SEO is Important!

Erik Karey Jan 31st, 2008 11 Comments

Search Engine Librarian Yesterday I was browsing the net and stumbled across an article and video blog on 45n5 entitled “The Best SEO Advice You Will Ever Hear” Mark, owner of 45n5, talks about how SEO isn’t worth your time and it’s the “Lazy person’s game”. Immediately, I felt this was kind of a BS argument. Being able to rank your website in the top 10 for any semi-competitive keyword is NOT a task the lazy. It’s hard work to do link building, on-page SEO and all the research necessary to target the right keywords.

Mark went on to compare SEO to the lottery by saying “Round up all of the people that win $100,000 per year via the lottery and all the people that make more than $100,000 via SEO and my bet is there will be more lottery winners.” Honestly this is a poor comparison as the lottery is just a game of luck while SEO is more of a skill or job. Simply buying lottery ticket after lottery ticket until you hit win $100,000 doesn’t require any skill. The people that do succeed at SEO are the people who know what they are doing, they aren’t lucky; they are good at what they do!

SEO and the result of it (organic traffic) is a great thing and the higher you rank in the SERPs the more traffic you are going to get and the more users you can convert into paying customers. Relying on organic traffic is not taking the easy way out nor is it a bad business practice. In fact, I think it’s a rather good business practice. I would rather users find me versus hunting them down through PPC or any other method.

All that being said, I’ll can agree to a point with Mark and say that SEO shouldn’t be your only concern when building a website. You need to produce quality content, you need to be giving value to your visitors and you need to focus on all of the other things that influence your SEO as well. Focus on exchanging links, creating linkable content, and promoting yourself through social networking and forums. All of these things in combination will undoubtedly influence your SERPs ranking. From there take a look at what you can do on-page to make your SERPs ranking even better.

When it comes down to it, creating and managing a site is a complicated task with a lot of different aspects to it. The overall moral of this story is to give everything attention and don’t over-analyzing any ONE aspect of your website.

Good Luck!

Popularity: 96% [?]

If you like this post please Subscribe to my RSS Feed

Add This Blog Post to Other Sites:

11 Comments

Jump to comment form | comments rss [?] | trackback uri [?]

1

HellFace January 31, 2008

Of course SEO is important. It requires a lot of time and work. Building a nice looking website is not as difficult as populating it and optimize it for the search engines.
I agree with you about the lottery. The comparison makes no sense…
2

Marcus Hochstadt January 31, 2008

Thanks for the article, Erik.

Can’t agree with you more on this. SEO is a skill that anyone who is determent can learn and master. It’s no magic nor comparable with lottery; it’s simply a skill.

As HellFace said, the connection Mark did doesn’t make any sense. It’s like comparing apples with potatoes…
3

Erik Karey January 31, 2008

Thanks for the comments both of you. SEO is just as important as any other traffic building technique there is. Organic traffic is a great thing to have and with enough time and skill invested you can get a nice ranking.
4

Utah SEO January 31, 2008

Yeah not to mention the fact that its in essence free. being on the front page of Google in the SERPS will yield mor results than PPC ever could.
5

Andrew January 31, 2008

I entirely agree with you. SEO is a useful and important skill to employ when trying to get visitors to your site. Perhaps it is a bit more chancey compared to other jobs, because when it comes down to it you are at the mercy of Google and other search engines if they choose to change something.

Do you read SEO-Theory? http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/ Michael is pretty good with his blog.
6

Murad February 1, 2008

A website has lots of components and they are all interrelated. But as far as SEO goes, good content, usability and design don’t sell themselves. SEO is the part that gets recognition to your work and ultimately traffic bringing you money. But hey if he doesn’t value SEO then I one less competitor I guess.
7

Guy Cohen February 6, 2008

Building a good website, is not only focusing on the traffic that you need to achieve but you have to think some other important factors that is needed to make your website be on top or known online. First thing, it’s important that you have to quality website with good content. Promotion is also important, this is where knowledge in SEO is needed.
8

SoundBlogger February 7, 2008

This is a great post because often times people do not realize how truly important SEO is for anyone wishing to improve their site’s presence online. It does involve a certain degree of effort and motivation to pursue SEO but this is an area that shouldnt be overlooked. Thanks for reminding us just how important it is!
9

TigerTom February 16, 2008

I wish more people thought like Mark. Less competition.
10

elliot February 27, 2008

SEO is huge! I am learning the hard way about how useful it truly is and it pays to know about it….
11

Monavie May 22, 2008

Thank you for this Erik, I hope Mark from 45n5 reads it. You managed to get both your view and his across, without any negativity. I completely agree that there is more than just SEO, but you can’t have a great website without it, and it isn’t just luck.