SEO's to Google – We're Your Best Friends, Stop Treating Us Like Enemies
April 4th, 2008I decided to add this note at the beginning of this post. Please understand while there is a ton of fact in this post it is to be read as a form of satire. Many did not seem to grasp that, hence my addition of this notification.
Sometimes it seems that despite owning one of the biggest SEO Companies in the world that Google has it in for all of us. They have waged war on buying links, crippled paid blogging services by nuking their networks page rank and have even banned web sites of major corporations. They constantly seem to push a covert mantra that all SEO’s are spammers unless they “just create content and let the system work” or some version there of. Personally I think it is getting old! So on behalf of my fellow SEO’s here is my direct letter of truce to Google, let’s see if anyone cares.
Dear Google,
As a person who has been optimizing content for Search Engines before Google was a search engine let me say I admire the work you have done and the industries you have created that have benefited so many of us. That said I and many other SEO’s resent the fact that you have worked so hard to make our lives miserable, spread propaganda about us and generally blamed us for your search engines limitations.
To be blunt every time a person runs a search and can’t find something they are looking for it is not because some evil SEO have optimized spam web pages. Often it is a failure of Google to return a relevant result and it is also at times a searcher who is, well, not capable of running a proper web search.
The following is a list of why Google could not exist with out SEOs
- The Long Tail – Right now searchers are beginning to search with more and more 3 and 4 word queries, to find specific content. It is SEOs that are out here doing deep data mining to find out what these people are looking for and creating specific content to meet those needs. Without us building that content and optimizing it such queries would now still be bringing your users the same 30 – 40 websites that show up for most of the larger terms and giving them the poor result that led them to go to long queries in the first place.
- Someone to Blame – Honestly with out us optimizing content when your algorithm takes a dump who would you blame? Who would you point the finger at? As mentioned above if we did not optimize tail search terms your results would be worse and we would not be here as your whipping board.
- Links – Honestly you would not be able to find much of the quality content that allows you to sell those wonderful ads (that you arbitrarily make one person pay more for then the next for reasons only you know) that make you those billions of dollars. Most site owners are simply unable to understand the nuts of bolts of making content indexable, findable and friendly to your bots with out our guidance.
- Even the Real Spammers Helped – Seriously when your first few versions of search were released they had holes one could drive a truck through or perhaps a cruise ship would have been more accurate. With out spammers you would have never improved your product to the level you have reached to day.
- We Must be Profitable – As an SEO I must either make my content or the content of my clients profitable. To do this I must have valid and useful content and my optimizing must match the search terms to content the user wants. If I simply get a page about Panda Bears ranked number one for the term “animals” it does my client or my own company no good at all. SEO’s do not try to rank irrelevant content as you sometimes infer, we purposely rank the best content we can develop to match the users need based on what they search for. In short the best and most accurate content online today is being created by professional SEOs.
At this time I would like to propose a truce, though we are sure you have no interest in doing so, as you need us as much to have someone to blame as you do for the other reasons I have pointed out. Still do you think you could tone it down a little? I mean we both know that you need us to make your search engine the best it can be so why are you always driving that multi colored bus over us?
In conclusion you built the system that values links over content so don’t blame us for using it that way. We are only doing what is necessary to help you provide relevant search engine results to your users. Sure we profit by doing so but based on the current financial reporting you are providing it is clear you are profiting a lot more then most of us.
Sincerely,
Jack Spirko
To my fellow Internet Marketers, so anyway I am sure I missed a few things. I am sure I missed some reasons why we are a far better friend to Google then an enemy as we are often portrayed. Please chime in below with your thoughts on this and point out the other ways that SEOs have made Google better then it would be with out us.
Now before you flay me, before you explain how they have purchased huge social sites (YouTube springs to mind) understand this is not a white paper, not an industry brief, no it is simply an speculative opinion. My first speculation is that I am correct about where social media is going and my second speculation is that Google’s staff is smarter then I am and can predict even more. When I put those two speculations together it forms an very interesting view of the future.
If you want to read my direct response just go to the 


