AT&T Offers Website and SEO Services, Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
AT&T is offering to help build and “improve” websites with a purchase of their web hosting services — fan-freaking-tastic (please note the sarcasm).
They’re doing this under the guise of helpfulness to small and medium sized businesses, but I promise this will be less helpful and more hurtful. No disgrace to AT&T, I like their products, have an AT&T mobile phone and think they do good work; however, building and improving websites isn’t their specialty.
These are going to be more off-the-shelf crap generic products. If you’ve seen one FrontPage site, you’ve seen them all, which is exactly how I imagine the AT&T developed ones will be.
Their design experts will work with business owners on, “issues such as copywriting, blog and forum integration, database development, search engine optimization and electronic shopping cart capabilities.”
Now, maybe it’s just me, but when was the last time you met a designer you’d trust with your SEO efforts? Seriously, SEO is rooted in good content strategies. How many designers do you know who would love to write and give you tips on your writing?
I promise you this: There will be some messes to clean up after this. Web hosting companies should stick to what they do well: web hosting. If we all just do what we’re good at, the world will be a happier place. 
April 18th, 2008 at 11:59 am
First Sam’s Club, now AT&T- what’s the world coming to? Since phone companies traditionally blow all others out of the water when it comes to getting the most BBB complaints, I don’t think I would want to trust them with handling my website needs.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I hear you 100% I just made the Costco reference to my girlfriend.
“Why is that bad?” she asked, and I said, “well, you trust Costco with your bulk items, but not with your specialty ones. This is the exact same thing.”
You can’t do everything great — companies just fail to understand this, most would rather do many things average rather than one thing amazingly.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:16 am
Yeah, that’s right one the money. The sad thing is since many people do not know a lot about SEO, they will see a big name like AT&T or Sam’s Club and assume that they must know what theyre talking about.