In the ongoing debate started by Danny Sullivan on the subject of calling blog spamming uncool (which had further traction at Threadwatch), Mike Grehan has weighed in with some tough words of his own:
"Personally, I couldn't give a **** about what we refer to as "ethics" or "standards" (save those for good business practice) in this industry. But I would like to think that some of us, such as Danny, who started this thread, obviously do give a **** about whether we're regarded all round as quality marketers.
If we don't, it's just left to the hundred thousand snake oil salesmen in our industry to bless us all with their reputation.
Who should be taking the industry forward? The ignorant technology dimwits – or the quality marketers?
Ask yourself. And if you can't figure it out, just close the door behind when you leave please. You've overstayed your welcome in this business far too long already."
Mike's point on this particular matter is that those who blog spam should get out of SEO/SEM, because they're not the "quality marketers" that he would like to see this industry represent in the future. His broader point, however, is that anyone who's idea of SEO doesn't involve quality marketing, from a greater perspective than simply tweaking pages and links for rankings, should exit as well.
Mike has a much longer sojourn in the field and the credibility and right to make comments like these (whereas I'd feel like a pompous ass doing it myself). When I joined SEO, it was a split between these divergent groups, with the shared goal of helping companies (or their own sites) achive business success through search engine prominence. I'd been marketing websites for years before that, but never considered myself an SEO until I started tweaking links and content for rankings. I suppose that there must come a time when the industry as a whole will have to stand up and oust the blog spammers if they want to be considered "quality marketers" rather than "technology manipulators" (or "dimwits" if you prefer).
If all they are doing, Michael, is sending out the usual bog standard link requests, like those that either get caught in my spam filter, or I actually delete, then I find it hard to call them the "quality marketers" Mike is talking about. There is more to quality marketing than builidng links, you know it, I kow it, Mike knows it better than either of us.
Used as part of a wider campaign, it could be part of quality marketing (provided the quality of the link requests was also raised).
Funny how the above strategy is applied three years from this blog post to 90% of the SEO companies out there.