First Search Engine Optimization was easy, now it’s something you really shouldn’t do at all. In a column on ClickZ this week, Shari Thurow argues that optimizations for the sake of the search engines aren’t that good of an idea.

Miss Thurow apparently thinks search engine optimization is something that happens to you while you’re busy doing other things – like building ‘user centric websites’.

Newsflash: It’s called Search Engine Optimization. It’s about getting your pages to rank highly in the search engines. It shouldn’t then be controversial to actually try to figure out what the search engine algorithms measure and then build or modify sites in ways specifically designed to rank highly.

Yes the algorithms are secret, and so the process requires study, testing, and some guessing. Results are not guaranteed, the algorithms are certain to continue to change over time, and mileage may vary. And of course there are methods and tactics that are ‘over the line’ which I’d reject only partially on moral grounds but largely because those specific methods are likely to only have short term benefits. But there’s a lot of ground between ‘be nice’ and ‘you’re evil’.

I think her distinction of ‘short term vs long term' seo is bogus. There is intentional SEO and there is coincidental SEO.

• Intentional SEO recognizes how the engines work and take that into account throughout site planning and content development. Without defining the boundaries between algorithm chasing and algorithm awareness, it just doesn't' make sense to avoid optimizations that are purely designed to provide the engines what they want to enable a page to rank more highly.

• Coincidental SEO is what happens to most people who build websites without sufficient algorithm awareness – they happen to rank at some level for some number of related terms. Building a website with a strong focus on satisfying the user would likely mean more text, more pages, and therefore more coincidental ranking results. But it would also miss a massive amount of traffic that actually optimizing the website (for the engines) would generate.

In a recent post I wrote that sites need to serve three masters – marketers, customers, and search engines. It’s possible to fully satisfy all three and online marketers should strive to do so.