As I said, blogging is light this week, but I couldn't help but notice this thread at Metafilter. How can we fight against such entrenched misinformation and stereotypes?
SEO people remind me of "weight weenies" in the bicycle world. Instead of focusing on training and riding and getting faster through practice, weight weenies obsess over how many grams lighter their new water bottle cage is, and forever want to discuss the lightest possible wheels they could put on their bikes to make them "faster"....
...And decent SEO people are totally okay people. And, while it's inconvenient for them, they may want to let go of the label "SEO" if they want to stop being associated with the teeming hordes of snake oil salemen who have spent the last few years making those three letters into a red badge of assage...
...SEO? Die in a fire. All of the spam I get that slips through gmail's filters is SEO link exchange requests. All of the chat requests I get are SEO "hay letz trade linxz!" douchebags. I hate these people. Really...
...Everything about this post reeks of what's wrong with SEO. It's like standing at the subway platform and watching the news headlines flash by on the CCTV. It may seem like you're getting informed, but it's just a bunch of headlines/blurbs...
Despite the years of educational efforts and promotion of SEO by even the search engines themselves, this kind of thing pervades. Is it heartbreaking? Or fuel to work that much harder?
Whilst the person/people writing the comments absolutely have a point (I do love getting emails offering to tell me about SEO - err, have you read our blog?), I could argue the same about just about any profession under the sun, and certainly most of those connected with the internet.
I think that Danny summed it up best when he said something along the lines of: most people don't know what SEO is and when they do find out what you do are eager to get advice.Who wouldn't want some help to promote their product or service?
This naive idea (as promoted by Google) that all you have to do is knock out some great content and the world will just start linking to it, is utter crap. If that was the case, there would be no such thing as marketing. Just because the internet allows the spread of information more easily than any other medium in history doesn't automatically mean that the cream will always rise to the top - in many ways you could argue that the inverse happens: there's so much stuff out there that a lot of the quality gets drowned in noise. Why is it fine to work to promote a product/service in the offline world but in the online world it's all snake oil?
At the end of the day it's unlikely that the people writing on that forum are really going to make a huge difference to my day to day life: we're looking to work with major brands and most of those have started to realise that SEO is a serious business and one that shouldn't be characterised by the chancers operating out of internet cafes.
I totally agree.
Otherwise the whole science of tricking the social media sites into listing content from our clients' websites on the front page would not exist. ;-)
Just kidding but every time you hear about 'the access to power Digg accounts', you can't help but believe such cynical views.
You can read the whole post here.
Just found this while I was setting up my first twitter account. I was becoming follower of people I know from around here and a few famous bloggers. Came across the above post in Brian Clark’s twits. 10 minutes and I am already loving twitter!
There is no doubt that there is some bad eggs within the SEO community, which I will get to in a bit.
However it does concern me with some of the stick the industry gets. To me part of the critisism must lie clientside. Now before I get a load of abuse for saying this my rationale is as follows:
AS regards the previous comment - "When everyone, and their brother and mother and sister and father is offering SEO service; can you really blame people for associating SEO with snake oil?" I suggest you read above.
I will conclude by using another quote - "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". A decision as crucial as the marketing of your website, should surely never come JUST down to price (which tbh the mother and sister and father scenario above would be), but should be a well thought out, well researched decision, where you choose the best supplier for your budget. But to put the blame soley on SEO (and tarnishing an entire channel) is a little unfair
Sadly whoever wrote this has got a fair point.
This is likely to resurrect the question of whether there should be a governing body - although the blackhats and spammers would thrive in an environment where other SEOs were regulated by a central code of practice.
Rand, you should totally contact this guy and interview him. It would make for a really insightful read.
Dude, I'm begging you... please don't start up that conversation again! LOL
This is why I feel the role of the SEO consultant or agency is not only to do the work of optimization but to educate the client. At least in those cases where the client is interested to learn.
There are always going to be those who choose to keep the clients in the dark and play on this ignorance for more profit/power. That's just the way the business world is. And those bad apples (I'd love to say there are only a few of them) are going to keep the "snake oil" stigma alive. I don't believe it's ever going away. But, in a way, I don't mind.
Ignorance is an opportunity to educate.
There are common sense reasons why link exchange spam emails don't work.
What would it take to sit down with a client and explain to them why SEO has the stigmas it does, what kind of SEOs perpetuate them and why those people have it wrong?
