Comments on: Web Developers: Money Grubbers,Plagiarists, and Art Fairies

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:55:20 +0000

Loving your site! Do you need any graphic work done?

By: terry

terry — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:50:58 +0000

I agreed with Derek’s piece more than this one. Most SEO practices are sleazy and deceptive. People just go with their gut to see if they’ll get a high rank in a search engine since no one has access to the ongoing implementation details of how they work. A web developer or designer can at least look into a text file and tell you exactly what’s going on based on what you want for your business. Better that than the crystal ball of the SEO snake oil salesman.

By: mrsockpuppet1

mrsockpuppet1 — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:11:58 +0000

Sock puppets, hear me out, you need to go on strike.
This site is breaking our union. Scabs!!!

By: johnny curdent

johnny curdent — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:41:26 +0000

Well, well, any(many) developer could do SEO job, hell, we created it ffs. Obviously, the contrary isn’t true since you define best practice by using cookies! Ohh well, i have no points, but so have you :D

By: Mike Child

Mike Child — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:04:16 +0000

This is a really great post, but there is a whole segment of the internet development community that hasn’t been sufficiently slandered yet.
What about those damned graphic designers – bloating the web with all their images and fancy fonts. And for what purpose, just to make web pages look nice.
Bar humbug. Just write good text.
But don’t get me started on “professional” copy-writers. They are obviously just another bunch of conmen trying to convince the world that their style of writing will sell more product than what anyone with any common sense could write themselves. The scummy bastards.

By: Yosef

Yosef — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:46:37 +0000

Possibly the best thing I have read online for a while, and a great response. At the end of the day, no matter what service you’re buying, online or off, someone out there will try and screw you. Lesson of the day: Be smart.

By: OJ

OJ — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:22:16 +0000

Good point, plus great plug for the Thesis theme. Funny how you wrote about all the phoney web designers and developers out there. I was hangin’ on the edge before you mentioned the clincher. Great theme, though. :P

And this note goes to all you people who “think” need design and development services. Start small. Start with WordPress, it has a LOT more features than you think. Then if you decide that you really need custom, expert web design and development, go get some really cool, respected, smart web designer and developer, not just a bunch of script kiddies acting like they’re pro. (I’m not plugging myself, at least not now. Haha!)

By: K.S. Katz

K.S. Katz — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:30:12 +0000

Ari – Thank you for the laugh. This post clearly illustrates that point that you can’t paint any industry, web design or SEO, with 1 brush.

Danny – In all serious, I’m glad you made those comments and it doesn’t at all take away from this beautiful parody.

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:42:35 +0000

Craig, the point is that some people who are not educated about SEO perceive it as gaming the system. Some people then go further and rant about SEO, making arguments against something they didn’t understand in the first place.

Google recommends SEO. OK, Google recommends it. Why would Google recommend something that’s trying to fool it? Answer: because that’s not what SEO is about. Despite what all those “people” who “know” will tell you.

Search engines see pages in a different manner than humans. A superior web developer will understand how to design for both humans and search engines. A good developer will know how to work with an SEO to do the same. A typical web developer will just build a web site and assume that it somehow magically will do well in a search engine. That’s the same as building a web site and never testing it in IE. You shouldn’t make that assumption.

Back to the superior web developer, they’d have to be extraordinary to also be a marketer. Part of SEO is keyword research. Part of SEO these days is understanding how you interact with shopping search engines, video search, blog search. How you optimize a local listing. The impact of social media sites.

That’s a lot for a web developer to also take on, don’t you think. I mean, just keeping up on web development itself seems to be a lot. SEOs can and do add value.

And sorry for bringing the entire sarcasm tone down :)

By: craig

craig — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:07:01 +0000

I understand that this is a sarcastic response to the SEO bashing you saw. I just don’t think the parallels work though.

Certainly any type of business can be run shoddily or deceptively, but that’s not the point of the article you responded to. The point is that people perceive SEO (even the most principled SEO) as “gaming the system”: trying to fool Google, and most importantly web users, into thinking your site is more relevant than it is.

Certainly there are some slurs in the original that should be responded to, but you’re not doing a good job of defending SEO here.