I agree that there are many developers who build bad code.They are thus bad at their job.
However, since most SEOs have no background whatsoever in coding, I fail to see how hiring someone with less skills is more appropriate than finding a different dev who can do his job well.
It would be like if someone was still ill after seeing a homeopathist, sending them to someone who plans just to look up their problem on Wikipedia, rather than sending them to a proper doctor.
What qualifications would you say an SEO needs?
(However, since most SEOs have no background whatsoever in coding, I fail to see how hiring someone with less skills is more appropriate than finding a different dev who can do his job well.
It would be like if someone was still ill after seeing a homeopathist, sending them to someone who plans just to look up their problem on Wikipedia, rather than sending them to a proper doctor.
What qualifications would you say an SEO needs?
monkeon schmonkeon,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 15:53,
archived)
... and you'll find most developers are openon their CV as to which languages they know as it is easy to test their claims.
I read this elsewhere...
"You know how they say the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt?
It's usually that.
A lot of webby people work their asses off to learn every relevant language, and every other skill that remotely applies to their field, then get out of school skeptical as to whether or not they can go tell an employer they're also an SEO expert (or replace that with any other skill that isn't their primary).
An idiot marketing major (not saying marketing majors are idiots, just that a lot of idiots are marketing majors) will get out of school thinking they're some techy elitist for knowing how to register a gmail account, having taken one class on internet marketing that briefly covered SEO, and not hesitate to boast themselves to a potential employer that they're an SEO expert. When asked to go in more detail, they'll cite their four years of school.
Ask that smarter techier person to go into more detail, they'll cite one or two classes they've taken on it, and mention that they go out of their way to build their sites to be search engine friendly, but haven't literally been paid specifically to do SEO.
To the employer, the marketing major who just sounded confident, rather than going into detail, will probably be their choice.
Of course, this isn't always the case, but I think it is quite often. Best thing to do is probably to just cite all of your skills, and just make it absolutely clear to every employer what you're really worth."
(I read this elsewhere...
"You know how they say the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt?
It's usually that.
A lot of webby people work their asses off to learn every relevant language, and every other skill that remotely applies to their field, then get out of school skeptical as to whether or not they can go tell an employer they're also an SEO expert (or replace that with any other skill that isn't their primary).
An idiot marketing major (not saying marketing majors are idiots, just that a lot of idiots are marketing majors) will get out of school thinking they're some techy elitist for knowing how to register a gmail account, having taken one class on internet marketing that briefly covered SEO, and not hesitate to boast themselves to a potential employer that they're an SEO expert. When asked to go in more detail, they'll cite their four years of school.
Ask that smarter techier person to go into more detail, they'll cite one or two classes they've taken on it, and mention that they go out of their way to build their sites to be search engine friendly, but haven't literally been paid specifically to do SEO.
To the employer, the marketing major who just sounded confident, rather than going into detail, will probably be their choice.
Of course, this isn't always the case, but I think it is quite often. Best thing to do is probably to just cite all of your skills, and just make it absolutely clear to every employer what you're really worth."
monkeon schmonkeon,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 15:58,
archived)
What they have or what is needed to return a good SEO result?If the project / team warrants it, an SEO person is needed to take the load off others. They should be getting on with other things.
Can the site be read by a text reader? Yes.
Can the site be used by a blind person? yes.
SEO over.
OR
Is the site interesting and linked to a lot ? nope.
Don't worry google will find you.
SEO over.
(,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 16:01,
archived)
Can the site be read by a text reader? Yes.
Can the site be used by a blind person? yes.
SEO over.
OR
Is the site interesting and linked to a lot ? nope.
Don't worry google will find you.
SEO over.
Sorry, I fail to see whatpoint you are trying to make.
( monkeon schmonkeon,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 16:06,
archived)
SEO is a big subject and the snake oil needs changing a lot.I wouldn't pay a dev to be pissing about with all that when there are 1001 other features that need to be knocked out by 5pm yesterday. There is the "business point" more than anything else.
I've seen some fucking mental changes requested by an SEO that returns some nice results. The Dev that had to code them didn't like it at all. He can code; but didn't like getting out of his box.
If you can do bother Great! others cannot. I pro SEO as a subject on its own.
(,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 16:30,
archived)
I've seen some fucking mental changes requested by an SEO that returns some nice results. The Dev that had to code them didn't like it at all. He can code; but didn't like getting out of his box.
If you can do bother Great! others cannot. I pro SEO as a subject on its own.
I wouldn't mind if SEO was a separate subjectif it wasn't entirely about blinding people with science and doing very little for their money.
It should perhaps be combined with Accessibility (a genuinely useful area) - which *does* require good coding skills.
(It should perhaps be combined with Accessibility (a genuinely useful area) - which *does* require good coding skills.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 17:23,
archived)
we've been talking about different SEOfor me they are much the same subject as they overlap in many places.
I'd say build a site with magic Accessibility and you'll return very highly in google. The balance between SEO and DDA is always a business decision and the money wins that one.
