Derek Powazek launched an attack on SEO yesterday that really said nothing that others haven’t ranted about before. I’ve responded to many of these attacks over the years in hopes of educating people about mistaken assumptions. I’ve largely given up. But I figured this time I’d give it another go with some personal illustrations I’ve encountered recently.
There’s an interesting debate here involving technical knowledge and how one is either heard or not heard. In the end, one should just be able to create solid content and that should be enough, but the way the system is built and gamed can create a massive difference between the haves and the have nots.
A similar thing is happening on social media and reach there. By handing your data over to social silos, you may gain a broader audience you don’t or shouldn’t necessarily have (keep in mind a lot of this content is drivel in the grand scheme). Should we allow the silos to create massive audience for drivel just because it drives clicks? Is corporate social siloing creating the world we would otherwise see if SEO black hats could have their way? Put another way, should cat videos have the outsized influence on society that they might not otherwise have without the effect of run away click collecting algorithms? Where is the happy medium?
