Why, why, why PART 2.

Yesterday when I blogged that BMW.de had been penalised in Google it was in the mindset of O'h well there's another big brand that either got convinced by another search marketer or talked themselves into a dumb tactic because they thought it would be easier than addressing their core issues, and engaging the technical team and some good SEO practice to address them properly.

But now after this has blown up across the UK media I am convinced that there is a serious misunderstanding about search engine optimisation (SEO) and how it can be approached amongst many brands & journalists alike. In fact I even felt obliged to submit my first ever official press complaint to the BBC, according to them BMW.de conducted:

...a practice known as search engine optimisation and banned by Google

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4685750.stm

E'r really? Have they ever read the following official statement from Google:

SEO is an abbreviation for "search engine optimizer." Many SEOs provide useful services for website owners, from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Which I tend to agree with much more; we do our jobs well, we give search engines more accurate content. Interestingly another journalist I was speaking with that wanted to know more about the issue that I thought was pretty clued up also knocked me sideways when they asked:

Doorway pages isn't that how everyone does search engine optimisation?

I had to explain how we'd turned down loads of projects where the site owner/marketing manager wouldn't commit to actually getting stuck in under the hood, and that for us a really big, really complex CMS with loads of technical issues and thousands of products was my teams dream project. 

What can we learn from this?

• That there are some serious misunderstandings in the media
• Brand marketers who don't understand algorithmic will look for the cheap and easy fix...but
  1. it's not cheap
  2. it doesn't fix anything