In honor of the holiday, this week’s “what if _____ was an SEO?” will not be focused on a particular individual, but rather our nation’s great patriots.  After all, “a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government” (Edward Abbey), and SEO companies must always be ready to defend their clients against poor rankings and low positions in the SERPs. 

Like Marilyn vos Savant’s definition of America as “finding and maintaining that delicate balance between freedom ‘to’ and freedom ‘from’“, search engine optimization involves a delicate balance between creating the best possible user experience and the best possible sites for the search engine spiders (a good SEO company will always come down on the side of the user, of course).

Mark Twain said that “in the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot“.  In the search engine optimization industry (as in most fields), unproven techniques and ideas are sometimes ignored because none one wants to do anything that may get them penalized or even banned by Google.  However, once a few brave souls successfully experiment with them, these very same techniques become a popular part of the SEO canon.

Happy Fourth of July!