SEOs -- what's the prevailing attitude?

[Ted Roche]

On Sep 6, 2005, at 7:47 PM, Fred wrote:

> Just wondering what you all thought about the practices of SEOs --  
> Search
> Engine Optimizers. Good guys, bad guys, somewhere in the gray?

They look gray to me. There are unscrupulous operators who set up  
entire sites (now they are creating spam blogs or 'splogs') solely  
for the purpose of juicing their ratings in the search engines. There  
are also legitimate firms that attempt to help legitimate businesses  
attain their "rightful" place within search engines.

I worked for a small company a few years ago who had a web-based  
product they wanted customers to find. They used direct mail with  
purchased lists, advertisements in the trade press, participation in  
trade forums, presence in discussion areas, membership in trade  
organizations and anything else that would work. They hired an SEO to  
advise them on the right search words to submit to search engines and  
the proper formatting of the web site at attract the most traffic. In  
that role, an SEO is no different than a sales/marketing consultant.  
They were not trying to flood or trick the system, just get noticed.

I think the problem comes when people try to define what they believe  
is "rightfully theirs."