Steve Jobs’s Good Name Corrupted by Bad Online Marketers

Steve Jobs at iPad launch in 2010 | BCBusiness
Steve Jobs at iPad launch in 2010

I’m pretty sure that Steve Jobs never took part in online keyword stuffing. So why do online marketers exploit Steve Jobs’s name so much?

Like many people, I have set up Google alerts for various subjects in which I’m interested.

Steve Jobs is one subject in which I’m not interested. But you’d never know that from the alerts and online ads I’m getting. Steve Jobs is everywhere.

Steve Jobs apparently is on the minds of just about every blogger and media site out there. They can’t get enough of writing about Steve Jobs, or the new book about Steve Jobs that was released soon after Steve Jobs’s death.

Is this because Steve Jobs is so interesting? Perhaps. Steve Jobs, I gather, was a pretty smart guy.

But I think this Steve Jobs mania has much more to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In online media, good SEO is really important. SEO is the way search engines find the websites of bloggers, online marketers, and advertisers. SEO sends them buyers, who find them through keywords. Google lists these keywords by how many online searches are made using those keywords.

Of course many amateur marketers, online writers, and advertisers who create online advertising that caters only to the mass don’t know how to weave keywords into copy that engages, entertains, and informs.

So they stuff in whatever keywords are creating the most searches – words and phrases like Steve Jobs iPhone, Steve Jobs Apple, Steve Jobs death, the Steve Jobs way to become rich and famous, Steve Jobs’s billions of dollars, and maybe even how to be sexy and attractive like Steve Jobs.

This kind of SEO strategy can make a lot of online content seem stilted and the product of machine writing. In fact, some of this keyword stuffing is done by machines. Google has tried to stop this with new keyword ranking algorithms, but it still goes on.

Now, I truly believe that keyword stuffing never bothered Steve Jobs, or made any difference to the life of Steve Jobs. It could be that Steve Jobs never even noticed it. I know it wasn’t his religion, like it is with some people.

I’m pretty sure that Steve Jobs had other things to do. Like making millions of dollars, inventing the Apple Computer, reinventing his company, designing the iPod and iPhone and the iPad.

Enough with heavy-duty Steve Jobs SEO. Stop sending me blogs or online offers or ads that are the result of “Steve Jobs” keyword stuffing.

I don’t think Steve Jobs would approve.