. Search results will come, especially when you have a few hundred users tagging, talking and bookmarking stuff. Before you know it, you’ve got thousands of pages of relevant content that you did not have to create, from a site that is actually a magnet for users.

For instance, thisnext, which is a social shopmarking site where a community of avid shoppers bookmark deals, steals, gifts, clothes, beauty products, shoes, and unique…stuff from all around the web, is just that kind of site. I can definitely say that I’m a fan of the concept. I’m sure I’m not the first one to notice the potential, especially in monetizing such a framework. I mean, where else are you going to find the Hello Kitty Assault Rifle? (something my wife has been eying, so I’ll be sure to bring her chocolate everyday)

It’s not new, per say. Forums have been attracting this kind of search results for years, but with a bookmarking site, you can create your own little celebrity status, becoming an expert in something. This can be attractive.

Eventually, viral marketing affects search, (linkbait, linkjuice, linkwhore) and I’m sure that most of today’s thisnext users found the site through search. I’m not your most accomplished journalist, so I haven’t asked before I started this post, so I can’t vouch that my opinion is valid. It’s an intuition, and not an opinion that should be taken as any kind of fact. All I know is my experience with thisnext, and my observation of the people around me. My wife found thisnext through searching for hair care.

This conversation started when he began explaining his online community building “software” as he calls it. In all actuality, I’ve been researching the semantic web, ontologies, meta data and associative word knowledge based systems for awhile. I’ve got to tell you the truth, his technology is impressive. I’ve also done a little database work, since my primary field is e-commerce, relational databases are always on my mind. (I’m actually preparing a post for this whole semantic, ontology, tagging thing, so stay tuned) So I was excited to hear more on his concept.

But when he said search was a thing of the past, my ears started to bleed. Unless I misunderstood, which has happened my times I’m sad to say, his idea was “build it, and they will come.” His technology would create instant authority because it created the proper meta data that pushed the concepts the community was most authoritative out into the web.

I asked, “Out into the web, …where?”

Remember “build it and they will come”? The basic concept of what NOT TO DO, when thinking of promoting a website. I mean, the search engines have all improved over the years, and Google’s capabilities are really staggering. I can pretty much bet you that if you have a url, and a bs index.htm page with nothing on it but company name, no inbound links, no site submission, and a noindex in the meta and the robots.txt file, google still knows it’s there, and would probably list the reference to the site in a search for the url. But there is no amount of meta, semantic, topological, ontological or any other “ogical” technology that will enforce it’s rules upon any of the SE’s, especially Google. It’s Google’s algorithm that decides if your an authority site, not your algorithm TELLING Google your the authority. Just doesn’t happen. Even though the technology was super impressive, his reasoning, his attitude was just wrong. You need to market your business, at least one freakin link somewhere. Nope, not according to his plan. According to him, people will go to a site they don’t even know is there.

So my main dilemma was trying to figure out how people where going to find this site. So I give him a theoretical situation. Say you build a community site for women entrepreneurs. There is PLENTY of interest on the web for that. How do you attract the visitors? How does a woman entrepeneur, who wants to network with other women entrepeneurs, find your site?

It’s as if I asked what 2 + 2 is to Albert Einstein. He was incredulous. How could I ask him such a question.

“The meta data engine will push out this information to the right people” he says.

OOOOOHHHH, wait a minute. Are you saying that you’ll have an RSS or syndication service that will push out the content of your community to web properties like Yahoo or Aol or MSN? You’ll be using a proliferated data model? Where will you get the initial content? ( I learned this stuff from Mike McDonald)

“No. We can use RSS and the syndicated datamodels of other websites that have information our users want. In the case of a woman entrepreneurs social site, we can draw in the information that they want to have, based on their movement inside the community. When they network with people from their own state, or college, or they communicate an economic idea, or their favorite accounting package, or where the best source for labor is, they will be creating meta data that is quantifiable. We can present her with everything she wants all within the same matrix, she won’t even know she’s always within the same structure.”

Right now I’m thinking ‘OK, listen. I AGREE 100%. Your technology is awesome. The relational data structure is simply massive in it’s implications. FACEBOOK is based on a similar concept. But even FACEBOOK had to let someone know they existed. “Hey, look at me, I’m FACEBOOK, you cool new toy”‘

So I ask him again -

“But how will a business woman know your site exists?”

“From the users” he says.

BIG SLAP TO MY FOREHEAD CURLY STYLE.

I say “And those users will find your site how?”

I had to ask this again. I was starting to feel all weird in the head.

“Because our technology will push the data out to those users”

Can you see where this is going?

Since we where sitting at a restaurant where a lot of professionals like lawyers, doctors and businessmen hung out, I ask the young lady next to me what she uses the web for. I had to make sure he listened to this conversation, so I made it look as if we where going to flirt with her.

“Hey” I ask her. “Do you like to use the internet?’

“Yeah” she says “I do a lot of research, and I network and communicate with others in my field. I buy a lot of stuff online as well.”

When he heard the word network, he grinned at me like saying “You see”

So I asked her, “How did you find these professional networks,” and I could see his face, waiting for the kill, to show me how I was an antiquated, silly and stupid individual who knows nothing of web technology and shouldn’t even be allowed in the room.

Wait for it….

She said “Oh, I did a search on Google for a young lawyers group. I did different searches. I used Yahoo as well. I found this blog of a young attorney in San Fransisco, but I also found a listing for a discussion forum for young lawyers, and a Linkedin listing.”

His smile faded.

“Ahh, you SEARCHED for it. Google is a great search engine. Yahoo is a little better at groups and such” I said.

“Yeah, but pretty much everything you want to find, you can find it through Google. If not that actual web page, then a reference to a web page” She said.

“Cool” I said.

..

I looked over at this incredible intelligent man who developed something I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and I said. “You see, she searched for this, on a search engine. She might have also been on a forum that had a link on it, but she found that forum via search to begin with. Those websites didn’t just appear on her page because they know who she is and came to her, and jumped through the browser. Now that she knows they are there, she’ll return on her own, WHEN SHE NEEDS TO. Not because she’s always in there.

He fell silent for awhile. I couldn’t comprehend how search didn’t even come into this man’s attention. Did he think that people would go online and pop into the url field his website because that’s what their fingers did?

Social Networking, social media, bookmarking, meta tags are a wave front of the future, but it’s hard to comprehend a future without search. Social technologies will never replace the need for search, I don’t care what the experts say. Search was borne out of necessity, and that necessity remains. But the social aspect of search WILL jump forward to show it’s face and be an active part of search. That is without question. Right now, you don’t have to go to a lawyers website to find out how the law works or what you need to do for a special case, you can read someone else’s account, and see different people’s reaction to that situation. That’s authority, and the SE’s like authority.