What better way to build trust and loyalty with your clients?
I find it interesting that when some people see "buy Viagra" they think spammer, not pharmacist, but when those same people see "trade links" they think "SEO", not spammer.
That's a perception problem that the SEO community needs to address.
As long as people are talking about "decent SEO" vs "bad SEO" instead of "spammer" vs "SEO", then I think we will continue to have this problem.
Real SEO's don't need to spam. Frankly, the SEO communities acceptance (both real and perceived) of spam is what is causing this issue, and as long as we are seen to accept it as a community, then we have little to legitimately complain about.
Rather than asking everyone else on the web to change their attitudes, perhaps we should begin looking at the root causes for those attitudes in the first place. Then take some personal responsibility rather than complaining that no one understands us. (cue violins...)
Ian
*** As long as people are talking about "decent SEO" vs "bad SEO" instead of "spammer" vs "SEO", then I think we will continue to have this problem. ***
EXACTLY.
SEO is not spam.
Spam is not SEO.
Spam is spam.
We surely can't blame those people - as we are all too tired of guys calling themselves SEOs but having absolutely no clue what it means... and those SEO spam we receive daily... grrr... if I were not an SEO being absolutely sure these guys and spam have nothing to do with it, I would hate it myself!
But to be absolutely fair, if I were one of those SEO haters, I would probably take some minimum effort to really learn what it is before posting messages like that.
Btw, reading through the comments to this post I can't help feeling pride for SEO community I am in: instead of hating the hater in return, most of us are more inclined to excuse his words...
@all
Naysaying is nothing new to SEO, and is most certainly nothing new to business--in general
The fact is that people and businesses will always need their websites optimized for higher rankings and better usability.
Those of us that do it right will rise gloriously to the top. Those that do it wrong will fall helplessly to the bottom.
Rather than chatter about a clueless infantile post made by a person who is clearly jaded, continue to do what you do best--educate and earn. Afterall, actions speak louder than words.
- Eric Itzkowitz
Ouch, my first thumbs down! OK, who's responsible? LOL
This is like a perpetual fight in every industry. There will always be those that try and make a fast buck, off the fuel of "we want it fast, we want it now, we want the best".
All we can do is push consumer education on the subject. Get folks more informed that SEO is more than a "set it and forget it" service for $49.99 and if you act now, you get not one, but TWO vidalia chopping wizards! Yet alas, that goes beyond the subject.
The most you can really hope for is that our cleaner, professional sites, prompting education and understanding, having a more personal level of service, will start changing how people view SEO. At the same time, if we're ranking higher than them in SEO services, they why concern? Yet if they are, maybe we need to do a better job.
The Internet lets the idiots out, making it easier for them to spread what we'd traditionally view as junk mail. It's the great thing about the web and the crap thing at the same time. Thus, the bottom-feeders of SEO and online marketing are possibly more visible to The General Public than are their counterparts offline. Therefore, they're easier to complain about as well.
I'm going to stand up for grey and black hats here for a second and point out that talented black / grey hat SEOs would be insulted (if they cared enough) to be lumped in with the "4 links from PR2 - 3 sites across nine niches for $299.95" bridage or the people who swindle thousands out of businesses for the grand result of having them rank for their domain name. Those people aren't black hats--they're usually idiots, crooks or both. Dislike both parties if you will, but I'd say they're not the same.
Yeah, most black hats would never spam you for links when they can just steal them...
;)
From my personal experience no matter what kind of service industry you're in, there's always someone out there ready to complain. I just tried Googling: red cross "bad press" and the first link that came up was about Red Cross being caught red-handed in some type of scam (gasp ... they make money off our blood saving people's lives? The horror). Our company has consistently been at the top of the SERPs for several key phrases like "web design firm". Quite often when we ask clients why they chose us it's because they found us at #1 in Google. And all of this done with white hat tactics.
And what is my point? I think with SEO, like anything else in life, you just have to be confident and happy with yourself knowing that you are doing the best that you can ... no matter what anyone else says. Do you hold open the door for the nice old lady behind you because you want recognition for being a nice person? Or do you hold it open because you ARE a nice person?
