SEO stuff: CMS equals Business Suicide!

(or: Social Media Optimisation versus Search Engine Optimisation)
I blundered in on a private tiff over at ACP Mags “Geek Gear” site. It was about SEO optimisation. Note that Geek Gear hasn’t translocated (is that the right word?) their URLs/pathnames from a node number to words that are Google Juice friendly.

One of the commenters aggressively pointed out that Geek Gear are n00bs at SEO. Which is probably fair as they were just talking about their first jaunt into optimising their site. I doubt they are going into practice any time soon as SEO gurus, blackhat or otherwise. This commenter did however link to an article Content Management Systems Equal Business Suicide! The author, SEO Guy, Ben Kemp from New Zealand goes to a lot of trouble detailing why CMS is crap for SEO. Here’s the highlights:

• Duplication of Content
• Shared IP Addresses vs. Unique IP
• Usability
• CMS and Being Held To Ransom
• CMS Saves You Money?
• Stand Out from the Crowd, Don’t Join It!

Ben unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately!) has turned off comments. But feel free to comment here instead. :p

In one of those beautiful, perfect, cosmic acts of irony, a Google search on “cms equals business suicide” brings up every article referencing his, but his. He not only doesn’t appear top, he doesn’t appear at all. Nice work SEO Guy. Incidentally, he is using WordPress.

And so the discussion regarding search engine optimisation versus social search (which surely the CMS platforms he lists, are a big part of?) heats up. A quick run down and some links:
Muhammad Saleem:

Why Socially Driven Sites Hate SEOs
If you look at the list of domains banned by the socially driven news and content behemoth Digg.com, you will find that a majority of them are SEO-related sites. While many people think that Digg has an irrational vendetta against these sites, it’s not entirely irrational, rather it’s simply driven by a mentality of generalizing.

He then goes on to play a video of a guy who runs a PayPerSocialBookmark service; it’s icky.

So Jason Calacanis (he of Netscape/AOL fame) sees this as an attack on the whole Web 2.0 movement:

The SEO folks got really pissed off at me for saying “SEO is bulls@#t.” last year, but the truth is that 90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman. These are guys in really bad suits trying to get really naive people to sign long-term contracts. These clients typically make horrible products and don’t deserve traffic–that’s why they’re not getting it organically so they hire the slimebuckets to game the system for them.

And then Neil Patel threw down a challenge that he could optimise Jason’s site and improve traffic, saying Calacanis would be SEO’s next evangelist. Jason Calacanis responded with SEO crack pipe increases traffic at Calacanis.com and the fight continues.

It makes our little Aussie tiff going on at Geek Gear look positively like a group hug. 🙂