Comments on: SEO, Surrealism & Salvador Dali

By: Scott A. Dennison

Scott A. Dennison — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:20:05 +0000

This article is a good read, never thought I could incorporate this strategy to my own SEO

learnings. Hope to read more of your SEO tips in the future.
Thanks a lot

By: Scott Salwolke

Scott Salwolke — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:42:53 +0000

How do you figure that SEO is about math and computer science? It’s about connecting with prospects. Unless your target audience is the math department, your better off with a liberal arts background then with a computer science background. You choose the words you think prospects are using and then incorporate them into meaningful copy. SEO is about conversions, not just rankings.

By: Muscle forum

Muscle forum — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:09:00 +0000

I gotta disagree with you todd that the liberal arts background helps in SEO. I think analytical minds with a background in math and especially computer science have a definite edge just cause of some basic concepts.

By: marianne sweeny

marianne sweeny — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:27:13 +0000

hello all – i am with the “wisdom of this crowd” in appreciating the provacative nature of this post. I agree that the measure of SEO moving forward will be made by those who extend the concepts instead of parroting them. Gone are the days of “no Flash, move the JavaScript” SEO advice. The search engines continue their development of sophisticated contextual relationship modeling for relevance. I believe that those who can take the surrealist approach of finding or forming concepts will see the most success in the optimization of websites for search.

By: Todd Mintz

Todd Mintz — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:10:05 +0000

Katherine, I do strongly believe that people with liberal arts / creative backgrounds have an advantage in not only learning SEO but being very good at it. The “out of the box” thinking you learn to do in college translates well in the SEO world.

By: Katherine Watier

Katherine Watier — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:09:06 +0000

This has been the month for me having “oh that’s why I like SEO moments” based on posts by SEOs about our industry. This is definitely one of those posts.

I love Dali, but even more than that I’m beginning to realize that my undergrad set me up for being attracted to search marketing. I went to Hampshire College, and (besides not tests, grades or credits) they emphasized being able to draw conclusions, synthesize information, and be able to write well over memorizing information. They thought being able to have a sense of where to get the information was more important than having it memorized. It’s also where I took my first web design class (back in ’94) coding by hand in Pico.

Along the way I’ve also found a natural talent for explaining tech to non-techies, and in this field, that’s been valuable as well.

Based on my background, it’s almost more surprising that I didn’t get involved in search marketing earlier. What a great post and a great “aha” moment.

By: Todd Mintz

Todd Mintz — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:36:06 +0000

Thanks for the nice comments…glad people got what I was trying to say.

By: Scott Salwolke

Scott Salwolke — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 03:07:54 +0000

Great post Todd. It’s one of those you have to read a couple of times to really take in everything. I’m a movie buff and first learned about Dali’s work because of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel and Alfred Hitchcock. I never thought of him in relation to SEO, however.

One comment in particular stands out. “I’ve always thought that talent and ability in SEO is far more reliant on personal perception than actual knowledge.” This is why a computer program can’t take the place of a consultant, no matter how many links it develops or keywords it generates.

By: Brian Carter

Brian Carter — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:37:31 +0000

Killer post- I find that Oriental Medicine (acupuncture) was very similar – discerning patterns amongst symptoms and then combining and customizing formulas of herbs when each patient and disease and symptom complex is different and each herb has 3-4 functions/actions… equally complicated. And I also loved Salv Dali from an early age. I also like Friedlander…

By: Gab Goldenberg

Gab Goldenberg — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:32:23 +0000

Love this: “I’ve always thought that talent and ability in SEO is far more reliant on personal perception than actual knowledge. A person’s ability to extrapolate creative solutions to a unique problem set (which is a very hard skill to develop) is a far more critical and rare ability to have in a SEO consultant / employee than being able to recognize the need for a mod_rewrite and then code it (which most of us can learn to do). The people I admire most in our industry are the people who are able to perceive uniquely and communicate that information for others to share. ”

Besides that, I like some of Dali’s work (though being taken to the museum as a kid, I thought his egg on a chair and red splatter on a white canvas kinda lame… I did that in kindergaretn n all I was told was “that’s nice honey… is it a dog or a cat?” ;).

And funny you should mention the ADD thing – I used to be patient. Like, really, really patient. Made me good on defence in soccer, for instance. Now? Multiple tabs are a must, minesweeper gets opened when a page is loading in less than 2 seconds (don’t get too happy for that long time on site, folks :P) which ironically costs me 2 minutes a crack… And I’m considering dropping out of college to do SEO full time. Messed up, eh?