The SEO Deck of Cards

During the last SEO conference, a bunch of delegates had been on a Heavy Drinking Sesssion. They arrived at the first session of the next day a little the worst for wear. But they did arrive at the session on time (just).

After boring the audience rigid for the best part of an hour, the speaker noticed that one SEO was not paying attention.

He called to him, and summoned him on to the platform.

"Do you know why I called you up here" he said

"For playing cards in in your session, Sir," was the response.

The speaker asked the delegate, "And what have you to say for yourself, son?"

"Much, Sir," replied the delegate.

The speaker stated, "I hope so, for if not I will take pleasure in humiliating you."

The delegate said, "Sir, I have been learning SEO for about six months. I have neither guide book nor SEObook, but I hope to satisfy you, sir, with the purity of my intentions." And with that, the guy started his story ...

"You see, sir, when I look at the Ace of Spades, it reminds me that there is but one Google, and whatever bad things are done by spammers, Google will trump them all, given time."

"The third Ace reminds me of MSN Search - a young and innocent search engine, from the company that just wants to be loved - aside from its other aim, of world domination by the year Y2K."

"The Ace of Diamonds reminds me that there is always a vacancy for the Best Search Engine Of Them All - and I remember AltaVista that was, Ask that never will be, and I try to guess at what is to come ..."

Content is King

"The King of Spades is the spam that so dominates some search results - but for every king there is an ace around the corner, waiting to confound the spammer's efforts."

"The King of Hearts represents those millions of websites that are SEO-naive; they just do their job, and many do it well - all their efforts are devoted to building a better site, for years, to the utter frustration of spammers who so often get defeated by accident - and longevity, the long service medal of SEO."

"The King of Clubs bring to mind the linking networks and spam directories that pollute the Internet and attempt to subvert the search results by a labrynthine web of deception. And I remember that all the SEs - even Google - have learned that linking alone is no way to give value to a site"

Design is Queen

"If the King of Diamonds is Content, then the Queen of Diamonds is Site Design - the two go hand in hand, and each is fatally weakened without the other."

Here, the delegate paused, sobbed, and blew his nose.

"The Queen of Spades, that Devious Lady, symbolizes cloaking; she'll deceive, and deceive and deceive again; her motives are never good - you don't cloak by accident."

"The Queen of Hearts reminds me of folk who visit each others guestbooks to drop a link; they join webrings (by the score), they always have a 'links page', where they say Nice Things about other sites. They have an image that says "vote for my site", and innocently publish "Site Awards" that mean nothing - but give a free link to some knave, somewhere. They rarely do harm, but what they fail to do is boost their sites in any noticeable way."

"The Queen of Clubs brings to mind those self-congratulatory pits of black hats that pass for forums; full of Google-hate, paranoia, and self pity when things go wrong. Few of them are the successful spammers they'd have you believe - most are wannabes waiting for their ship to come in. They know who they are."

Jack the Lad?

"The Knave symbolizes the dreams of youth - that the Internet is all about linking, and linking cannot be bad. But the reality is that you are responsible for your links.

The Knave of Hearts reminds me that link requests cannot be taken for granted; you need to know who to trust. And who not to"

"The Knave of Clubs" is the spammer who tries to sell linking schemes, 'you can't go wrong' he says 'this is approved by Google'. Just because Google hasn't yet found a way to dump them without collateral damage does not mean Google approves!"

"The Knave of Spades is the spammer who offers a link exchange - but when you look carefully, you are giving a link which will soon be to a bad neighborhood (if not already!), and you get a valueless link from a deep page that no-one ever visits, often made worthless by javascript or nofollow"

"The Jack of Diamonds isn't a knave at all, but a true son of his parents; after Content and Design, Navigation and Quality Links complete the Royal Family."

"So each suit represents a part of the SEO world;

Diamonds are pure, honest and reliable; they symbolize the efforts of White Hat SEOs.

Spades are the opposite, representing pure spam and the Black Hat view of the world.

Hearts represent the amateur, naive or new webmasters; they have good motives, but may be taken in by the misinformation that abounds, and may cause harm - but Hearts are much more likely to be harmed themselves by the dark siders.

Clubs remind me of those impressed by the Dark Side, taken in by the promises, rather than making them. They 'can't see the harm' in link farms, they think adsense before content is 'cool', they cannot tell the difference between a page impression and a unique visitor - or, more worryingly, between a visitor misdirected by spam and a converted, paying customer. They are the 'bums on seats' brigade."

"The numbers cards remind me of the numbers of pages I still have to climb to get to number one - and the number of of sites above me on each page as I progress though the serps.

"When I count the number of spots in a deck of cards, I find 365, the number of days in a year. There are 52 cards, the number of weeks in a year. There are four suits, the number of weeks in a month. There are twelve picture cards, the number of months in a year. There are thirteen tricks, the number of weeks in a quarter.

All these remind me that SEO is a long term project; it is silly to expect instant results in such a huge and hostile world, and there are no shortcuts to success that do not carry risks - real risks of all my hard work coming to nothing. So you see, Sir, my deck of cards serves me as an almanac and an SEO guide.

The Speaker was furious - this uppity delegate had stolen his time, and denied him the chance to promote his black-hat software, the real reason he'd accepted the invitation to speak.

And friends, this story is true. I know ... I was that delegate.

Published: 06 September 2005
This article may be published elsewhere, provided this footnote is included as is,
with a live link to the source: http://www.sick-site-syndrome.com/articles/
Copyright © 2005 Andrew Heenan. Comments very welcome.