The Search Ninja

In my last post I briefly discussed the SEO industry’s love of coming up with clever terms and jargon; i.e. SEO Wordsmithery.

My general disdain for SEO industry vocabulary/jargon has nothing to do with the jargon itself (for the most part). Rather it is the application thereof that I find annoying: SEO’s like to come up with neat terms and creative phrases solely to impress each other.

This pointless show-n-tell for ego stroking is a common trait within the industry that I have commented on many times. If you would like to delve further into SEO circle-jerking please read my post on Search-Masturbation-Expo.

Accordingly I tend to resist incorporating any fancy SEO wordsmithery into my own professional interactions and communications; even within my own private work. However I often find that a certain language barrier does exist; certainly with many clients and especially so with potential clients.

For example the term SEO2g, which I use to distinguish high-end, scientific SEO from common SEO, is a term that is essentially meaningless to persons who are unfamiliar with my work. Furthermore an explanation that SEO2g stands for Second Generation SEO, offers little remedy (Worse still I have noticed that most people slip into a kind of trance as soon as anything remotely technical enters the conversation. The eyes just glaze over…). This is no good for a technical guy like myself and is one of the reasons that I prefer the solitude of a brains-behind-the-operation type role for most projects. I am exaggerating a bit, but you understand.

The industry at large offers almost no assistance as the common SEO vernacular is mysterious at best, and possibly even laughable in certain company and therefore remains of little use when in discussion with non-SEO’s (i.e. clients. Clients and potential clients are, after all, the only people that I am interested in discussing SEO with.). So it seems that when it comes to effectively communicating the finer points of SEO2g to the world, I’m on my own. Fair enough.

If I turn my attention to communicating the distinctions between SEO2g and common SEO with the SEO industry itself (which I occasionally find myself required to do), I am faced with a variety of problems. Most of which seem to stem from the personalities at work within the industry. It has been interesting to note the caustic reactions that my ideas tend to incite (especially to some of the definitions found in my SEO Glossary).

Therefore I have decided to work within the framework of common SEO vocabulary in an attempt to create a palatable packaging for my brand of SEO.

Building upon the two most popular distinguishing terms used by SEO’s:

• White-Hat SEO: Used to describe SEO’s that adhere to search engine terms of use and webmaster guidelines.
• Black-Hat SEO: Used to describe SEO’s that focus on aggressive exploitation of susceptible algorithmic features of search engines.

I would like to introduce a third denomination of search engine optimization. One that describes scientific, research-based, advanced search optimization in easy to stomach language (This should not be taken as a retirement for the term “SEO2g”. SEO2g will continue to describe truly advanced and evolved SEO practices.)

For the SEO world at large; I am pleased to introduce to you: