A discussion I was having with my boss prompted me to write this and I thought that it was too good not to share with the world.

My problem is with the Internet community as a whole placing so much importance on SEO and Google SEO in particular. I believe it’s possible to rank highly on search engines without SEO. I believe it’s futile to optimize for an algorithm that 1) you can’t and won’t ever see and 2) is ever changing. Human powered search is starting to gain ground (like Wikia and Mahalo, or even Digg and Delicious). And as technology progresses, the algorithms are going to get better at separating useful content from spam. I believe that Google (and others) could do a much better job of giving results if no one did any SEO at all. If people took the time they spend on SEO and instead spent that time on improving their site, coming up with new features, thinking about accessibility, etc., they (and the Internet as a whole) would be much better off.