[Hot] Organic SEO is the Opposite of Spam
A recent headline from The Outline strikes an ominous tone: "Spam is Back!" As the article notes, efforts in the early years of the 2000s reduced "the proportion of all emails that are spam...to a low of about 50 percent in recent years," but "spam has clawed itself back from the grave."
The most notable recent example may be the "poltical bots" that influenced the American election. However, this new spam, which is largely motivated by crime, has inundated our lives, and this time spam may be here to stay.
The Outline quotes Finn Brunton, an assistant professor at NYU and the author of Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet, who says: “I think we had a really unique set of circumstances that created this temporary window where spam was in remission, and now we’re on the other side of that, with no end in sight.”
No end in sight? That's bad news for anyone with an Internet connection. The resurgence of spam, of course, has many implications for SEO too. First, unfortunately, a great deal of spam can be linked to so-called SEO firms. This association between spam and SEO, however misguided, is a serious problem for SEO. In a recent article for Search Engine Journal, Tony Wright, an SEO veteran wrote:
"There are still uneducated, unethical people claiming to be SEOs, and our industry still has less respect than used car dealers."
Read: Does SEO Have a Reputation Problem?
These "unethical people claiming to be SEOs" abuse black hat tactics long ago penalized by Google and abandoned by true SEOs, but we see SEO on social media and in our inboxes everyday.
Read: SEO Spam Emails: Bad News for Your and SEO
In reality, SEO, if practiced ethically, is the exact opposite of spam. In fact, comparing organic SEO to spam is the best way to illustrate the true value of SEO. Today's post, then, is a battle cry against the zombie that won't die: SPAM.
Digital Marketing: Spam is Not the Answer
Digital marketing is about the projection of images. The best digital marketing campaigns strike a balance between the quality and quantity of images. In this view, quality and quantity exist on a spectrum from efficiency to inefficiency. At a certain point, increasing the effectiveness of one decreases the effectiveness of the other.
Blasting emails to millions, regardless of the recipient's preferences, spammers utilize quantity alone. Quality is not even a consideration. Instead, spammers play a numbers game, striving for bare minimum conversions: 1% or less. Sound inefficient? It is, in one sense. Yet a 1% conversion for one million emails is still 10,000.
Would you like 10,000 customers? Perhaps. But if you're goal is a sustainable business, spam is not the answer.
Spam comes at a cost: When you spam, your image is degraded. You might attract 10,000 customers, but you repel 990,000 potential customers. This applies to all forms of spam--not merely emails (see below: keyword stuffing, link schemes, and duplicate content are all forms of spam).
Without a focus on quality, spam eventually repels all customers.
This is why spam is the lowest level of digital marketing, and why it is inefficient.
Additionally, as we noted above, spam is a black hat technique: a set of duplicitous practices exploited to manipulate search engines. Black hat SEO is largely irrelevant, but practices like keyword stuffing, link schemes, and duplicate content continue to haunt browsers.
If you've searched for a legitimate product and landed on a spammer's site, you've been victimized by black hat SEO.
Organic SEO: The Exact Opposite of Spam
Opposed to spam, Organic SEO focuses on quality. The saying quality trumps quantity is accepted as doctrine across the world. Yet focusing on quality to the exclusion of quantity can be inefficient, too.
Imagine a single human being: a CEO or brand spokesperson. This person may have enormous persuasive power. Yet, this person is necessarily limited in the quantity of potential customers he/she can reach. His/her conversion might be 100%, but if he/she only speaks to 10,000 people in a given year, the result is the same as spam: 10,000.
The best digital marketing campaign strikes a perfect balance between quality and quantity.
So how do you balance the quantity and quality of your marketing without sacrificing either?
Organic SEO connects customers to products or services. For organic SEO, the first step in striking a balanced digital marketing campaign is understanding the customer.
Understanding your product or service is crucial, but understanding who needs/wants your product or service is more important. By understanding precisely who you want to market to, you reduce the quantity of the people you market to. You ignore disinterested people who are likely to ignore your digital marketing; at the same time, you increase the effectiveness of each piece of marketing--each "image."
When you understand your ideal customer, you can create images uniquely suited to convert that customer. This is all about quality: creating the best vision for your customer. This level of precision, which is about quality, also utilizes quantity to reach people who want to be reached. This is Organic SEO--and in this way, Organic SEO is the opposite of spam, which works on quantity alone.
Striking the Perfect Balance Between Quality and Quantity: Stepman's SEO
Organic SEO strives for quality to the extent that the time and money expense does not compromise customer service. If a brand spends too much time perfecting its image, it might sacrifice customer service.
Ideally, with the help of a digital marketing firm, a brand can outsource Organic SEO to professionals who understand how to balance quality and quantity.
In part, the success of an SEO campaign depends on complex search engine algorithms—and the search engines change their algorithms about 500-700 times a year. The work of understanding and utilizing these ever-evolving algorithms is time-consuming. A high-quality SEO company understands how to do this work without wasting time.
Do not trust an SEO firm that spams your inbox. The nature of organic SEO is to attract customers organically. If you've found this blog, Organic SEO works.
