The Sisyphean task of SEO

This post is more of a rant than an article. Something written to make fun of my own frustrations. A short continuation can be found here

The core reason to have a website, a public place to showcase whatever you’re selling, is to attract visitors.

Back in ancient times, when the world wide web was in its infancy and everybody was clawing for their space online, the internet was barbaric. There were legions of ‘start’ pages which you could pay to be included on and lead people to your humble page.

Then, like prometheus descending to the foot of Olympus, came Google. Instead of the sacred flame they brought us a new deity, the Search Engine. This slowly changed the entire trajectory of the internet, from a lawless and desolate void into the intricate web we know today.

Our lord and saviour Google now decided what was worth our time, and based their ranking on content en reliability. This tenet brought a silver age of the internet. Websites created meaningful articles and structures and Google organically ranked them based on their value.

But man, ever devious and greedy, wasn’t content with this. How could they outperform their competitors without offering more value? What folly would lead man to bow before the algorithm without a fight?

One such group of people, the marketeers, took on this challenge. They spends the ages before influencing people using manipulative tactics, could they do the same with a machine? An effort was made.

The marketeers started to game the system, polluting their content with keywords and revitalising the ancient custom of selling and buying links. For a time this had the intended effect, their devious tactics made them rise through the ranks and once again the internet was dominated by lawlessness.

Our new deity quickly caught on to these heretical practices, and responded in kind. Devaluing these websites and setting up new tenets for the world to comply to. Of course, the marketeers greediness knew no bounds, and these tenets were also twisted in their advantage.

The result was an everlasting arms-race between the algorithm and the marketeers. Every new tenet became a challenge to them. The people who focussed on meaningful content became victims of this race while Google and the marketeers profited.

The punishment of the entire internet soon became clear. A never-ending task of chasing the algorithm up the hill. Only to reach the summit and the rules to change, leaving you back at the bottom.

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