3 Ways SEO is Like Baseball

SEO is to the online world what baseball is to America: life would carry on without it, but somehow it just wouldn’t be the same. As we’re now deep into the 2011 MLB season, I humbly offer three ways in which search engine optimization is like our nation’s pastime.

 1. There are Rules, Rules, and More Rules: A friend of mine moved to the United States from Iran twenty years ago, at age eight, and so didn’t really grow up with baseball like I did. A few years back, this friend decided that, since our hometown Minnesota Twins were doing so well, it would be the perfect time to get into baseball and learn how the game works.

“Well,” I said, “the first thing you need to know is that you’ll never know all the rules.” I added that, even if one were to watch every game of a team’s 162-game regular season, and learned a new rule with every game, that would still only cover a fraction of the rules. Even professional umpires probably don’t know every rule of baseball.

SEO is no different. There are so many different aspects of SEO that, even by studying it and learning something new every day, you’ll never be able to create a definitive list. All you can do is keep learning and improving your game.

2. There are Scads of “Unwritten Rules” As Well: Even if you did somehow learn all the official rules of baseball, there are still dozens, if not hundreds, of unwritten rules that ballplayers live by. The “Baseball Code,” you might say.

SEO is similar, but more contradictory. Most of the “real” rules of SEO are spelled out in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but there are some SEO procedures that are directly opposed to these Guidelines.

•  The Baseball Code says you should never, ever swing at a 3-0 pitch (make the pitcher throw a strike).
• Google’s Guidelines say you can’t pay for links, but Yahoo Directory links—which you can only get by paying for them—are very helpful for rankings.
• In baseball, the batting team’s players should never walk over/on the pitcher’s mound, under any circumstances, during an inning in progress (always go around).
• Google says nofollow links give no boost to rankings, but there are documented cases of nofollow links that do pass authority and improve site rankings.

3. Bad Guys Sometimes Succeed…: The New York Yankees are perhaps the most hated team in all of professional sports, for a number of reasons that time and space don’t permit here. But, they have won the World Series 27 times. Bryce Harper may be an immature punk, but he’s probably going to be one of the best players in the baseball—if not the best—in a few years.

We’ve all heard of Black Hat SEO companies that engage in shady practices to boost their clients’ search engine rankings. Meta-tag stuffing, hidden or invisible text, gateway pages, and other tactics can work to improve rankings. They just won’t work for long.

The Yankees don’t win the World Series every year—often times they don’t even make the playoffs. Harper may knock the ball out of the park and trot around the bases like a show pony, but he’s plenty likely to get plunked for it in his next at-bat. And, inevitably, a Black Hatted website will get busted down to Class A ball by Google’s or other search engines’ webmasters for those less-than-honest SEO tricks.

As these three comparisons show, SEO and baseball are more alike than peanuts and Cracker Jack. GO TWINS!

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