Being bogged down by work and the holidays, I haven’t had much time for SEO reflection, but recently, an event sparked some of my thoughts towards search engine optimization…
For the uninitiated, let me give you a little terminology lesson. For some reason, the SEO community is divided into two camps, White Hat and Black Hat. Those two Final Fantasy-esque terms originally come from descriptors for hackers (or h4x0r5). A Black Hat hacker is a malicious villian who breaks into your computer system and steals all your personal information, secret government files, your wife and the deed to your house… and s/he does it because you’re using Windows Vista. A White Hat hacker is a noble internet knight who breaks into your computer system and tells you he could’ve stolen all your personal information, secret government files, your wife and the deed to your house… and s/he does it out of the goodness of their hearts…
Somewhere along the line, the SEO community also picked up this terminology and applied it to methods of optimization. The White Hats follow Google Webmaster guidelines to the letter, and shun any notion of what they are doing is spamming. Black Hats utilize technical hitches in search algorithms to achive quick results at the risk of being busted by the Google cops, and think that White Hats are whinning babies.
I’ll be honest, when I first heard of these distinctions, I thought it was pretty cool. It reminded me of when I played Dungeons and Dragons when I was 9. The more I started doing SEO, the more I started to realize the whole concept was really kind of stupid.
“Really? You’re a noble and just individual because you’ve never used comment spam?”
“Really? You’re an internet super genius because you can do a 302 redirection to trick Google?”
Guess what? You’re in Marketing! Its all evil! Let me give you a quote from Bill Hicks:
“There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself – seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously… You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage.”
Now, before you start your moaning and complaining, yes I do realize that I am in the same boat. Yes, I am in marketing, but I can accept being Satan’s spawn if it means never having to work in retail again…
I suppose what I’m getting at is, if you do Internet Marketing, you’re a spammer. There is no ifs ands or buts. If you still don’t believe me, take this simple test…
Have you ever:
a) emailed someone out of the blue in hopes you would get a link?
b) looked at the content of your website and added a bunch of keywords to increase the density?
c) commented on someone’s blog and and added your website housed in keyword rich anchors?
d) used javascript?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, yes Virginia, you are a spammer. If you answered no to all of these questions, then you obviously work in retail.
Okay, enough ranting.