The most notable recent example may be the "poltical bots" that influenced the American election. However, this new spam, which is largely motivated by crime, has inundated our lives, and this time spam may be here to stay.
The Outline quotes Finn Brunton, an assistant professor at NYU and the author of Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet, who says: “I think we had a really unique set of circumstances that created this temporary window where spam was in remission, and now we’re on the other side of that, with no end in sight.”
No end in sight? That's bad news for anyone with an Internet connection. The resurgence of spam, of course, has many implications for SEO too. First, unfortunately, a great deal of spam can be linked to so-called SEO firms. This association between spam and SEO, however misguided, is a serious problem for SEO. In a recent article for Search Engine Journal, Tony Wright, an SEO veteran wrote:
"There are still uneducated, unethical people claiming to be SEOs, and our industry still has less respect than used car dealers."
Read: Does SEO Have a Reputation Problem?
These "unethical people claiming to be SEOs" abuse black hat tactics long ago penalized by Google and abandoned by true SEOs, but we see SEO on social media and in our inboxes everyday.
Read: SEO Spam Emails: Bad News for Your and SEO
In reality, SEO, if practiced ethically, is the exact opposite of spam. In fact, comparing organic SEO to spam is the best way to illustrate the true value of SEO. Today's post, then, is a battle cry against the zombie that won't die: SPAM.
 |
| Like zombies (and zombie movies), spam JUST WON'T DIE! |
Digital Marketing: Spam is Not the Answer
Digital marketing is about the projection of images. The best digital marketing campaigns strike a balance between the quality and quantity of images. In this view, quality and quantity exist on a spectrum from efficiency to inefficiency. At a certain point, increasing the effectiveness of one decreases the effectiveness of the other.
Blasting emails to millions, regardless of the recipient's preferences, spammers utilize quantity alone. Quality is not even a consideration. Instead, spammers play a numbers game, striving for bare minimum conversions: 1% or less. Sound inefficient? It is, in one sense. Yet a 1% conversion for one million emails is still 10,000.
Would you like 10,000 customers? Perhaps. But if you're goal is a sustainable business, spam is not the answer.
Spam comes at a cost: When you spam, your image is degraded. You might attract 10,000 customers, but you repel 990,000 potential customers. This applies to all forms of spam--not merely emails (see below: keyword stuffing, link schemes, and duplicate content are all forms of spam).
Without a focus on quality, spam eventually repels all customers.
This is why spam is the lowest level of digital marketing, and why it is inefficient.
Additionally, as we noted above, spam is a black hat technique: a set of duplicitous practices exploited to manipulate search engines. Black hat SEO is largely irrelevant, but practices like keyword stuffing, link schemes, and duplicate content continue to haunt browsers.
If you've searched for a legitimate product and landed on a spammer's site, you've been victimized by black hat SEO.
 |
| Like zombies, spam will not die, but you do not have to use spam to succeed online. |
Organic SEO: The Exact Opposite of Spam
Opposed to spam, Organic SEO focuses on quality. The saying quality trumps quantity is accepted as doctrine across the world. Yet focusing on quality to the exclusion of quantity can be inefficient, too.
Imagine a single human being: a CEO or brand spokesperson. This person may have enormous persuasive power. Yet, this person is necessarily limited in the quantity of potential customers he/she can reach. His/her conversion might be 100%, but if he/she only speaks to 10,000 people in a given year, the result is the same as spam: 10,000.
The best digital marketing campaign strikes a perfect balance between quality and quantity.
So how do you balance the quantity and quality of your marketing without sacrificing either?
Organic SEO connects customers to products or services. For organic SEO, the first step in striking a balanced digital marketing campaign is understanding the customer.
Understanding your product or service is crucial, but understanding who needs/wants your product or service is more important. By understanding precisely who you want to market to, you reduce the quantity of the people you market to. You ignore disinterested people who are likely to ignore your digital marketing; at the same time, you increase the effectiveness of each piece of marketing--each "image."
When you understand your ideal customer, you can create images uniquely suited to convert that customer. This is all about quality: creating the best vision for your customer. This level of precision, which is about quality, also utilizes quantity to reach people who want to be reached. This is Organic SEO--and in this way, Organic SEO is the opposite of spam, which works on quantity alone.
 |
| How do you fight the zombie that never dies: SPAM? Organic SEO. |
Striking the Perfect Balance Between Quality and Quantity: Stepman's SEO
Organic SEO strives for quality to the extent that the time and money expense does not compromise customer service. If a brand spends too much time perfecting its image, it might sacrifice customer service.
Ideally, with the help of a digital marketing firm, a brand can outsource Organic SEO to professionals who understand how to balance quality and quantity.
In part, the success of an SEO campaign depends on complex search engine algorithms—and the search engines change their algorithms about 500-700 times a year. The work of understanding and utilizing these ever-evolving algorithms is time-consuming. A high-quality SEO company understands how to do this work without wasting time.
Do not trust an SEO firm that spams your inbox. The nature of organic SEO is to attract customers organically. If you've found this blog, Organic SEO works.