The Difference between the Art and Science of SEO
The way to build more traffic to your Website is to improve your search engine optimization. Search engine optimization can be practiced as an art or as a science. It’s better to practice search engine optimization science than search engine optimization art. When you use SEO as an art you fall into the trap of playing paint-by-numbers SEO games. People who use SEO art tricks risk getting their Websites penalized. SEO should be applied in a very scientific way.
There is a lot of theory behind SEO. The theory of SEO says that anyone can optimize their search experience. Even searchers can optimize or improve the way they search. This is a very important point to know because in SEO theory here are four reasons why your search traffic changes: You change your Website, or someone else changes their Website, or the search engine changes their data and algorithm, or people change the way they search.
If you’re trying to learn the art of SEO you need to really stop and learn the science of SEO. Search engine optimization science takes the form of SEO theory where you investigate the causes behind things that happen in Web search. Here is an example. A few years ago Google asked people to use “rel=’nofollow’” on links in their blog comments. After a while some people said that you could control which pages receive PageRank on your site if you use “nofollow” on some of your navigational links.
In SEO theory this is a really bad idea because there is no way to test your PageRank. You cannot see where the PageRank flows. For about two years there was a big debate about using “nofollow” to sculpt PageRank. The people who said this was a bad idea practiced SEO theory or scientific SEO. The people who liked sculpting PageRank were painting by numbers in the art of SEO. In the summer of 2009 Google said that so many Websites were hurt by PageRank sculpting that they had to change the way they treat “nofollow” in early 2008. None of the PageRank sculptors noticed the change even though they said they were testing for changes.
There is always something new to learn in SEO theory. It’s not a quick simple set of guidelines. Some people are pretending to know SEO theory but they don’t really write about the theoretical side of SEO. If you want to learn more about search engine optimization you should study SEO theory. You won’t be sorry.