Very good person Steph, being from the South and having lived in other parts of the country and world I am surprised how much less often people do not hold doors for others outside of the South. We as narcissitic Americans really do need to bring some chivalry and manners back to our younger generations
Hi Rand,
You ask how we can fight this perception and i think you have already identified the solution. All 'decent' SEO's know what they are doing is right and whilst it is upsetting to see others tarnish the reputation of our profession the only course of action is to just keep on doing what we are doing and keep doing it better and better.
If we were to do as this blog suggests and give up the term SEO we would just be admitting defeat and anyway whatever we subsequently decided to call our profession would just suffer the same fate.
I think we keep the faith and eventually these guys will fade away.
Also i think Google and the other SE's have got a role to play here by improving their own systems to become better at identifying black hat techniques they can help us regain our reputation.
Finally in my experience its about finding clients that appreciate a good SEO and are willing to pay a premium for the service, a small number of high value clients that appreciate you means a happy agency!
This is exactly the experience I have found with Web Design Clients. Most of them have HAD a bad website and are ready to pay a premium service for a real one. The sad thing is, a bad SEO working on a site before you do can really hurt your efforts when the client comes around to you.
I am not really an SEO guy. I read SEOmoz because I work in technology, run some of my own websites, and like to keep up on what's going on. That said, I know several people who call themselves SEO experts who don't know their ass from their elbow. They're the same leeches who marketed themselves as HTML experts back in the dotcom days. They just move from trend to trend latching onto whatever pays well.
One person who sticks out in my mind is a girl who tried to do a web seminar on SEO. I know her from the dotcom days and know she didn't know jack back then either so I started asking her very pointed questions. She finally shut me off by telling me that she can't tell me her secrets because then she would have nothing to offer her clients.
In the end what I was able to determine is that she knows almost nothing about SEO. What she is ultimately offering her clients is copywriting and keyword packing in the text. I gather that only because she never mentioned the phrase link building and kept emphasising that you had to write your copy using some magic vodoo to get highly ranked.
She knows all the buzzwords and makes what she does sound very mysterious so people will write her checks and wait for their #1 ranking in Google but she probably doesn't have one happy client.
I feel sorry for honest and competent SEO folks. When any fool who can read a forum can call themselves an SEO expert it's difficult to establish credibility. But it's people who write on sites like this that really establish the difference between a real SEO professional and the average snake oil salesman who represent the bulk of the industry.
There is no smoke without a fire.
There is no smoke without mirrors...
I think since computers became mainstream, everyone became experts.
Everyone became graphic designers with the use of paint of powerpoint, so why would they need to hire a proper graphic design agency (sigh), likewise whilst working for other organisations, it has saddened me that companies assume the IT department can handle the company website!
What we can do is only educate people on the benefits and reasons for having a website, and then for doing SEO. Where IT is concerned, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it really annoys me when people assume they are experts, it devalues our years of experience, training and investment - but we have to rise above it, we have to prove why we are better.
Through education, and providing evidence/case studies, anyone choosing between a reputable company and your bedroom wannabe should be able to make a real, informed decision, those factors are what should seperate the real professionals!
I think the only way to fight back against the claim that SEO is a placebo is to create success stories. The evangelists on the 'snake oil' side speak from overwhelmingly negative experience.
Create happy clients and they will be positive evangelists. Educate and communicate and show them success. That's more powerful than an anonymous email promising 800 links a day.
Sometimes positive stories like that work better than protesting against the misconceptions. After all, if this is our industry then of course we're going to defend it, but that doesn't mean anyone has to believe us.
"SEO people remind me of "weight weenies" in the bicycle world."
I think he is right. There are SEO people who have a very limited view of what SEO is. A real SEO has knowledge not only with the technical side of SEO but advertising, branding, copywriting and marketing as well.
I think the future of SEO is not SEO, it is holistic marketing. Someone who has learned a lot about advertising, branding, copywriting and marketing as well as the technical elements of SEO will be the sought after people/ companies of the future.
I disagree with Gabe in dismissing this as "dumbass stuff." Seems like insightful feedback, at least some of it. It's just a matter of processing it and learning from it. Steph Woods' attitude resonates with me.
The fact that one of the comments from the tread that Rand collapsed together was from the guy who runs Metafilter, and I occasionally see him complain about fighting spam comments and astroturfing efforts, so his point of view is probably valid.
