SEO is like Art

Fri, Jun 5, 2009 Posted By:Eric Friedman

Marketing.fm, Search Marketing, Technology

blankcanvas
“masterpiece” by 415style

I was talking with Amanda Peyton who I met after the Internet Week version of the NY Tech Meetup about SEO and gave my thoughts on why and how it is important. This was following another great event showcasing 50+ companies in the first NYTM Showcase demo room.

She asked “does SEO even exist?” to which I replied with what I believe is a very good analogy I will use going forward to explain my thoughts on SEO.

Seo is like Art

The gatekeepers who decide whether or not your page is “optimized” are the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This is done via a blackbox that people have tried to game, crack, follow, and abide by for many years.

The analogy holds true for art as well as the gatekeepers who decide whether or not your work is “art” are the major museums such as the MoMA, the Met, and the Guggenheim (at least here in NYC).

Each group is similar as they have different specialties and themes, and their own flavor of what works and what does not. They are curated and handled differently, but ultimately have the final say.

People spend vast amounts of time arguing whether or not something belongs in a museum or not, and one of my favorite examples is the painting Blue Monochrome by Yves Klein which is one color on the entire canvas.

I will avoid the argument for the moment of whether or not this is art, but clearly it has some foundation as it is hanging in the MoMA.

The same holds true for websites. You can build a site, optimize it, and throw it online and call it “optimized” but only the engines will determine if this is really the case. Your reward for optimizing towards the guidelines set forth by these gatekeepers is ranking. This is now heavily influenced by outside links coming in, but still determined by the engines.

So I challenge anyone who really questions the validity of SEO and so called SEO-experts, and use my analogy of artwork. If it were that easy, everyone would pickup a blank canvas, some paint and brushes, and create a masterpiece – whatever that may look like.

, , , ,

This post was written by:

Eric Friedman - who has written 647 posts on Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm.

Analyst at Union Square Ventures, blogger at www.marketing.fm and operating experience within SEM, SEO, and Social Media. You should follow me on twitter @EricFriedman

Contact the author

  • Cool article and I do agree that SEO is more art then science. There is no pre-set step by step instruction manual to gain great SERPS. Over time, some people will find a better fit then others!
  • socialmaker
    When it comes to seo services there are only a handful of companies who really know what they're doing. Only these know what content is all about, fixing site issues, URL canonicalization and rewrites and getting you a lot of links.
  • didgiwidgi
    Interesting article I searched for SEO art and this page came up :-)
  • ravm
    The beauty of what you've said is that search engines like Google really are in a position to determine whether something is "art" with or without SEO. In fact, I think using SEO to improve search engine rankings will become obsolete in 1-3 years.
  • Exactly.

    What do you think will drive the engines and SEO to be obsolete?
  • ravm
    I guess it's a couple things I've been reading that really have me thinking a lot about it. Google wave and the fact that Google, along with NASA and many others are investing in the Singularity University, have me really thinking about the direction that Google's taking the web. It's just my speculation really, but it seems that personalized search is going to go way beyond the simplicity you see today. No one is going to be able to say, "I rank #1 for such-and-such a keyword," because your results are going to be different from my results, which will be different from everyone's results (in most cases). SEO to improve search engine rankings may not be necessary. Although, I might be wrong about SEO being obsolete, because the truth is, it will probably evolve in some way. But what if it simply can't evolve because of the superior nature of AI assisted search?
  • SEO is like art in the sense that when people ask "Why aren't I here? I could do that" SEO practitioners can go: "Because you didn't do it".
  • Great comparison. The 'color on canvas' art you mention was eye opening to me the first time I was at the Guggenheim and it's elevation to 'art' is difficult to understand without some concept of why anything shows up in a museum.

    Also as a side note - the disqus profile wouldn't let me sign in here (it is working elsewhere). I know you recently migrated and wasn't sure if this might be a bug or not. (Firefox/mac platform).
  • Thanks - I will check it out and see if I can replicate the problem on my end.
blog comments powered by Disqus