SEO An Art or Science?
This is probably the gazillionth time someone has been talking about whether SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is an art or a science.
There’s this set of people who claim to specialize in the “art of SEO” and others who claimed to have mastered the “science of SEO”.
But, what the hell is SEO?
Is it an art or a science?
I just thought it would be fun to do a little bit of an investigation.
Here’s what dictionary.com defines an art to be:
” the craft or trade using these principles or methods.”
So, the definition typically means that an art is something where we apply acquired knowledge to create something.
In the case of Search Engine Optimization, we apply the acquired knowledge of the way google behaves, the way it ranks sites or the way search engines work in order to generate results i.e search engine rankings and traffic.
So, that seems okay doesn’t it?
I was pretty confused myself, so I decided to go and pick up the definition of “science” from Wikipedia, and this is what it said:
” systematized knowledge in general.”
“a particular branch of knowledge.”
These are two different definitions of Science, and I thought both made sense with respect to SEO.
With SEO, its definitely a systematic process and definitely a branch of knowledge.
We use acquired knowledge systematically to optimize sites.
So, how do we actually categorize SEO? As an art or a science.
This brought me to a single idea.
In common usage, we don’t actually represent anything too “systematic” as an art.
Art is more of a creative idea than a systematic and singular process.
Even thought we all like to claim that SEO isn’t a systemized process, it is one to a large extent.
There is a lot of creativity involved in Search Engine Optimization, but it is at the end of the day still a singular system of process which are used to procure results.
SEO as a science makes more “sense” - since its more of application of acquired knowledge and systemized processes.
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One Response to “SEO An Art or Science?”
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Well, I think SEO is an Art. Yes it comprises of systematized processes, but then so does many works of art.
A painter would undergo a lot of steps and processes before he makes that final masterpiece, same goes for a singer or a writer.
I call it Art because it is value based, it needs creativity, and it’s about understanding people and observing them. You can’t write a book if you don’t observe people, and the same goes here.
Another reason I think it is not much of Science, from a pure layman’s point of view- It is all about Common Sense. Just like Art, it’s all about being clever.