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Continuing on a theme here, another buzzword that sometimes makes me cringe (although not quite as predictably as “best practices“) is search engine optimization (SEO).

A July 27 post by blogger Anil Dash (who managed to deftly win a high-profile SEO contest – to the consternation of many SEO professionals) nailed down for me what bugs me about much that I’ve seen regarding the practice, and sometimes the principles, of the SEO field.

In Optimizing Search Engine Optimization Dash points out the obvious: SEO should be a byproduct of excellent content. Good search engine placement should not determine which content is considered excellent.

I couldn’t make those points any better than Dash did, so please read his article. However, here’s an additional point he didn’t cover…

From my own experience, when online content is excellent and on-target for the intended audience, search engines are NOT the main source of traffic to the site. Rather, excellent content tends to attract a myriad of links from other online venues, including weblogs, e-mail publications, and webfeeds.

Why? Because great content offers intrinsic value.

People rarely link to sites that will not offer significant value to their audiences. It’s like being at a cocktail party – no one likes to talk to people who instantly turn around and introduce you to a procession of idiots and blowhards. People who publish online, in any sort of digital venue, tend to value their audiences and wish to maintain their good will. Generally, they don’t want to shuffle their precious audience off to Schlock City via ill-considered links.

Granted, I’ve worked mainly on online venues intended for what might be considered niche audiences of one kind or another: content professionals, journalists, energy professionals, nonprofits, various corporate and scientific sites, etc. But in online media, as far as I can tell, niche audiences rule. This medium is meant for “nichecasting,” not broadcasting. It just works better that way.

I can certainly see why people who publish online content primarily to support sales or marketing efforts would care about good search engine placement. It does make a certain amount of sense in that context, and SEO techniques should indeed be a consideration for those efforts. However, in my experience, content that is shaped primarily by SEO considerations ends up feeling fake and forced, like a politician’s poll-generated “talking points.” In short, that style of content may attract a lot of eyeballs – but at the cost of undermining its own credibility. It tends to appear shallow and, to a certain extent, untrustworthy.

Thus I applaud Dash’s efforts, and his well-deserved win. He wrote:

“[Some said that] I shouldn’t have entered the contest because [SEO] isn’t my business. I can understand the resistance to an outsider entering any community’s contests, but I think that, though I did essentially enter the contest on a lark, it served to illustrate a larger point. MBA types like to say that the rail industry didn’t understand it was in the transportation business, not the train business, and so lost out to the development of the interstate highways and air travel. That’s an oversimplification, but the SEO industry does need to learn that its real business is in helping clients make information that’s compelling enough that potential customers want to find it. Once they’ve created that information, it behooves them to make it as accessible and sharable as possible, and to provide affordance for easily keeping it up to date. Publishing of interesting content that readers can share with each other, provide feedback on, and easily update? Hey, waitaminute… that is my business!”

If this rings true for you, it might be a good idea to lay off the SEO strategies for awhile and talk to an editor about how to create content that not merely attracts eyeballs, but that consistently engages and satisfies your target audience.