As someone who has worked in marketing and advertising for years, I’ve seen certain words that used to be harmless develop negative connotations. Most of us don’t hear the word “advertisement” without thinking of an annoying interruption. Particularly, the acronym “SEO” (short for search engine optimization) has become associated more and more with spam, manipulation, and trickery.
Shifts in the meaning of words are a natural part of lingual evolution, but these particular buzzwords suffer because of the people who exploit their popularity to make a quick and easy buck.

Colleen Jones, in her book Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Content, speaks to this problem specifically with regards to SEO. She says, ”SEO snake oil [...] leads people to spend money on being found (which often doesn’t work) at the expense of making their website worth finding.” She's right.
So, in this post, I'm not talking about SEO snake oil. I'm talking about quality SEO. We all need it, like it or not. SEO is a critical part of any online effort, whether you’re building a website, launching a blog, or mobilizing your website. Let’s take a minute to remember the top reasons why we need it – and can even grow to like it.

10. SEO Makes Us organize the web

You love the internet because you have instant access to crazy amounts of information, right? Well, if it weren’t for SEO, trying to access this information would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. SEO helps us organize the overwhelming internet into relationships (for example, blogospheres of likeminded people) and indexes (think a Google search that yields relevant results).

9. SEO encourages competition + IMPROVEMENT

SEO keeps the internet competitive, which means you get better and better websites. Thanks to complex algorithms developed by the search engines to measure quality and relevance in order to rank listings, competitors must continuously improve their websites in the fight for that top ranking.

8. SEO unites us around Best Practices

Because SEO is so integrated into every aspect of a website, it unites all of us – designers, writers, architects, developers, and marketers – as we choose how to design, write, and develop for an organized WWW. For example, a decision such as deciding whether to use Flash instead of the SEO-friendly HTML 5 for a video, has impact on developers, content planners, and designers.

7. SEO helps the little guys

Thanks to cheap and SEO-friendly online publishing tools like Wordpress and social networks, many an agile start-up and small business has fought its way to visibility amongst the “big guys” through strong SEO.

6. SEO leads to better site navigation

Problems with navigation and internal linking adversely affect SEO and lead to reduced site traffic. On the flip side, a logical structure – one that includes important links on the top-level navigation bars, niche areas farther down in the menu, and important content no more than three clicks away – gives benefits such as
  • enhancing usability.
  • decreasing bounce rate.
  • healping search spiders index your pages.

5. SEO helps companies speak their users’ language

Getting SEO right requires researching our users’ search behavior, namely the words users type in the search box. The better a website speaks the language of the right users, the better it will perform in search. The benefits don't stop there. The insights you gain into how users talk about you, your products, or your ideas are helpful for customer service, marketing, product management and more.

4. SEO creates matches made in web heaven

The world is full of billions of people with unique needs. Likewise, the internet is full of billions of types of content with the potential to connect those people with the right product, service, or community. SEO matches the right people with the right content and, ultimately, the right product, solution, or person.

3. SEO encourages consistent + integrated MARKETING strategies

For SEO to work, it must be implemented consistently and throughout each layer of a website. Metadata, titles, headers, copy, and even related Tweets and blog posts must contain the right keywords and content. And consistent, integrated keywords and content require a consistent, integrated message.

2. SEO forces us to make content better

Contrary to some people’s perception, good SEO isn’t cramming keywords into content. SEO benefits from intelligently crafted copy, meaningful images, and indexable multimedia content. You can't skimp on content and expect to rank well in search. That brings me to the final, and most important reason to embrace SEO…

1. SEO IMPROVES user experience.

All of these benefits – an organized internet, competition, a unified vision, an equal playing field, a deeper understanding of users, consistent strategies, and better content – improve the web experience for our users. Embracing good SEO is embracing good user experience. What's not to like about that?