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)