In watching clips from the recent Miss Teen 2007 pageant, especially the infamous clip of the contestant from South Carolina, it is hard not to draw some parallels between new SEOs and a pageant contestant.

When you listen to teenager Lauren Caitlin Upton's reply to "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?", her answer is incomprehensible. You can bet that she was coached to make strong statements and start with phrases like "I personally believe", "I believe", "Our future", and "Our children". And obviously, if she is in the current pageant, she beat out many other competitors in order to represent her state. But she wasn't able to put her coaching together with her thoughts on the matter and thus even with the "I believe" message, you really don't believe that she believes what she is saying even if you could figure out a bit of what she was trying to express.

This is similar to how many new SEOs obtain advice about optimizing web pages then put together semi-incomprehensible web pages or "door way pages". The intent, obviously, to rank for a keyword or term. While these pages do some times end up ranking for less competitive key words, even if they rank, the pages are often poor in promoting the good or service to a human that visits the page. These pages offer a low rate of conversion into a sale, sign up, etc. Thus science is not always enough to rank a page.

Some of the best speeches, plays, poems, and other writings, just don't fit into a neat and tidy framework. The language is beautiful but the frame work isn't familiar or the point of reference doesn't make sense for the reader. This is like web pages that are visually stunning, which may use Flash, interesting steaming audio or video, may have advanced JavaScript navigation, or don't optimize their pages for important keywords, these pages ultimately don't rank as well although they have the "art" side of things nailed down.

Whether SEO is an art or a science, I would urge you to consider that it is a bit of both. Like Upton's quick, formulaic response to the pageant question, SEO can be used to quickly create formulaic web pages that may have problems because they don't necessarily appeal to human visitors. While they may rank well, this is for low competition key words or phrases, they don't have they appeal to cause people to link to them. On the other hand you can create pages that greatly appeal to your site's visitors but don't necessarily appeal to search engines.

Unlike pageants, where you get one real chance to make your statement, rankings are calculated by the engines all the time, 24-7. Whether you are new or old hat to SEO, take any SEO advice with a grain of salt. There is not one simple thing to do in order to rank well. Even if you are optimizing text, this is the not the end all, be all. Even if you are creating tons of great viral videos, participating in forums, and other methods (like link bait) to get eye balls to your site, this is not the end all, be all. Consider SEO to be both an art and a science when creating your pages don't get caught up working only on one.

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