If I were to guess, that community has people who, on par, feel they don't need to focus on the search-facing stuff as much (I was one once). Meanwhile, a lot of what SEO does is, say, getting the big company to fix obvious problems to increase traffic, or get the 100th drop-shipper on the scene to rank better, or get the 100,000th online university affiliate site to somehow rank and stand out. I don't think that your average MetaFilter commenter has that need at all, so they can dismiss it and amplify the stuff that really annoys them and touches their world, and it seems to start with link exchange/buying UCE.
I also think the simple $5 sign-up from Metafilter saved that thread from being overrun with opposing comments from angry SEOs.
I have to admit my first introduction to the SEO world was through a friend who had signed up with "Internet Advancement". The person had been cold called by them and after being told some wonderful things, shown some graphs and a few weeks worth of phone calls decided to sign up with them.
They promised to get a certain percentage of keywords for the site ranked in top 10 positions and if they didn't you would get 50% of your money back. (Good deal if they double what they want their profit to be and then do nothing)
The first problem I saw after looking over everything was they had taken the keywords requested and run them through a report to get "better" keywords (see: long tail).
After 3 months they had not gotten any of their improved keywords or the original keywords ranking and had infact dumped the site from an average of page 5 to page 16 and in some cases totally out of the rankings.
Their work involved adding some spammy text to the bottom of the front page, linking keywords from that front page to random pages within the site and then submitting the site to 1000's of directories and search engines.
3 months was the length of time allowed for this company to get the results before the 50% refund could be requested. From the time of requesting and with weekly calls and emails to this company it took 6 months to get the money back and only after we involved the credit card company who couldn't "officially" do anything but did do some investigation and calls for us. Lesson learned from this was to research a lot and to involve the credit card company prior to the 3 months mark.
Good news now though, after being a free and paid member here at seomoz for some time I've managed to help this person into page 1 rankings for their long tail and just recently into page 1 for their truely profitable keywords.
Replying to myself, very sad. It seems Rand had something to say about Internet Advancement awhile back.
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/internet-advancement-fuels-my-rage
Even though I don't have comments enabled on my blog, I still get spam comments that I have to delete from my dashboard... the joys of automation.
Part of the problem is that some people see SEO as spam; and of course, plenty of spammers are very well versed in the ways of SEO. The overlap is blinding people to the fact that there are actually very reputable SEO companies out there that build real value with their services and have nothing to do with spam...
Most of the people who use the Internet are not webmasters themselves, but almost all of them receive spam in some form, e.g. e-mail spam. These people do not care about distinctions such as black hat or white hat SEO.
Many people consider SEOs spammers, because many of those who call themselves SEOs are spammers. This is unjust for those SEOs who do solid work, without spamming others, but it is justified for a significant number of people, who claim to do SEO.
As long as spam is such a huge annoyance, SEO will have a bad reputation. Educating people and reducing the amount of spam can improve this situation.
I don't personally think that spam is the largest factor in peoples dislike of seo companies. I think there are far too many shonky characters around ripping off people that don't know any better.
I have someone create a website for me, my website does okay but I want it to do better. I hear about "SEO" or a company contacts me, either way it seems that unless you're prepared to research heavily into the subject and into each company you're considering, there isn't anything to say "we won't rip you off, honest".
If there was an SEO association that SEO companies could belong to, that basically gave that company a seal of approval then people would be able to trust and like seo companies in general a little more. I also don't think it should be a blackhat vs whitehat entry requirement. I think admittance to the association should be based on fair practices and fair results with the ability for customers and other members to complain to the association about shonky seo companies.
Most industries have some sort of association like this. I've never heard of one for the SEO industry.
My 2c...
- Snake Oil garnered a bad name because
1) it wasn't regulated, therefore there were no product standards against which to measure the average bottle o' tonic.
2) truth in avertising didn't exist at that time, and today a user's online experience is very much like that of the the Snake Oil audience.
That said, I think clients need to take some responsibility and complete some basic due diligence. References, examples, testing. It's a lot of work to find the right SEO resource, especially if you don't really know what SEO is about but someone told you you should have it... It's still a business investment that the decisionmakers should really understand conceptually what they're getting for their money.
We live in an age of finger-pointing and dodging responsibility. It's easier to blame someone/something else for our failures...wait! I didn't fail because the failure was due to someone else [fill in the blank].
