Guru -- India A teacher or a wise man.
www.britishempire.co.uk/glossary/g.htm
A guru is a person who is
regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a given area, and
uses it to guide others. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru
As the term “Guru” relates to teaching, in that context then
I must be a guru. I have certainly done my share of teaching,(training is
probably a more accurate term), over my last 12 years in the online promotion
business.
As it relates to wisdom ----- ahhhh, not so much.
My New Year’s Resolution
for ‘09
To stop arguing over the use of SEO, the world’s most egregious
misnomer, but to try even harder to de-mystify the process the term universally
applies to for the people who choose to read what I write.
Again, my purpose is to simply teach. Not to teach what I
do as much as to teach what I believe. I’ve said many, many times that we are
all free to believe what we choose and if you don’t exercise that freedom – you
lose! So I can give you a shovel, put you must do your own digging.
So, I’m no longer going to engage in any more debates or
arguments to defend my position or philosophy. I will simply state it and leave
it to you to use what you like and poo-poo what you don’t.
I’m not going to argue about it anymore because most of
those I would argue with either
#1. I have a great deal of respect for and wish to do
nothing that may cause anyone to lose their respect for me or mine for them.
#2. Are so desperately clinging to a falsehood for the
sole purpose of trying to elicit validation that arguing is akin to engaging in
a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
Never
try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
It’s been almost 3 months since I last posted but I
waited for today for three basic reasons.
#1. It’s the first work day of the new year and a good
time to make a major shift in my presentation and online persona
#2. I was seriously considering stopping blogging as an
SEO as I was going through a severe moral dilemma. I find the term offensive now and did not wish to continue
promoting it. I’ve never liked it and have long thought it was the primary cause
of so much derision within it’s own community and also the cause for such
negative associations with the process of online marketing.
But this past year it has gotten harder and harder to
watch the almost constant petty bickering at places such as Sphinn.com and the countless
circular debates at almost every open platform that attracts those who call
themselves by that misnomer.
I believe it has long been becoming more of a detriment rather than an asset to be
associated with the term and as online marketing matures, I feel so should the
people involved with it and that applies to the majority of those calling themselves
SEO’s. We may be an expert at IR, we may have exceptional skills in conversion
acceleration, we may even be able to capture huge audiences on twitter but none
of those things does anything to optimize any search engine.
#3. I’ve been working diligently on a program that is a
customer reporting tool and activity management system for an online promotion
service business. It is broken into two primary sections. One is for reporting
activities related to traffic generation and the other is to help analyze
metrics for the purpose of increasing conversions.
There are many products on the web that does one or the
other but to my view they are always loaded with a lot of data that never, (or
at least rarely enough to make them virtually useless), really help actually
generate revenue.
This program is streamlined to focus on data that you can
actually use NOW to increase conversions and see at a glance what you are doing
wrong if the numbers aren’t where they should be.
It is also built to be proactive rather than re-active.
Most analytics show you who, what, when and where but don’t give you anything
to use to do something about it. This is the program I’ve used in many forms
for many, many years to enable me to deliver dynamic content related to a known
referrer on the fly while being totally transparent in the traffic generation
department. It is one of the primary reasons my business flourishes while I spend
very little time in social circles promoting myself.
To me THAT is what online marketing is all about. Traffic
generation and conversions. NOT SEO. SEO’s do NOT OPTIMZE SEARCH ENGINES as the
acronym implies and that is at the heart of the problem with the negative image
and the negative display of etiquette between members of the same tribe.
I’m finished calling what I do something that I do not
do. I’m not finished with it to invalidate anyone or question their abilities.
I’m finished with it because it is misleading, has no real reason to exist and
simply because it is wrong.
I’m going to use the next few posts to de-mystify some of
the terms and pseudo intellectual labels that get thrown around trying to
impress others with the depth of the throw aroundees level of knowledge in the
field of “real” seo, (sorry for the quotation marks but that phrase always
kills me!). The brutal truth is that there is actually no such thing as REAL
SEO. There are things like LSI - behavioral metrics – geo-targeting – personalization
– blended results etc, but none of those things have anything to do with optimizing
a search engine and you have no real reason to fear or be intimidated by any of
them. Besides, you can believe me when I tell you that if I can do it, ANYONE
can do it and it ain’t that hard.
Always remember three simple, basic concepts and you will
do fine promoting your site and your client's sites without having to get a degree in any of those academic
disciplines.
#1. All search engines programs are written by human
beings. Those algorithms reflect the opinions, biases, likes and dislikes of
the people doing the programming. In
other words, search engines promoters like you to believe that search engines think
and act like very smart people. But the
reality is they do not think at all. They only do what they are told to do by
humans with a real human agenda. Complete with all the virtues and frailities.
#2. A search engine’s primary purpose is NOT to deliver
relevancy. A search engine’s primary purpose is to deliver revenue. That is not
the same thing.
#3. Targeted traffic
is NOT the hard part. Conversions are. If you need traffic – hell – just buy
it. A lot of time, (most of the time?),it’s cheaper anyway.
Traffic generation has much more to do with effective
management than it does IR-LSI-behavioral metrics-blah-blah-blah.
Finally a question for you.
Why do you think you want SEO?
Whatever you answered you are wrong. No one NEEDS SEO. Every
commercial site on the web NEEDS customers and revenue and you sell to people
not machines. You are never going to sell anything to a search engine. Even an
optimized one.
Peach Y’all
The anti seo seo guru
RELATED REFERENCES
http://videos.webpronews.com/2008/12/29/ses-chicago-bruce-clay-revisits-his-ranking-is-dead-statement/
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/18/what-googles-matt-cutts-sees-in-2009
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-ranking-reports-dead.html
Damnit! Did you drink all
the kool aid except for one tiny little sip and then put the pitcher back?