I’ve gotten more and more requests recently to help clients with search engine optimization. Most of the time, the request comes in like “hey, can you help XYZ corp get a lot of hits on their new site?”. For the most part, folks seem to have this impression that you can follow some strict mantra of “SEO” rules and tricks and you’ll somehow get a massive stream of visitors to your site.

I spend a lot of time trying to dispel this myth for my clients.

It’s not that I’m that pessimistic. I mean, I am, but not monstrously so. I just want people to have a realistic idea of what really makes a site, or for that matter a particular product, attract an audience…