Quite often, I get annoyed.
Be it people who have no sense of their surroundings, or people who don’t understand how a lineup works, but most often is people who just do not understand Search Engine Optimization. Especially when it comes to job descriptions…
Here’s one of my favorites:
We will need to provide the following capabilities, in addition to providing our current content:
- ability to sign-up new customers.
- easy to use customer interface and navigation.
- in the future (4 – 8 months out), ability to link web interface with a customer report capability (which draws upon a database).
- ability to apply SEO.
- flash programming knowledge.
- up to date knowledge on best practices in website development, especially for technology services sector.
We’ll just ignore the “flash programming knowledge” for the time being and focus on “ability to apply SEO”… ok, take a moment… breathe.
Let’s think about this for a moment.
def:ability
ability n. , pl. -ties . The quality of being able to do something, especially the physical, mental, financial, or legal power to accomplish
def:apply
apply ( ) v. , -plied , -plying , -plies . v.tr. To bring into nearness or contact with something; put on, upon, or to: applied glue sparingly
def:SEO (from Wikipedia)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the higher a site’s “page rank” (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
So basically, this job is for some one who has the ability to design a front-end interface with flash, set up a reporting system, who also has the quality of being able to bring into nearness or contact the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.
Why does this infuriate me, you ask? Well, let me explain something to people who think you can add SEO to a website like you can add oregano to a pasta.
YOU CAN’T!
Okay, okay. For all of you who think that all you need to rank well in Google is to put up a title and meta description, let me propose this to you. Go register iknownothingabouthowthewebworks.com (its available, I just checked). Then go pick a keyword to target. I dunno, maybe something high volume like “free porn”, add your keyword stuffed meta title and description and come back to me in a month and tell me how its going.
So often, I come across “web designers” who claim to do SEO, and my question is, “where do you find the time to do both?” because the funny joke is, SEO IS A FULL TIME JOB! Do you think links build themselves? (Well, ok. When done correctly, some do.)
Yes, I can hear you mewling and whining “but but, what about all those sites that do well and have no SEO”? Take a look at how old those sites are. Any site that has relevant content for the keyword and is 10 years old is going to rank well inspite of itself. That’s the old “age and trust” thing you might hear some SEO’s talking about.
Ok. I’m calmer now. I’ll make up for this rant later by posting some Google query string parsing I’ve been doing from my log files… but I’ll post it in flash.
