Why SEO Is Like Poetry

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, March 26, 2009 Comments (2)

If you read a lot of poetry, no two poets are alike. Robert Frost has a distinctive voice and style. Edgar Allan Poe is a far cry from Walt Whitman, both of whom wrote in the same century and within 10-20 years of each other. SEO is a bit like poetry.

What I mean by that is every search engine optimization firm and expert has a unique style. While there may be similarities in approaches and two experts can each have an equal amount of knowledge on the technical aspects but be vastly different in how they employ them, say as different as Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath. One poet can emphasize on site optimization more than off-page elements whereas another expert might emphasize off-page elements like link building more than the on-page SEO elements like alt tags and title attributes. It doesn’t mean that either is wrong or right. They are just two different approaches.

I believe that a balanced white hat approach is best. By trying to diversify your on site and off site optimization and branch it out into multiple directions at once, including a focus on strong on-page elements as well as off-page SEO, you go a long way to ensure that you rank well for your key terms no matter what the search engines may be doing. Many so called experts do really well for a while – that is, until one of the search engines changes its algorithm or ranking factors, then they see their pages falling through the floor of the SERPs. Later, they may bounce back when the search engines make other changes. But a well-rounded approach to SEO can keep you rocking steady no matter what the search engines emphasize. You will always see fluctuations, but the key is to minimize their effect. You want a balanced portfolio of techniques all the time.

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2 Comments

Made Thursday, 26 of March , 2009 at 2:50 pm

All you’re describing are the deficiencies of SEO vendors. There are many professionals out there who are unqualified or simply uneducated about what a true Seach Engine Optimization effort entails. A “balance white-hat approach” isn’t best, it’s correct… to a degree.

SEO isn’t an art, it’s a science. There are many elements in the formula to make it effective. You are either dealing with a expert who knows the intricacies of that process, or you are dealing with someone who only knows their piece of the puzzle.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Thursday, 26 of March , 2009 at 3:03 pm

@ Arun Srivastava – Thanks for reading and your comments and opinion!