If people would simply advocate building applications which follow the semantics of HTTP instead of advocating "REST", many more people would understand the benefits and conform; there would be no need to write a thousand and one posts explaining what is REST. Unfortunately the original exposition of this way of building web applications was done in a dissertation, in a "scientific" style that I think Orwell captured so well (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm, worth a subscription of its own). Another problem is that unfortunately most web developers (not to mention "SEO experts") don't have any real understanding of HTTP or the principles behind the WWW, which makes them also unaware of the very practical problems certain design decisions can cause.