SEO: Understanding the Trick is Pointless

The part of Seth Godin’s Tribes that res­onated with me most falls towards the end of the book under the sub­head­ing ‘Under­stand­ing the Trick’.

Here, Godin draws an anal­ogy between true inno­va­tion and lead­er­ship to under­stand­ing how a magic trick works.

It’s all well and good know­ing how the magic trick works; after all, it’s not hard to fig­ure out how to do the ‘Twisted Aces’ or ‘The French Drop’.

The skill is in the art of its per­for­mance and cre­at­ing magic in the spectator’s mind.

The same, Seth argues, is true about leadership.

Under­stand­ing and pay­ing lip ser­vice to effec­tive lead­er­ship is point­less unless you are com­mit­ted to learn­ing the art of its execution.

How this relates

A hunch I’ve had for a while and, one which I’ve heard oth­ers artic­u­late, is that SEO is self-serving indus­try.

The reams of con­tent and dis­cus­sion online are full of mar­keters pay­ing lip ser­vice to a best prac­tice of SEO; to the vision Rand Fishkin is often found ser­mon­is­ing.

Look under the bon­net of most web­sites’ link build­ing strat­egy though, and you will quickly see prac­tices that are a far cry from Rand’s utopia.

Whilst many are quick to shout at the magi­cian that they know how the trick is per­formed, per­haps they would be bet­ter keep­ing sch­tum and using the time saved to per­fect their own sleight of hand.

Post By Michael Smith (31 Posts)

Michael works at 9xb Dig­i­tal Agency in Har­ro­gate, Mon­day to Fri­day. Click here to fol­low him on Twit­ter or have a look a his Google+ pro­file.

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Last updated by Michael Smith at August 25, 2012.