Why New Tech Doesn’t Need SEO

Almost all copy these days is SEO (short for Search-Engine Optimization) - it seems like people can’t write an ‘about us’ section anymore without stuffing it full of keywords. I hate reading that stuff, and I especially hate writing it. Now… I don’t mean to bash all of SEO here – I can see how, for some projects, you’d want to use it. But if you’re developing new tech, your project isn’t one of those.

Why? Because new tech people will find good new tech. Andrew Hyde relayed a funny quote the other day: “marketing is punishment for a bad idea.” It’s a little flip, but for new tech, it fits. If your shit’s good enough, it’ll go viral - people won’t need to find it searching on google… they’ll find it on your blog, on twitter, on facebook, or even on the street.

And when they do – when people get to your site, they just want to see your app (and a bit of good copy). They don’t want to see what keywords a computer-generated writer spit out. They don’t even want to see marketing… they want to see who you are, what you made, and why you made it.

So, just go write this stuff free of limitations. If you still think you need SEO… you don’t. That just means your product stinks. In that case (even more so), don’t spend time on the keywords, spend time on the code.