SEOh NO!

Posted by JohnCarcutt
December 20, 2005

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Something I’ve noticed in dealing on both the client and agency side of this business; The interactive industry touts “measurability”, “scability” and “results” so often that there is inevitable misunderstanding that occurs when discussing SEO projects. SEO is an inexact science. SEO’s do their best to understand the state of their industry in the present, understanding that the rules can (and often do) change without warning. Clients who are used to managing SEM and other interactive projects often expect the same reliability out of SEO. They want to be assured that the content, design and technology changes SEO’s suggest will ONLY positively impact their rankings in the SERPS. What most site owners don’t understand is that ANY change to your sites content, flow or design will almost assuredly cause a temporary drop in your rankings. It may take up to 6 months to regain your ground. Of course the justification for that being that your site will eventually rise above its current positioning after the engine spiders have adequately cached and ranked your optimized site. But even then, there’s no guarantee. Some SEO firms now throw out guarantees; I always question their subject matter expertise when I see this. Any SEO that gives positioning guarantees either takes pride in insulting industry intelligence or isn’t seasoned enough to know better. It’s most likely the latter.

As this industry continues to define itself, I think we will see more concrete, actionable knowledge as a byproduct. With the “secretive” nature of the big search engines like Google, this will certainly be an uphill battle. Of course all of the engines have a vested interested in persuading us to focus our efforts in their bottom-line driving PPC programs. This makes me wonder how important ranking algorithmically will be in 5 years.