Be that as it may, the amount of SEO info out there in cyberspace is really overwhelming and even contradictory. It's tough for folks who are not Web-savvy to know what's true and what's not. Sorta like trying to choose an attorney to handle a legal issue.
So we just have to keep educating, managing expectation, and asking for testimonials so we can say, "Hey, talk to John about what I/we did to solve their issue..."
The facts seem to be that you need to be clear as a SEO what you are offering in forms of services. You need to also inform/educate the business owner why these services are important so that you can clear up any confusion that may arise.
Haveing qualms about SEO's is just like any other industry where hiring and independent contractor can be a constly mistake. It's tough to find a good honest mechanic, plumber, remodeling contracter, caterer, independent beauty consultant or whatever.
I ran into a problem with a horrible programming company located in Utah and I know other people who have had similiar issues with webmasters and design companies so it really just boils down to whether the person you are dealing with in business is an asshole or not.
None of us should let worthless comments like that get us down. Anyone that has experienced working with even a moderately proficient SEO will pass on the good word.
Hey when you have outfits like trafficpower and their ilk doing mass marketing and providing no useful SEO benefits this is what will happen.
The adage that we get the quality of government we deserve, so goes the same for the vast majority of web site owners. Most site owners have no idea what disciplines are important in making their site perform in search, conversion or any other aspect of a web site mission. It is easy to become cynical when you see the numerous promotions like site submissions to hundreds of search engines. I believe that PPC is so attractive because in principal is easily understood by site owners.
I gotta say, as a cyclist, that laughing at weight weenies only works if they're slow.
If someone's shaved every ounce off their bike AND they're in good shape, they're going to cruise by you. Feel smug if you like but you just got your ass kicked.
There's a point to my ramble: People like to attract attention or satisfy their egos by applying a single label to an entire industry, like SEO. Let them. We're going to blow past them regardless.
It's ironic that the post is about cycling and SEO, two areas where some "practioners" disgregard traffic laws, behave poorly, and become a representation for the whole. People then lump all cyclists and SEOs together in their respective niches and conclude that all act the same.
This shows how comments get spread like wildfire judging a whole. Poor SEOs and irreverant cyclists do not represent the heart of each discipline. wrttnwrd mentioned "single label" which is something everyone who has a passion is going to encounter.
As ciaran said. Water. Duck. Back.
Our job is to exercise ethics and follow the "traffic" laws and try to outweigh the poor practicioners. Maybe it is time to work toward an SEO Code of Ethics! After the SEOmoz training, I understand how certification is mute. The snake oil guys will just get their little badge for their site. REALTORs have a Code of Ethics. Maybe we should study and apply that same approach.
I always find it very interesting how people tend to focus on the bad things in life. If someone buys a product or stays at a hotel, they are more inclined to leave a bad review if the product or service was unsatisfactory as opposed to a great review for things that kept them happy.
The SEO industry undoubtedly has it's fair share of nay-sayers because of a few bad experiences with the person claiming they know SEO when in all actuallity all they do is keyword research and copywriting. These are the kind of people that taint the industry.
On another note though, I do know that SEO is being seen in another light for many others with many large corporations bringing SEO people in house and building teams to have a presence online. It's not news to you guys, but any big corporation takes quite a bit of time to make any big business decision. I remember a blog post that Matt Cutts wrote (or maybe it was a video) saying that he was talking to this company and they had a site-wide change going through that had began a few months prior. The only thing that was going to be added was an extra sentence in the title tag of each page. These corporations take MONTHS to add a simple title tag to each page of the website. Now I'm taking into consideration that the sites are gigantic, but still, a few months? The fact that companies of this magnitude understand the importance of SEO and are willing to build a team of their own says a lot and I think whatever the nay-sayers may complain about, our impact cannot be ignored.
And the crazy thing is, I don't even feel like I'm that great at SEO.
Every conversation I have with someone unaccustomed to SEO begins with an explanation of how unfortunately i don't know the black art to cheating Google and no i don't think that the only reason why we're not number one in Google is because we don't know the hacks as well as our competitors.
In fact because so much of SEO is inherently simple and straightforward - create a useful site that works well, that people can find, that doesn't trick your users and that encourages inbound links - people seem in disbelief that this actually requires any management.
"Well if it's that simple why does SEO exist?".
And my answer to this partly rhetorical question is: "Well because people seem obsessed with the 'building it and they will come' mentality and completely ignoring the basics"!
