Seth Godin's Broad Brush

I don't know why, I just got this thing about Seth Godin.

Maybe it's because of the way, in the silly sheeplike hero-worshipping world of the internet, you can just feel the unthinking breathless admiration when people type his name.

Maybe it's because his short posts often seem to me to sacrifice meaningful detail in order to create an appearance of punchy innovative thinking.

Probably it's a combination of the two.

Case in point: this post

The central idea here is simple:

• You can go about seo in two ways


• Try and rule the search engine results for your keyword - Godin uses plumber as an example


• Or make something so special out of your own company that you don't need search engine rankings for the generic term because everybody is searching for you


• The first is impossible so try number two

Now, while I applaud Godin's encouragement to people to create something special, his argument here is so simplistic as to be laughable.

I mean, who even searches for plumber nowadays?

Google has recognized that unqualified generic terms like plumber are pretty useless for many searches by including the one box of 10 local results in the middle of unlocalised searches for thousands of generic terms.

Web savvy plumbers nowadays wouldn't be targeting terms like plumber but more useful and more ruleable Google results like plumber London or plumber West London or even plumber Housnslow. And that's not to mention plumber combined with whatever other qualified searches punters tend to use (reliable? 24 hour? emergency?)

And while, as I said, I do like the way Godin wants people to create something remarkable (and I do, I really do, I think being remarkable is a fantastic thing to aim for), I just can't help feeling that in the real time-pressed world with mortgages to pay and children to care for, I just can't help feeling that for many plumbers as for many middle aged female web designers, being remarkable is just not a realistic aim.

Doing a decent job for clients is about all I aim for. Really decent. Something they will be pleased and maybe pleasantly surprised by. But remarkable? I just havn't got the time. Not if I'm going to earn enough money to pay for the mortgage, the education, the...

And under those real world circumstances, well, thank goodness for the the myriad of qualified search terms that are worth ranking for. Thank goodness for the nitty gritty details that don't seem to exist in the wonderful purple world of Seth Godin.