If you have no idea what this is about, check it: Dave Pasternack SEO Contest .

Update, 2/14/07:  Threw link love to Oilman and Graywolf.  Also threw my hat into the PPC ring…

We are here today to help Dave Pasternack.  Dave Pasternack recently talked out of his cornhole for about the 347th time about how easy SEO is and why all of us competitive SEO’s are overhyped.  While there is some merit to the latter, the former is akin to saying, “Nationbuilding is easy.”

Dave is what I call a PPC Myopian.  I run into them ALL the time.  Mostly, they are thanking me for referrals as I wouldn’t touch those client leads with Lexington Steele’s unit (Google it if you are from the Midwest).  There might have been a time where I taught Realtors how to canvas paid search for slave labor rates, but those days are long gone and I don’t need to be the equivalent of the cheeseburger-hoarding crackhead from Menace II Society.  Mainly because I could rank a site.

I love PPC.  I arbitrage the hell out of it.  But it’s the least defensible traffic there is and I could train a chimp to do it.  Basing a business on something that Koko the Grey Gorilla could master if she spent less time in the tire swing is utterly ridiculous.  It should be a tool.  It should be a tactical strategy.  But to use it as a long-term strategy is simply clueless. 

PPC management should be software and AI based.  It is the classic business process that is on the verge of becoming part of the larger movement towards Marketing Automation.  Do some keyword research, get your campaigns live, aim for an ROI, lather, rinse, repeat a couple times a week while you’re sucking down your morning caffeinated beverage of choice.  Oh, and even if you are really good at it, Google might Quality Score you into slimmer margins if your competition isn’t yet.  While the immediacy of Paid Search is great, I would sweat my ass off if I didn’t have the ability to build a growing, sustainable, defensible audience via natural search or web promotion.

Listen, Pasternack.  We all know what you and Jason Calacanis call “SEO” is indeed pretty easy (unless you have idiot clients who unravel all your hard work every three months).  In fact, I really don’t even call that SEO anymore.  I have always called that Search Engine Compliance.  Organize the information in such a way that it optimizes your on-page factors.  On-page factors that count, oh, about 5% (at best) in your ability to rank in competitive natural search.

But let’s assume that you compete (that’s what us real SEO’s do) for traffic that has 40 other competitive webmasters.  Now that shit ain’t easy!  No amount of the Compliance Phase is going to bail your ass out of that free-for-all.  THAT is the real SEO these days.  With CMS’s and E-Commerce platforms all producing search engine friendly architecture these days, anyone who even talks about Search Engine Compliance is either a glutton for punishment, an idiot, or a newb.  Or a PPC Guy.

Dave, I will make you an offer.  If for some reason this page ranks for your Kitty Kelley Unauthorized Biography of an SEO Contest, I will take Aaron’s jack and not donate it to charity.  I will use it to buy you a nice trip to come see me in San Francisco or in San Antonio so I can help you learn about the real SEO.  Just make sure to bring some rubber gloves, a welder’s mask, and a lighter because it’s freaking ugly out there.

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