CC: Santa chucks the finger by BoSoxBrent.
It’s this dreaded season again and all of us in the SEO industry will have to endure humiliations we have to face each year. To lessen the impact of the Christmas SEO woes I compiled a list of 10 holiday no-nos for SEO specialists to avoid at all costs:
1. Do not tell your relatives you practice “SEO”. Tell them you’re an internet specialist. If they want to know more, tell them you optimize websites. Then change the topic of the conversation. Remember, some family members will always want to know but will never be able to understand. Then all of a sudden everybody in the room will ask whether you work for Google, manipulate search results and whether it’s illegal.
2. Do not tell your girlfriend or wife that your PageRank got bigger or worse, smaller. Especially as she might get it wrong that your “paycheck” got smaller.
3. Don’t try to explain to anybody that Google rankings are not “natural”. You shatter world views! People either won’t believe you or they will become cynical and detached when they realize that Google is not God and rankings are not based on traffic or a website “being the best”.
4. In case someone asks whether you’re a computer specialist say you are not, you only use your computer like other people use cars. Otherwise they will make you fix their broken Windows XP machine. Don’t try it! You will spend hours and hours with it and give up in the end anyways. You’re an internet specialist, you have no clue how computers work.
5. Do not tell relatives that their websites do not rank well or are not optimized. In 2009 they will want you to optimize the meta tags or the PageRank, for free. Most importantly they will not want you to change the site or add some content because they love the site the way it is. “You just need to do some SEO, nothing else.” ;-)
6. Do not tell younger cousins that they should not post their private party images (where they are drunk or naked or both) on MySpace or Facebook. They will hate you and think that “you’re sooo conservative!”
7. Don’t try to explain to average citizens why you use Twitter. People will think you are crazy to tell the world what you have for lunch.
8. Don’t try to point out to your (potential) parents-in-law that the “search results” on top of Google are actually ads. You make them look stupid and they won’t like you anymore for the next 10 – 20 years.
9. In case the conversation touches topics like spam, blogs, hacking etc. leave the room instantly. Otherwise you will be the person to have to explain yourself why SEO is spam, comment spam and SEO hacking no matter how white hat you are.
10. Don’t criticize Google for anything. People love Google. So you telling them about privacy concerns, a monopoly or China will make them assume that you are a crazy conspiracy theorist.
I’m pretty sure that there will arise more problems like these. Try to generalize this advice and in case you do not want to take any risk, just say that you do research most of the time (you do, keyword research).
Related posts:
- SEO 2.0 Reality Check: What’s True What Not?
- 3 Way Link Exchange with SEO Spammers Is a Dead End
- PageRank Superstition: 200+ Signals Are Not One Google Juice
- Top 10 Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media
- Think Relationships not Technology
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This thing has 18 Comments
Even though I don’t always follow the “rules”, I agree.
I especially enjoyed #3. :-)
Thanks…
These are great rules for a lot of people in other technology-related fields. Everyone in my family thinks that my husband, who is a designer, is a networking king, and he’s constantly getting called upon to fix home computing problems!
Nowadays, I tell people I’m an internet marketing marketing manager doing ‘those text-ads on Google’… People know what they are, and thinks it’s quite simple so drop it!
Great tips all around. We should just say don’t try any blackhat stuff.
Even if you are a computer technician, never tell anyone who is likely to take advantage of it (that’s pretty much everyone!)
Martin: Yeah, #3 is a classic.
Sarah: A designer? Isn’t it someone working with computers? ;-)
Jack: I don’t do PPC so I can’t say that.
Franklin: Not sure what you mean. Can you explain. Also make sure to read my commenting guidelines, I had to edit your “name” the second time in a row. Last but not least I wrote you an email a while ago and never received a reply.
dodonell: Yeah, play safe, just keep it to yourself.
You’re right on the google is not God part lols, I’m having that kind of problem too when people ask you what you do for work I usually tell them I do advertising online.
Well, the first thing that came into my mind while reading this article is that it’s funny, but then I realized they’re all true! Especially #5, hehehe… not just your relatives, but also your friends, neighbors and your relatives’ neighbors will come knocking on your door asking you to do SEO on their personal websites because they want other people to see their profiles on the first page of SEPRs.
I like it:
“you only use your computer like other people use cars”
It’s actually true (:
Hi There,
I really enjoyed your article specially your tip no 2nd and 4th.
Happy New Year dear Santa.
I had a good laugh..twice :)
I like very much no 9. I’ve got into many of an explanation what a blog is with family. After the 3rd time I got bored and passed it off as an on-line diary.
Wow, this is really funny stuff. With the wife’s side of the family now and finding it all a little too true. SEO is a nice topic to put most family members to sleep, leaving more egg nog for the rest of us.
What a beautiful picture !!
I had a laugh…
My aunt ask me what I do for a living and I told her I do SEO, that was a big mistake on my part cause it took me 30 min to explain to her what I do. lols
Like #7 :)
SEO is one of those jobs where depending on who you are talking to you need to tailor your explanation of what you actually do. When I worked in SEO I simply – broke my job into ‘getting client websites to page one of Google with the example that Bob the Builder in London – wants to be at the top of page one when you type builder London in to Google search bar’ – simple – and to be fair that’s all it is – its just the WAY ITS done that makes it actually WORK. I haven’t said that to one person and needed to elaborate further. I like point 4 to very true!
Nice post.
having now done SEO for my new law firm for 2 months I have tremendous respect for what you guys do