The good thing is that the people who do embrace SEO and SEO professionals are the ones who will be left with jobs online. So we can only hope that it's a form of natural selection, the doubters will end up being culled as their websites die leaving the SEO believers to continue paying our wages. Well i can dream...
There are bad/inept people in every industry. How any datelines or 20/20s have I seen on bad contractors?
The bottom line is it is up to the consumer to do some research and over the past year I have read hundreds of articles about what to look for in an SEO. Even Google wrote about it. If you don't want to hire a bad SEO research first, especially in this economy.
I don't hire anyone that emails me, ever. I do get some really funny SEO emails. In fact, I just emailed some great SEOs I have used in other articles and asked them to contribute to an article I was writing about funny "SEO Promises and Sales Gimmicks" I see on sites and emails, such as:
"With over a 1,000 years of SEO experience...".
There are a lot of dumb people in this country that just have to complain about something or their day is not complete. I wish them well, they must be miserable.
As for those of us who often feel a little offended, (and how can we not?) all we can do is do a good job for our clients. I think there must be a lot of SEOs doing this because people are spending less on conventional advertising methods and a lot more on SEO & SEM. If the whole industry sucked as much as these ignorant nimwits say so much money wouldn't be spent on it.
What search engine was around 1,000 years ago?
Alta Vista, right?
It is hard to keep this fight up. People hate car salesman and brokers, but that is not going to stop pople from investing or buying cars. This thread is a matter of opinion only to me and I move on.
What do you call 1000 lawyers chained to the bottom of the ocean?
A good start!
That said... run into a little trouble and the first thing you say is, "I want to talk to my lawyer!"
Agreed on the car salesman statement.
IMHO, the bad rap SEO gets is similar to the junk mail from insurance, financial, HVAC, home repair, real estate, and other companies - wanting to sell a product without concern for the needs of the consumer. And all wrapped up in the "fast results, cheaply"-type of packaging.
We know that good SEO takes time - every single aspect of it - and in a world of instant gratification, it's a turn-off.
It's up to us, the White Hats, to continue demonstrating and showcasing what we know to be true. As J.Stolarcyk just said, happy clients make the best evangelists :)
You know, that's the price we pay for being in this industry. Slackers and black hats make the noise and we pay for it.
We suck it up and keep chugging along doing it right. Our customers know who we are and word of mouth will prevail.
I know that I've already commented here but I thought that, especially with Rand having enough to worry about with his nuptials looming - not that marrying MG is anything to worry about, I just meant - oh never mind - it might be an idea to compress my thoughts slightly.
Anyway, Rand - I really doubt that you need anadvice from me, but I really think that the best way to look at this is..
Don't sweat the small stuff. Nothing on that forum is going to hurt your business, or your reputation (or mine, or most people on this site)
Water. Duck. Back.
Can you really blame people for having this kind of views? No offense, I know the difference between a good SEO service provider (like SEOMOZ), and a bad one. If you visit any webmasters forum and check out some of the links in their signature, you will be see that more than 50% (numbers pulling out of my ass) probably offers some kind of SEO service; and when you actually do visit their site; your jaw will drops and you will shit bricks.
Whats my point?
When everyone, and their brother and mother and sister and father is offering SEO service; can you really blame people for associating SEO with snake oil?
SEO service is the new Snake OIL business model the same way the likes of John Chow started the MMO business model.
It's definately sad, but it's true.
You can't stop people from having their own opinion, no matter how ill-informed and wrong it is. You ask how to fight it Rand? You can let your work/actions speak for you. Thats about it, even then there will be people that you will never be able to please.
I just do the best job I can and work hard to improve. If run into someone with an wrong understanding of what I do and is open to listening I show them what I do and hope that I've been an effective communicator.
My 2cents
Matt
Your post rings so true. I have started to do some SEO work at my current job and it is amazing how misled people are. Hopefully they will take my recommendation and check out this site.
Rand,
You just spread his message considerably farther than he could've done on his own. Don't help the spread of negative press for the SEO community. I'm sure it's a personal frustration of yours but your audience is considerably wider and considerably more powerful than his was . . . you just shot yourself and this community in the foot.
Brent
I think the anger of the people such as the guy presented by Rand in the post is not totally misplaced. There are some bad people out there, who are creating a lot of bad name for SEO.