You've had some bad SEO people haven't you.
(,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 17:39,
archived)
I'd say build a site with magic Accessibility and you'll return very highly in google. The balance between SEO and DDA is always a business decision and the money wins that one.
You've had some bad SEO people haven't you.
To be honest, it became an annoyancewhen I looked to see if it is something I could offer my clients, and the more I looked into it, the more of a con the whole thing seemed to be.
The books I have read on it are all about possibilities and never proven facts. No science whatsoever. There is also very little theory behind it, proven or not.
Which would be all okay if it was offered as a small job. However, it's the fact people then dare then charge monthly fees for SEO which costs more than the site is actually worth by pretending it's a really complex science. If it was, they would need a degree in statistical analysis to do the research.
Reaching a high accessibility level does take real programming skill, and yet SEO (the actually Optimisation side of it) which should be a sub set of that job same seems to be an unqualified position.
I think you'll find that it's a shockingly low amount of SEOs who could build a site which even validates, and making a site validate is rarely part of what companies offer as SEO work.
If SEO meant that the Accessibility would be improved for people, at least it would have some positives!
(The books I have read on it are all about possibilities and never proven facts. No science whatsoever. There is also very little theory behind it, proven or not.
Which would be all okay if it was offered as a small job. However, it's the fact people then dare then charge monthly fees for SEO which costs more than the site is actually worth by pretending it's a really complex science. If it was, they would need a degree in statistical analysis to do the research.
Reaching a high accessibility level does take real programming skill, and yet SEO (the actually Optimisation side of it) which should be a sub set of that job same seems to be an unqualified position.
I think you'll find that it's a shockingly low amount of SEOs who could build a site which even validates, and making a site validate is rarely part of what companies offer as SEO work.
If SEO meant that the Accessibility would be improved for people, at least it would have some positives!
monkeon schmonkeon,
Mon 21 Jun 2010, 18:32,
archived)
Validation is largely irrelevant to either SEO or accessibilitybut I think that you have met a cowboy or two and so are slandering those of us who do this professionally.
(
LordManley twitter.com/LordManley,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 11:13,
archived)
Validation *is* important to accessibilityIf bad code breaks a site in certain browsers, it could well break a screen reader, which is ultimately another browser.
It maybe not so important with SEO, but could confusing code not also confuse the Google spider, which is ultimately also html-parsing software?
There is also the cross-over with things like alt-tags.
Back on topic - I fail to find out what skill sets an SEO uses on a day to day basis which deserves the high price they charge. I'm not saying all the work is invalid, but do you really not think that a lot of people are abusing the fact that most business people have heard of SEO, think they need it but are ignorant to what they are actually paying for on a day-to-day basis?
I don't mean to slander *everyone* - and I am willing to admit that my own research hit a brick wall when I started looking into link building and felt dirty, so if I may have just done a bad job on the actual optimisation side.
However, I've yet to find anyone who can explain what it is they actually do that requires an expertise that people should pay premium rates for.
I like to think that I am willing to change my opinion, and it might be bad experience - but when I've asked why a theory exists or why a change needs to be made, it's rare that anyone seems able to qualify it with anything other than hearsay.
Again, a lot of them do not seem to actually use common "Would Google have any reason for doing this?" sense when they do optimisation. Eg The recent theory about page speed. You see blogs obsessing about milliseconds difference, when surely Google is only trying to weed out sites that are on a stupidly slow server and piss people off, rather than the rank a site that takes 0.5 seconds to load over one that takes 0.7 seconds.
(It maybe not so important with SEO, but could confusing code not also confuse the Google spider, which is ultimately also html-parsing software?
There is also the cross-over with things like alt-tags.
Back on topic - I fail to find out what skill sets an SEO uses on a day to day basis which deserves the high price they charge. I'm not saying all the work is invalid, but do you really not think that a lot of people are abusing the fact that most business people have heard of SEO, think they need it but are ignorant to what they are actually paying for on a day-to-day basis?
I don't mean to slander *everyone* - and I am willing to admit that my own research hit a brick wall when I started looking into link building and felt dirty, so if I may have just done a bad job on the actual optimisation side.
However, I've yet to find anyone who can explain what it is they actually do that requires an expertise that people should pay premium rates for.
I like to think that I am willing to change my opinion, and it might be bad experience - but when I've asked why a theory exists or why a change needs to be made, it's rare that anyone seems able to qualify it with anything other than hearsay.
Again, a lot of them do not seem to actually use common "Would Google have any reason for doing this?" sense when they do optimisation. Eg The recent theory about page speed. You see blogs obsessing about milliseconds difference, when surely Google is only trying to weed out sites that are on a stupidly slow server and piss people off, rather than the rank a site that takes 0.5 seconds to load over one that takes 0.7 seconds.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 12:09,
archived)
Valid HTML is good, but nopt neccessary.For example, JAWS often requires broken code to work effectively and it is a requirement that you make sure it degrades gracefully.
( LordManley twitter.com/LordManley,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 16:51,
archived)