Thursday night I attended my first #SEOchat.

For those of you that aren’t aware. SEOchat is a Twitter style chat session that takes place every Thursday night on Twitter. The topic of Thursday’s chat was link building, but every week the organizers focus the discussion around something SEO related. Next week’s chat will feature Marketing Pilgrim’s fearless leader, Andy Beal, so don’t miss things next week!

As I was participating with the group the other night I couldn’t help myself feeling excited talking “links” with other like minded geeks. And then it hit me like a load of bricks. I love SEO. Seriously, I have a mad crush on SEO and it doesn’t look like it’s letting up anytime soon! The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my love for SEO has been a long time in the making. In fact, I think I started falling for SEO long before I even knew what SEO was. You see my love for SEO isn’t rooted in dominating search engine results but rather everything that takes place to do so.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love keyword research, because using good keywords means that you are communicating to your audience with relevant language that they can relate to.

I love content creation, because without good content your site is pretty pointless.

I love link building because it means that you are aggressively promoting your site’s name and web address. Which is at the core of Internet marketing.

I love optimizing a site’s information architecture, because having good IA means being well organized and presenting your content logically.

I love creating and improving usability, because having a well thought out user interface helps users discover more on your site and increases user retention.

I REALLY love writing code that search engines can understand. Because SEO friendly code means that it is more likely to be picked up by new emerging technologies and is also accessible to people with visual impairments.

But, most importantly, I love SEO because it raises the bar. It sets a standard in all of the areas above that matter most when creating and promoting a web site. In short, I love SEO because it is making the Internet a better place to share information and build businesses.

So the next time you hear someone criticize SEO, or call it dead. Don’t write them off because they don’t understand SEO. Instead, write them off because they don’t understand the internet, and how to make it better.

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