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Theory and SEO
[7/20/10 edits in red.]
Assuming that I haven't missed something completely, which, naturally, I have . . .
Humans communicate for
fivesix reasons:- To educate;
- To entertain;
- To persuade;
- To inspire;
- To attract; and
- To deceive.
Any discrete communication might serve one or more of these purposes. For example, with this sentence I aim to educate and to persuade.
Examples of communications intended to attract arethe setup for a joke, or the first sentence of a good book or the location of the post splitter in this sentence, intended to draw the listener or reader in.
A lawyer's online communications that may be associated with that lawyer by potential clients should educate, entertain, persuade, inspire, and attract.
(A Tangent, Which Will Be Very Important to Future Theory Discussions: a lawyer's stock in trade is not, as Abraham Lincoln would have had it, her time, but rather her knowledge and her intellectual abilities. A lawyer's online communications that clients might see are effectively free samples of the lawyer's product. So even while lawyers' communications entertain, persuade, and attract, they educate: "This," they say, "is what this lawyer knows, how she thinks and how she communicates; it is, in short, who she is as a lawyer.")
Search engine optimization does not directly advance any of those goals of communication. It may expedite them (because you can't communicate with people who aren't there), but it is the tail, not the dog.
4 responses to “Theory and SEO”
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Very True. In fact, there are a few real “SEO professionals” out there who shout in the woods (a la John the Baptist) that a true SEO professional will never tell you how great he or she is, they will demonstrate it instead.
That being said, I slightly disagree with you that SEO does not directly advance your stated goals (which I believe I am in agreement with, but am still digesting). Let me offer an example:
Say you have a blog about, oh, criminal law in Texas. And say that your purpose with said blog is to foster discussion and learning about certain aspects of criminal law that are misunderstood or completely misconceived (i.e that the prosecutors speak for “the people”, that police officers never lie, and so forth). If I understand correctly, this blog should fit within your defined goals (if not, please help me understand).
Now, since discussion and dialectic are necessary to your purpose, you must attract some readers and commentators to your blog. Alas, your blog has finally appeared on Gaggle, that vaunted search engine, but it has made it’s initial appearance at number 567 out of 568 “hits”. You have determined based upon your search engine ranking that it is not likely that you will be attracting many visitors to your blog and your wonderful idea will fail as the result of a lack of participation.
So how do you improve your ranking? The same way that the other fella in the Houston, TX area did with his – through the use of SEO.
note: SEO includes things like “backlinks” or references in other blogs to your blog posts, keywords like “criminal” “Texas”, and so forth. Fact of the matter is that we all have used some SEO whether we intended to or not.
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Mark Bennett July 22nd, 2010 at 07:38
That’s pretty much what I meant to convey with my last paragraph. By attracting more visitors, SEO doesn’t cause education, inspiration, and so forth, but it expedites it.
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Mickey Fox July 27th, 2010 at 20:00
Well stated point. But does *anything* really *cause* education? I used to teach political science to freshmen college students. I certainly never *caused* any of them to learn (no smart cracks about my teaching skills) but I hope that I expedited their learning through my antics.
Cause and effect are funny things. A defendant’s attorney would have you believe that A never caused B. A prosecuting attorney would want you to believe that A *always* causes B (and therefore C *must* be guilty).
When you write, I have noticed that you often use very good examples. One should probably say that those examples merely *expedite* the learning process. However, one might also say that your writing would be far less persuasive without the examples. SEO can be used in much the same way I think. (if only to gain gravitas for your writings)
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This may be a woman’s thing (Deborah Tannen would say so), but people also communicate to connect – to share experiences or build relationships or feel closer. Maybe that is what you mean by “to attract.” Social media, like it or not, supports the connection goal of communication. When someone tweets even something stupid, it’s like a “hello there” in the real world, another link that makes us feel less isolated. When someone writes a blog post that shares an experience that we’ve also had, we feel less alone and closer to the author. Communication as connection is also what distinguishes as lawyers from machines – we can empathize with clients, support them and encourage them so that we inspire their trust.
Mickey Fox July 21st, 2010 at 20:37