Why SEO Doesn’t Work

Post-war American industrialists loved efficiency experts: men with stopwatches and clipboards, paid to find ways for a company to shave seconds–even minutes–off the time it took workers to complete every task.

This rational, numbers-driven strategy was supposed to help management control an emotion-driven workplace.

Today, SEO experts promise us easy money from manipulating consumers to buy something, or visit our site.

But this is no time to suspend your disbelief, just because their technique is technology-based.

Behavior isn’t rational. Never has been. Any brand-new marketer or sales pro learns this fact within a few hours of meeting his or her first prospect. If buying decisions are emotional and irrational, why waste money and time on techniques that pretend we act rationally and are so herdable?

It’s because these snap-on techniques encourage us to believe–irrationally–that people are willing to be manipulated.

SEO experts, like the late unlamented efficiency experts, would have us believe that people leave emotions behind when talking about business. An SEO client is born every minute; dreaming that everyone except him or her behaves rationally, and will respond to the newest off-the-shelf manipulative process.

We’ve been warned for decades that technology tends to backfire on us, creating complications we didn’t expect. Yet we keep pretending that technological tool we’ve just bought will have only a very specific, limited effect, and will bring us lots of money. Like hospitals, or Google.

Here’s some good news: the line separating a superior business leader from a successful marketer is blurring. Workplace behavior looks more and more like what we do for fun or relaxation. Designing a great business has become more and more like designing a great campaign. Use your intuition and wisdom correctly to accomplish either or both. Then profit from irrational human behavior.

But the next time an expert promises you untold profits if you’ll use his incredible numbers-driven technique, hide your wallet from yourself. Then ask him to show you his hands. Is that a stopwatch?