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Finally ... John Dvorak Exposes SEO Industry
February 10, 2009
PC Mag's John Dvorak has declared SEO to be snake oil. Guess it's time to close up the shop.
Sigh. Not exactly a new theme, but as weak arguments go, Dvorak's is particularly so. I'll sum it up for you in case you don't have the time:
- John gets bad advice about optimizing his blog.
- John's page views decline.
- John equates his bad advice with SEO practice.
- John picks another third-tier technique (tagging) and also equates it with SEO.
- John anecdotally proves that tagging is ineffective.
- John concludes that SEO "simply doesn't work."
But wait! He completes the formula. Don't forget about the final, disclaiming paragraph, designed to hedge himself against any criticism:
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's nothing you can do to get more attention. Much of what you can control is structural. If you have a blog full of fancy AJAX code, it's going to be difficult to index, for example. Making your Web site search-engine-friendly is one thing, in other words. But using stupid human tricks such as the long URL and tags to get more attention is folly -- and bad advice, from what I can tell. Beware!
In other words, real SEO isn't bad, but bad SEO is bad, but you don't get to know that until you wade through his lesson on why singular techniques, in a vacuum absent an overall strategy, are unhelpful. Come on, John. You're better than this.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at February 10, 2009 7:58 AM
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Comments
I couldn't help but be almost offended by John's article, simply because it was devoid of any real understanding of SEO strategy. I posted a breakdown of the article here: http://www.contextsolutions.net/blog/2009/02/why-john-dvorak-is-dead-wrong-about-seo/
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