Comments on: Theory and SEO

By: Carolyn Elefant

Carolyn Elefant — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 20:55:30 +0000

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.

By: Mickey Fox

Mickey Fox — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:00:57 +0000

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)

By: Mark Bennett

Mark Bennett — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:38:46 +0000

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.

By: Mickey Fox

Mickey Fox — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:37:28 +0000

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.