Ever heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

I am convinced that SEO software sellers are the modern equivalent of Snake Oil salesmen. SEO = Snake Elixir Oil. SEO should be pronounced "See-o" as in "See-o money fly out the window".

I think if a Snake Oil salesman from 1850 came back to life today, he'd probably set up a website and start selling SEO. It's all about painting the perceived benefits of an ephemeral product.

I just found out that a friend of mine spent SIX THOUSAND dollars on SEO software and a bit of other software. Most of that stuff you can get cheap or free. Programs that will analyze your website's "keyword density" and all that nonsense -- if you want to mess with that, at least use free tools available online!

Apparently, he was convinced that SEO was a valuable service. Really it isn't. Just do about 12 things right on your webpage and you're good to go. Spending too much time on SEO is a waste of time. Spending anything more than $150 on SEO is usually a waste of money. Develop more pages for your website instead -- go for quantity rather than quality. It will kill your competition every time.  More pages = a bigger website = a bigger search engine target. Search engines don't care about your annual sales -- just your web pages. If the website for Jake's Diner has 200 pages and McDonald's has 10 pages, guess which one will get more search engine traffic? Jake's Diner, which is apparently 20 times bigger than McDonald's -- at least in Google's eyes. Don't waste much time on SEO.

SEO sellers, most of the time, are a scam. You can learn most SEO you need to know yourself via Google, or pay a guy like me $100 to do it for you (which might include me finding you all the free software tools you need). The heart of the SEO scam is that every website "needs it" -- after all, name me ONE man who invests his life in his business and doesn't want it to succeed. Just like Snake Oil salesmen knew that everyone wanted to be healthy and live long...

I'm posting this here in case anyone ELSE I know is about to be taken in such a scam...apparently some people don't know what I do for a living. I'm an experienced web developer and computer programmer with 16 years' experience on the Internet. I know what is worth money and what isn't.

I also do SEO -- but it's really more like part of any good developer's website creation process. It's like an artist charging separately for a work of art to be "aesthetically pleasing".  If I'm hiring an artist, it darn well be aesthetically pleasing or I'm hiring someone else!