Is SEO actually detrimental to the web?

I do not mind living on an Internet where blog post links last beyond the next update, URLs hint at content, StackOverflow crushes archived mailing lists on programming questions, the top result for "biology bingo" is not a blank page (it was in 2006), and content is created for demographics which are not content creators themselves. Hug a SEO, they're half the reason Google works these days (particularly at the fringes where the link graph is sparse and hence classic PageRank isn't oracular).

Depends on what kind of SEO you mean. I've seen both ends of the spectrum -- some "SEO" is just good web practices codified, some "SEO" is just a code word for content spamming.

It seems like something of a zero sum game to me, since they're competing for rankings, rather than, IMO, creating much actual value. Once you've taken care of the basics that Google mentions on their site, more effort is just an "arms race" in some ways.

White-hat SEO, or providing genuinely good content that's easy for both humans and algorithms to parse, complete site maps, etc. is unquestionably good. Gray- or black-hat SEO, which results in ad-spammed content farms reaching the top results when there are much better sources (in many cases sources which were scraped by the SEO sites without proper credit) is destroying the web. SEO agencies posting dozens of generated blogs to bury negative reviews of themselves are definitely evil.

The long tail theory for URLs (i.e. where URLs make sense), combined with doing half of Google's job for them (i.e. making your pages index easier and in a more relevant manner) is nothing but pure gravy for the Internet. The gaming, the spam blogs, the autoposted crap of the world are scum, but it's an ongoing game of cat and mouse between google and the blackhat SEOs.

Personally I like the fact that someone can search for something rather specific and find something that's relevant, as opposed to the traditional mid-90s method of using 4 or 5 different search engines and 3 or 4 directories to hopefully find what you want.

Argument against: "search engine optimisation" is about optimising web sites for machines, not for people.

Argument for: the function of those machines is to help people, so a) optimising for the machines is indirectly beneficial to people because they're happier when the machines work better, and b) as the machines get better at understanding what's good for people, optimising for the machines becomes more directly beneficial to people because they both "want" the same thing.

The web would be better if everyone simultaneously stopped doing SEO and started thinking about people directly instead of indirectly via Google's ranking algorithms, but now that the arms race is in full effect and there are a million parasites making a living from it, the best case scenario is for Google to continue to close the gap between "good for machines" and "good for people" so that the satisfaction of the SEO gods translates as completely as possible into the satisfaction of human users.

Real, SEO valuable in the long-term, is nothing more than another marketing channel. Saying SEO is bad for the web is much like saying leaflets you get in the mail are bad. As with everything marketing, there are good people/companies who get their message across without being sleazy or spammy, and then there are sleazeballs.

IMHO, Google had a few settings wrong (call them "bugs" if you want) in early 2000s which many techies capitalised on. It's no different than finding a loophole in the finance industry regulation and trying to get away with it. In the case of Google's bugs, Google eventually reacted and became much more stringent. Sadly, by then the reputation damage to SEO has been done.

As for sentences for URLs, I agree with you. There is a fine balance between saying domain.com/widgets/green and domain.com/buy-new-and-used-widgets-green . I always ask which one would you rather speak over the phone, and that gets the point across.

If blackhats were not using SEO to game Search engine results and rankings, they would be using some other method to game other systems like webrings (remember those?), website directories or just good old email spam.

Silver lining: SEO rules are mandated by a Tech company like Google who can push an agenda for better web-standards.

The problem is the people that do black-hat SEO, they will always be around screwing things up for others through scamming and spamming.

> URL's are now sentences.

Which is still better than http://example.com/portal/servepage.asp?state=URHDA43FIDNWQI... (add 100+ chars) type of URLs we used to have before the SEO era.

Most SEO is nothing more than basic web concepts implemented right. People benefits from that, too.

White-hat SEO helps accessibility.

When client asks "can't we just Flashajax the hell out of it?" they won't listen to response that it won't be accessible, standards-compliant, etc. But they do listen to "No, Googlebot won't index it".

This is a really old conversation and it has steadily become less and less relevant over the past 5 years. The most effective SEO practices these days involve off-page and off site linking and on-page optimization is gets slightly less and less effective every year. Tricks like keyword stuffing URLs, title attributing everything, and no-follow sculpting, which used to actually make a difference at one point in time, essentially make no difference these days. For most SEO aware web developers these days, SEO is more and more about accessibility and usability, as it should be.

The most effective tricks these days mostly involve passing as much link juice to the site as possible, and matching it to good content that is based on sound keyword research and user demand. In order to do this in such a way that actually makes a significant difference in ranking without being penalized is usually beyond the the average developer "dabbling" in SEO. The blackhat term for this is "link laundering" and it's really the only way to get the huge traffic gains in a reliable and sustained manner. Most SEO companies fit into one of the 3 following types:

1. Basic SEO is getting easier to execute with all the hand-holding that Google gives out to webmasters these days, however the benefits are minimal. Most of that realm is about making sure you're not screwing up your content, rather than optimizing it. The kinds of gains you get by doing this are maybe a 30% increase in traffic, assuming you site is not screwed up to begin with.

2. On the other hand, using link laundering/pyramids even less talented SEOs can see somewhere in the area of a 400% increase in traffic without much risk of a penalty. This is a lot trickier though because imitating a strong, natural, niche link graph is a lot harder than most people think.

3. The last strategy is commonly referred to as "turn and burn". This basically involves taking whatever content you have and link spamming the hell out of it which will cause it's traffic to spike briefly before being banned from Google's index. Ever seen all those spammy comments in you blogs that are pointing to a really crappy landing page? This is what they are doing.

Now granted I've made a lot of generalities here. Most of the time I see people discussing this topic they seem to not understand what SEO is compared to what it was 7 years ago which is why I'm taking the time here to explain this. The rules change a little when you start out with a valuable asset such as a large quantity of good content (such as any of the Q&A sites), or a set of very high quality links (anyone that's been covered by the major news outlets) because you can base your strategy on getting the most out of those assets.

Anyway, now that I've gone off on that tangent the easy answer is yes, good SEO is good for the web because it makes content more usable and accessible, and bad SEO is bad for the web because it means more spam.

It has been detrimental as soon as a suit heard about the <META> tag some time in the 90s. Then you had I dunno, a site selling lawnmowers with "ANNA KOURNIKOVA NEKKID" in its HTML and it was all downhill from there.

Why doesn't HN use those sentence urls?

Good SEO is about making your content as easy as possible to index, using semantically meaningful markup and keywords. Bad SEO is about using convoluted tricks to game search engines.

Good SEO is good for the Web, bad SEO is bad for the Web.