And spammers are worst of them. I just don’t understand why my little known blog should be bombarded with “cheap viagra” and “….. girls” comments? Now it has become a daily ritual to delete these 20-25 comments.
I completely agree - but its a case of dont throw the baby away with the bathwater (Sorry to use another quote)
A lot of your spam comes from people reading certain blogs that insist "links are everything", and who publish endless lists of places to get free links from.
The sheep follow those lists and spam the crap out of every last one of those sites.
Daily, I see spam posted at one site, and then the same spam appear a few minutes later at another site, and a few minutes later at yet another site. The order the sites are spammed in is always the same. It's damn obvious that all those different spammers are working their way down some list, that some "expert" has produced and has published as being the fastest way to "get to number one on Google".
As a moderator on one of those sites that gets spammed, it's damned satisfying (when you see someone signing up that you know has already posted spam on some other site) to be able to ban and block them as they are signing up, and before they even post, so they never get to post their spam or be able to access the site again.
I do that several times every day, but they still don't "get it".
sometimes people just make such type of post to get attention. In my opinion a site selling adult stuff need SEO too, but the point is some seo'z arent doing Related SEO. They are just putting there links where ever they found place to do so.
Have been in an SEO ethics discussion on Twitter this am. Want to post Dave Snyder's SEO Ethics
I completely agree with you about the need to have a code of ethics now more than ever.
This effort has to be an industry-wide initiative led by an impartial voice using an all inclusive approach.
We continued the conversation this morning on Twitter and I learnt that there have been similar initiatives in the past that apparently did not see the light of the day. One of the main issues was the lack of participation and adherence to the code by industry members.
I personally would love to see and support someone that can bring all the main players to the table for a discussion of this nature. Rand, perhaps you can crystallize this initiative and be the Goodwill Messenger?
As someone mentioned on Twitter this morning: "Where there is a will there is a way."
@GlobalFusion Excited to continue the discussion and effort. So many of us value ethics in SEO, which is probably why Rand and others of us are upset by the ignorance. Time to put energy into our core values!
This is great. I always love these types of misconceptions as it furthers the need for trust, integrity and reliability from those who can actually offer it. Every single one of my clients has either found me or were a referral from my personal and business network. And as far as biking goes, I like my 34lb bike, all its gooey suspension and wouldn't "downgrade" to XTR components to save weight (they’ll just break sooner). I also like to carry enough tools to fix anything that breaks, extra tubes, lots of water and food. And there’s nothing like hammering past a bunch of guys uphill that are "saving weight" because it looks cool. So trust your legs & reliable bike just like your SEO guy.
But have you tried the XTR dual pull drop two gears at a go shifters? They're a revalation! The carbon XTR rear mech is just silly, and breaks far too easily.
I agree with most people here, there's a lot of obvious frustration with 'snake oil' SEO providers, but I think as a community most everybody here is professional enough to rise above it and keep pushing our message forwards that we are not spammers and we do provide real quantifyable results for our clients. In the end the cr@p SEOs will get squeezed out by the good ones, and sites like SEOmoz only help with this.
To me, it seems that SEO has become a four-letter-word mostly as the result of too many "SEO" people going out and doing underhanded things to make the rest of the SEO crowd look bad (ie. spamming, leaving crappy comments with links in it, etc.). As a result, many of us are somewhat hesitant, if not reluctant, to even mention that we're associated with SEO companies. The only way to keep plugging away is to keep providing quality content and building relationships with other bloggers. If you write about the things that matter to you and keep the good content coming, then you won't have to ask for links; you won't feel inclined to spam people.
The solution to some of this SEO ignorance is SEO training, but when SEOs discuss training, someone mentions Certification and then the rest of the thread deteriorates.
The consensus would appear to favour learning on the job as being the only peer-approved path, but we know that some people are unlucky to get their first jobs at shady SEO agencies where they only know the "wrong" ways.
Then we have threads such as this one where the ignoranti are criticised for being ignorant. How can their souls be saved?
When you write good content, you get links for free, without asking for them.
When you are fast, you react first and get a lot of hits from search engines.
SEO is not about spamming people with 'can I haz link plz?' messages.
YES! This is exactly my feeling - - when I offer great content, I get an easy link. And great content doesn't just happen. You have to have great writers.
