[gsa]

Chasing Google ranks is an abysmal practice, but a basic level of SEO goes a long way in making content discoverable and accessible. As for the rest of the practices of the SEO industry, I believe in the saying "if you provide good content, you don't need to SEO".

[hoosieree]

Would you mind elaborating a little on where you draw the line? In my mind "SEO" means adding the correct meta tags to the html, but I suspect that's because I have approximately zero wisdom on the subject.

[Kye]

SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) get mixed up a lot. SEO vs SEM is like aesthetics (color theory, composition, etc) vs a billboard ad. The latter cares about the former, but the former is innocent.

[gsa]

Some things that qualify for essential SEO in my book:

- (Basic) meta tags

- Alt attributes

- Mobile friendly content (always required for a blog)

- Loading speed, optimised images etc.

- No JS rendered content

[xnx]

We should rename legitimate SEO to Search Engine Usability.