Tonight, while taking a leisurely ride home, I saw some friends from way back when. Conversations ensued, and somehow the inevitable “What are you doing these days?” came up.
Now SEO (Search Engine Optimization for the uninitiated) sounds pretty complicated, so I usually just say something along the lines of… “Well, you see, errr, I make websites do a lot better in Google. And that makes the people who own that site very happy.”
Well this particular night something unusual happened. The guy I was talking to had heard of SEO. And he said, “Well, that must be about the most boring job in the world.”
Yeah. He said that.
Now maybe it’s not skydiving instructor, or brain surgeon, but the most boring job in the world?
So I picked my jaw up off of concrete and started riding home. And it occurred to me that he likely only knew the Old School version of SEO. You remember- the Wild West of SEO- when meta-tag stuffing and cloaking and all of that made the big bucks. Back then, SEO was strictly an IT thing. But things have changed a lot since then.
Now Search Engine Optimization is so much more. It’s about figuring out what people want and giving it to them. It’s about learning what users type into google, and then helping them find it. It’s still a little bit about the IT thing, but it’s way- WAY- more than that.
So I want to say Thank You, Google. Google, you took rankings and made them more about what people like, and less about meta tags. Thanks Google, you made SEO fun and cool, and now nobody can ever say SEO is boring again.
Remind me to buy you a beer if I’m ever in Palo Alto.
photo credit: artnoose
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Actually they’re HQ is located in Mountain View, CA. And from the looks of the food there, I’d guess they’d take a vitamin water over a beer unfortunately. :p