I know that my team offers something that other SEOs do not, and that's why we're successful. I get where metafilter poster is coming from, but I'm confident that not all in the SEO realm are sleazeballs with a shady bottom line.
The major part of the SEO-Work is collecting links. To get the good links you often have to contact people. So it is inevitable that SEO will receive a bad reputation because of this. I guess most of us wrote a lot of emails with link requests. This makes us SPAMMERS. We are guilty and deserve such a perception!
Michael Janik, Hamburg - Germany
When you write good content, you get links for free, without asking for them.
When you are fast, you react first and get a lot of hits from search engines.
SEO is not about spamming people with 'can I haz link plz?' messages.
We do need to talk about this problem.
It's that frustrating age-old battle of good versus evil.
If I were looking for someone to do SEO for my website, I would want to know why I should choose your services.
The list of reasons should include how to tell the difference between whitehat SEO and the junk.
Best way to fight? Shed light on the darkness, do what is right, and maintain your professional integrity.
Yes, Jane, some bad guys are way smarter and talented, but they are still scummy.
Those who wish to remain ignorant about SEO use these lame excuses. Those who wish to understand, however, are the one's who sites will be kicking the asses of the ignorant.
Sooner or later, they'll come around if they want to compete.
I totally have to agree with the original post. Now don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself a "SEO Expert" by far.
However, the client's that I have done SEO work for, I have always sat them down for about an hour sometimes two and explained the whole process of what I was going to do, when I was going to do it and why I was going to do it.
A lot of companies seem to eager to jump on whoever is ready to fork out some cash, but never actually take the time to explain the process. I find that if you explain the process of SEO to your client, they are happy to pay the fee.
As far as I'm concerned... The good SEO companies around know to focus on educating the client as well as offering a great service.
"Despite the years of educational efforts and promotion of SEO by even the search engines themselves, this kind of thing pervades."
The bottom line is that you can't fight overwhelming public perception--it's akin to beating the ocean with a stick. "SEO" has been hijacked: if it means one thing internally and another think to the outside world, there needs to be a different way of discussing it with the outside world.
I think the challenge is that SEO is regarded as a tool or skillset and not a job. It's like to saying you are a "negotiator"--another valuable skill that has no accreditation or clear measurement and functions as a means of accomplishing some other goal. One way around the snake oil image is to wrap it up in some role and title that has more context, such as Content Manager or Online Marketing, which makes sense anyway given that SEO is part of some larger goal. It's the same way "negotiator" becomes "sales" becomes "business development", yes?
The 2 comments from Ravi and Pinky (both fellow indians unfortunately) are unbelievable.
The problem with seo is that there is no yardstick with which you can measure things. Also there are lot of bad fishes and people who think its easy way to make money.
@simple2remember - I loved the beyond seo and holistic marketing remark, I hope you dont mind if I start using this phrase in my blog :)
Pushkar
PS - How to change my seomoz name which I had registered some eons back to my real name?
[email protected]. I just told him what I wanted it changed to and he fixed it quickly for me. Good support team at SEOmoz!
Well, people come in all types as does SEO service.
HI, I am pinky patel, seo in ahmedabad. I have 1 year experience in seo field. so i want to share my seo knowledge with you. plz give me more information about seo. and visit my site https://seoupdetednews.blogspot.com/
Oh dear!
FAIL.
<scary music> They're here!
I had to give him a thumbs up for the sheer chutzpah of this comment!
These spam comments have to be a joke. Either that or they can sense when they are being talked about come out of the woodwork.
Hi ,
Doing great job. Your writing style is reailly good. I always learn your blog many time.
Regards,
Ravi Kesarwani
https://www.ekamsoftwares.com
Ooh, this one rocked :)
Sick irony?
See, this right here is what that MeFi poster is talking about.
Not only leveraging the ends as the means, but also being kind of sloppy about it. No wonder the stereotype exists; it embodies the lowest common denominator.
Ravi was just proving a point... Lets face it. People have created and featured software to spam blogs and forums... Overall web content has suffered greatly due to the army of self-proclaimed "authorities" spreading crap or half truths all to get people to click on their affiliate links
It makes my heart glow that mozpoints can go into the negative. Three cheers for signed integers.
For you thumbs down but I would say gret job Ravi for gvg us alive example ;)
Hi Ravi BTW i was interested to know howz ur company doing?
i saw ur company is in SEO business too ;)