5 Reasons Why SEO is Bullshit

Ok, I am in one of those moods. Maybe I am ODing on learning about SEO. On one hand I am enjoying learning about SEO, it is fascinating and I am even seeing it working for me though it is slow. But I also see some problems with focusing so much effort on SEO. If my language offends you well so be it. I am not one of these fake bloggers who has their smiling picture telling everybody how perfect they are. I am human like you. I get pissed, frustrated, excited, cynical, idealistic, and overly optimistic. So here are my 5 reasons why SEO is Bullshit:

#1 SEO Does Not Get Irony

The Psychic whose show was cancelled due to “unforeseen circumstances.” I love this one.(This picture is from Viralnova.com and they have some other great examples of irony on their blog post here.

So I am going to start getting ranked for “Psychics?” I would be very proud to rank for irony. I am going to do a search for long tail irony keywords. (That would be quite ironic when writing a post why SEO is bullshit.) My blog is about marketing. Am I in danger of losing my “relevancy ranking” Does Moz have an irony index to rate my site?

#2 SEO Does Not Get Sarcasm

I actually have an aunt like this. You can say something sarcastic and clever and she will just stare at you blankly. “But that does not make sense. That is not logical. That is not correct.” Coming from a more scientific background (PHD) she is so left brain orientated that she literally cannot understand sarcasm. Either can Google. Mark Twain gets sarcasm and his writing genius was never shackled by algorithims.

Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.” – Mark Twain

#3 SEO Does Not Rank Humor

There should be a search engine which just ranks posts based on how funny they are. Could their be such an algorithim. I can imagine all the little Dr. Spocks in Google trying to analyze humor. Humor is human and Google is not.

#4 SEO Impedes Creativity in Writing

Most of what you read on blog posts including this one are just regurgitations of what is written elsewhere. There is very little true creative writing going on. True creativity where you actually share original thoughts is not rewarded by the search engines. You are better off looking at trends, finding “keywords” that are popular and that have little competition and capitalizing on them. SEO is clever but it is not creative. If somebody just wrote an incredible short story that tranported it’s readers into another world or lead them through a great adventure without H1 tags or God forbid not in a list format the story would languish alone in Google.

#5 SEO is Not Human

Google does not actually read your posts. Google analyzes data. Generally the more popular sites get ranked the highest. More popular does not mean better. Just look at Google Trends and check out what is popular and you will see what I mean. I can be a bit scary. Just for kicks do a search in Google and check out the listings on the last pages of the search findings. You will find some very high quality and often “human” writing.

Even though a wordpress blog is set up perfectly for SEO a blog format really is not the best format for SEO. Because a blog is supposed to be about humans sharing ideas with other humans. The best writing is writing that is done without any regard to search engine rankings or keywords. Should you choose the keywords that most effectively communicate what you are trying to convey or should you include the hottest keywords that you researched even if they are not 100% what you really wanted to say.

My Articles Will Be “Human Optimized” Before Being “SEO Optimized” From Now On

As for me, I am going to write my blog posts from a human perspective first. Screw the rankings for the blog posts. Sure I will do some SEO after I write the article but the article must first be “Human Optimized” not “SEO” optimized.  Thank you for indulging me on this rant. If you care to add to it you are welcome to do so in the comments area.