Why The SEO World Is Like High School

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Ken

I’m hard at work at the moment writing the next instalment of the Beginner’s Guide to WordPress and SEO, it’s going to cover the essentials for setting up a WordPress blog, from the initial preparation, through to uploading and then configuring your new blog, but it’s turning into a much bigger post than I originally had planned, so instead I’ll be splitting it up into a series of posts that deal with each phase in turn and posting those over the next few days.

In the meantime I thought I’d post about an observation I’ve made since entering the world of Search Engine Optimization. 

The online space around SEO is a lot like High School

If you’re into SEO (and if you’re reading this blog I’ll assume that you are) then you may have noticed this as well.  In real life, I’ve experienced high schools in both England and Australia, but for the sake of clarity I’ll make my analogies based on references to American High Schools (because everyone’s seen enough American High School movies, like The Breakfast Club or American Pie, to understand these reference points).

• There’s The Football Team
  These are the guys that everybody looks up to and they know it.  If one of these guys says something you’d better listen.  But if you say something to one of them, they may not even hear you because everyone else is talking to them at the same time.
  And of course, what football team would be complete without…
• The Quarterback
  It’s a safe bet that he’s one of the most popular kids in school, he’s certainly one of the few kids that’s likely to get much press coverage on his own merit.  There might be some people out there that want to knock him off the top spot, but he’s there because he worked damn hard for it and he’s good at what he does.
• The Prom Queen
  The most popular girl in school.  Everyone’s got a soft spot for the Prom Queen and more often than not she’ll be one of the first to point out a new trend which everyone else will be following by next week.
• The Cheerleaders
  The hot chicks that everyone wants to hang out with.
• The Rock Chick
  She’ll kick your ass if you piss her off, but you know she’s one of the coolest kids in school.  She probably smokes and rides a motorbike and everything.
• The Chess Club
  The smart kids.  You may not understand all of the big words that these guys use, but you can’t shake the feeling that they really know what they’re talking about.
• The Foreign Kid
  A genius at what he does, but sometimes it’s a little hard to understand his accent.
• The Intelligent Loner
  He doesn’t hang out with the cool kids or go to their parties.  He just gets on with his homework and gets straight As.  Will sometimes take the opposing viewpoint in debate class just for the mental exercise, but will stand his ground and argue his case for as long as it takes.
• The Cool Hippy Chick
  She just kinda hangs out and writes poetry but you can tell that she’s one of the nicest kids in class.  She’ll probably be the first one to talk to you in the lunchroom.
• The Class Clown
  The kid who sits in the back and makes everyone laugh, but still gets great grades come exam season.
• The Hall Monitor
  Everyone loves to rip on this guy, but it’s usually meant in an affectionate way (even if a couple of the guys from the football team might say they want to give him a wedgie from time to time).
• The New Kid
  Just trying to find his way around at the moment and hoping to make some new friends.

 Update:  Holy cow!  I never expected to get such a big reaction to this post.  Seems like I’ve really struck a chord with people.  Thanks for all the great feedback (and all the link-love) everybody.
There have been a few comments that it’s a pain in the arse having to go all the way to each target page to see who’s who out of the high schoolers though ( yes www.seomoz.org/users/view/63 I mean you), so I’ve added alt text to each personality’s link to make it easier to see who they are.

There are also a couple of extra groups that were missing from the original list, so just to round things out here they are:

• The Bullies
  Every school has them.  Everyone else in the school hates them.  Your mother always told you that if you just ignored them they’d eventually get bored and leave you alone.
  No, that never worked for me either.  But that doesn’t mean I have to give them any link juice today.
• The Stoners
  What does it say about the SEO high school that this is the group that’s been asked about more than any other?
  They’ll come up with some pretty far out ideas sometimes.  Some of them might even work.  But they won’t remember most of them in the morning.
• The Teacher Everyone Fancies
  Because it’s just not high school if you can’t hum Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” on the way to at least one class.

Ok, that’s it.  I’m done now and I promise I’m not going to add any other groups to the list.

But since you’re here, let me point you in the direction of the Cool Hippy Chick’s post about finding an anthem for the SEO High School.

Other SEOpsCentre Posts You Might Find Interesting:

1. Link-Fest for Friday April 25th 2008
2. The Rank Amatuer’s Guide To Accidental Linkbait