A Bad Month For SEO's Reputation

A Bad Month For SEO's Reputation

We seem to be going through another wave "SEOs are scumbags" incidents, and I find myself with little energy to push back against them with yet another defense of the industry. It's not that SEO doesn't deserve better treatment. It's just that I feel anything I could say, I've said before -- as have others as well. But below, a round-up of some of the latest developments, including a podcast defense of SEO that I did after Jeremy "Shoemoney" Schoemaker gave SEO some slams.
On January 7, Tech 'Solutions' Your Small Biz Can't Use from Gene Marks in BusinessWeek is what I'd say was the start of the current round. Marks wrote:

Search Engine Optimization
You mean for $5,000 I can get my company's name on the very top of Google's search results? Where do I sign? Many business owners have been fooled by the allure of search engine optimization [SEO] -- and I'm one of them. I forked over a bunch of dough to a firm in California that promised to get my company's name on "all the major search engines" when someone was looking for products that we sell. How did they plan to do this? I'm still not really sure, but it had something to do with spiders, black hats, and link farms. That should've been enough of a hint that witchcraft was involved. After a brief flirtation with page 47 of MSN's search results, I gave up. SEO probably does the job for companies with oodles of money, but not for the typical small business.

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