“It’s Google’s game; we’re just playing it.”
~ Igor Tossell, The Globe and Mail
There’s been a lot about SEO in the mainstream news lately, from the Wall Street Journal to The Globe and Mail, and even the New York Times. Last week, we posted a rant, (If You’re Going to Write About SEO, Get It Right) showing off a little bit of spirited irritation for the inaccurate and often sensational portrayal of an industry we love.
It’s no wonder some of these places might not be completely accurate about SEO, especially if you count the Huffington Post as “properly SEO’d”. For the longest time, almost every article started out with something similar to, “If you searched for [key term], you’d find [large number] of searches. What does that say? That a lot of people want to know about [key term].” You’d also find a long list of key words “artfully” disguised as tags.
These methods worked, getting the Huffington Post ranked for a many an unusual term. Therefore, people interested in SEO (but not having much knowledge) nodded and said, “Yup, that must be SEO.” In fact, a similar method was made in a NYTimes article about websites not fighting fair for the term “Mother’s Day flowers”…
