Silly Questions People Ask SEOs

This is just something I had on my mind today and finally decided to take some time to put it down on paper!  I love what I do for a living, but every once in a while I get asked a question that makes me take a step back and say (to myself of course) WTF?

I get asked silly questions all the time, or at least what I feel are silly questions. I wanted to see if other SEOs out there had stupid/silly/funny questions that they have been asked (and were willing to share) so I went to Twitter (of course) for a little research and asked the question –

What was the toughtest/stupidest/silliest SEO related question you have ever been asked?

Sample of Silly SEO Questions
Sample of Silly SEO Questions

I have been asked every single one of these besides the one about shingles (which is pretty tough) and it just makes me laugh.  The one on here I like the most is one I have been asked many times too – “My site went live today, how come I do not show up on Google?”  The one that takes the cake for me though, is this one that I got asked the question this week:

Why are my Google rankings so much better on my computer then when I look at them from other computers?

Ok, I don’t mean to trash talk, but if you are in the business, you need to get a little familiar with how search engines work – especially Google.  There is a little thing called personalized search, and if you have a Google account and are logged in, it is keeping track of your actions and will bring you search results based on those actions/searches you do on a daily basis.

I bet Google enjoys fooling people, if not, then people like this should not be in business.  Either way it brings up a good debate IMO, about what Google is doing to the future of search the more they keep messing around with stuff like this.  I wonder how many people out there own businesses, have a Google account, never read blogs or know about personalized search and think they have amazing rankins, then wonder why no one ever goes to their site.

Thanks to @biglist @stevemullen @ShellHarris @bill_slawski and @joehall for participating.  If you guys are not already – you need to be following them on Twitter.  As always feel free to follow me – @Matt_Siltala on Twitter!

6 thoughts on “Silly Questions People Ask SEOs

  1. Darren Moloney says:

    Like the post but I have to admit my clients don’t tend to ask questions like this mostly as I ensure they are fully informed before any project is started so everything is clear.

    I do not take any client on who does not recognise that getting into Google can take weeks and/or months. If they think they can get into it faster then thats up to them though I will recommend Adwords if they want traffic in minutes.

    Best I have had is about 3 days to get a brand new site indexed and ranked into Google but it was a mixture of non competitive phrases, well written, relevant content and some decent links…

  2. Mat Siltala says:

    @Darren Moloney
    Yea, I do the same. I guess I should have made it clear the person who was asking this question was not a client. You bring up a great point though that SEOs need to be doing a better job of making things clear to the client. Great comment – Thanks!

  3. Kate says:

    Come on guys every industry has people who don’t understand the industry and that’s why they come to us. Just because we know the answers doesn’t make their questions or requests stupid (except the Shingle thing that is just funny). Perhaps the outcome should be that we are giving more information to our customers. Who is going to advertise on their site that making them a great website will not give them a ranking on Google for x amount of weeks??? Nobody otherwise they won’t use you or PERHAPS this is what we should try the honest approach. Nah forget that you know what I am getting at. We presume they know the basics but in many cases they don’t have a clue so we need to educate them.

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