SEOEdit

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of manipulating web content to increase its page rank with popular search engines such as that provided by Google.

Many people attempt to make money by offering SEO consulting services.

Personal views

Companies like Google are successful because their search engine delivers high-quality search results; it is in their interests to return the kinds of results that people genuinely want. The market relationships are quite simple:

• The more people want to advertise with Google, the more successful it will be
• Advertisers will choose Google if Google can provide them with maximum exposure
• Google maximizes exposure by attracting users
• Google attracts users by giving them what they want

This is a very healthy symbiotic relationship in which users, advertisers, and Google acting as a broker between them, get what they want.

I personally believe that SEO is detrimental to users because it explicitly seeks to subvert Google’s goal (of locating the content that users want to find) and instead cause Google to return the results that the SEO consultant wants them to see. If a SEO consultant succeeds in increasing the page rank of content beyond its real merits, then the user is harmed because he or she doesn’t get access to the best possible results.

Rather than waste money on SEO services, I recommend that people follow the single most important bit of search engine optimization advice: publish worthwhile content. If you do that, then people will come.

And to people considering getting into the SEO business, I recommend you look into a less ethically dubious line of work; there are plenty of interesting, rewarding, financially lucrative fields in IT that don’t have that kind of question mark hanging over them.