Why SEO is the new religion

I don't know why, but something I read recently on an SEO blog got me thinking about the concepts behind working in Search Engine Optimisation.

The exact algorithms used by major search engines are closely guarded secrets so a lot of the techniques used SEO practitioners are based on assumptions made by experimentation. Much of the blogging done about SEO makes much use of phrases such as "I believe that.." and "In my opinion...". So like religion, much of SEO depends on a person's faith in the effectiveness of certain techniques.

Additionally there are "Churches", the collective belief in a particular set of tenets. The two main ones being so-called "White Hat" and "Black Hat" SEO. Like most religions, there are smaller breakaway factions who choose to follow only a part of the tenets of the larger churches. Some of these have also begun to adopt their own coloured hats too.

I think it's an interesting insight into human nature that we act this way. The old religions are based on people trying to find reason for the age old questions of life and death because there's no user manual to say "this is why you're here". The new religions of SEO are based on people trying to find reasons for why their blog only comes in at number 46 on Google for searches on "pink waistcoats" because there's no manual to say "50 inbound links from pagerank 5 sites will increase your pagerank by 1".

Labels: Opinion