Ok, I’ve got a hypothetical situation that I need some additional thoughts on. Let’s say that I (hypothetically) worked for a company that decided in its infinite hypothetical wisdom that buying links would be a good way to achieve rankings for certain key terms. So, this link-buying company hypothetically signs a hypothetical contract with another company for something in the order of 1,500 links from blogs over a period of a few months.
Update:I’ve decided to change the diagram below because development and SMO don’t really overlap all that much (it could be argued they don’t at all), so I think my new diagram is a bit more appropriate. You be the judge. – Andrew 8/19/08
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I’ve been toying around with what I guess you could call the philosophical underpinnings of SEO lately, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that SEO shouldn’t be a pursuit in and of itself, but should be an organic result of work put into development and social media marketing. And I would be remiss if I didn’t include a Venn diagram to illustrate my point.
Obviously a developer should have an eye for SEO so he knows how to code. I’ve also lumped content writing into development because that’s where it belongs historically. This person should also be aware of how search engines work so he can write accordingly.
The social media side is really just the kind of marketing that draws traffic to your sites and generates quality links. Essentially, the SEO part of social media is link bait.
I’m pretty sure that these positions, coder, writer, and social marketer, combine to form the heart of SEO. Sort of like Captain Planet. Thoughts?
I was loitering on Google image search and ran across this when I ran a search for “Playstation 2″:
Does this mean sponsored image ads are going to be infiltrating image search in the future? Or maybe just a beta test?
Update: Looks like this is fairly old news. Here’s the story at CNet.
I hear a lot about how to start a new business or product line. What startles me the most about these discussions (at least the ones I hear most frequently) is how backwards they are. The person I am discussing with will start out by asking, “What can I sell that will make money?” To me, this is approaching a business in the wrong order. (more…)
