21. Jason - you really should learn more about the 'good' SEO industry before you display your ignorance on the subject. Talk to Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, anyone at SEW, or even check out an SES conference yourself. They are all people working very hard to make sure the SEO industry continues to grow in a positive manner.

Posted at 10:06AM on Feb 8th 2007 by Scott Randolph

22. Great post! I've always felt that SEO is best achieved just by building a great website, and following good practices.

Posted at 10:33AM on Feb 8th 2007 by Jeremy Sisson

23. We had our first SMO incoming call the other day. Geez, what a bunch of crap. You're so right - just be yourself and post when you have something important to say.

Posted at 10:47AM on Feb 8th 2007 by Learn Anything

24. Well, Jason, I suppose you and I are probably going to be seen as being in the same camp on this issue.

I would, however, be very careful about the "90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman" statement. Can you substantiate this claim further or is it just a guess?

best,
Dave Pasternack
President
Did-it Search Marketing

Posted at 11:04AM on Feb 8th 2007 by Dave Pasternack

25. you guys railling against "good design" probably aren't defining design properly. designing a car, or a computer isn't just slapping a bunch of crap together. ask Honda, ask Apple. it isn't walled gardens passing incomplete bits of poop to each other via catapult, hoping somehow a decent product emerges...

good design is when all good things come together to make one seamless whole. and THAT is where real SEO magic begins and ends.

think beyond your walls (and fuggedabout the box)

Posted at 11:12AM on Feb 8th 2007 by Victor Agreda Jr

26. I, as an ex SEO consultant, agree with everything you've said.

Posted at 1:36PM on Feb 8th 2007 by Paul Fisher

27. Nice tie.

Posted at 3:15PM on Feb 8th 2007 by Chris

28. does this mean you might take up the Pronet Challenge?? :)
http://www.winextra.com/?p=278

Posted at 4:18PM on Feb 8th 2007 by Steven Hodson

29. "PS - And to the SEO idiots trying to "take over my SeRP" on Google you're proving my point exactly. Grow up.. the only thing you're ever going to prove by trying to game my SeRP is that you're low-class idiots."

I wasn't really interested in this feud but doesn't this statement disprove your whole theory of SEO being worthless? Surely is an SEO firm can game your SeRP and beat your blog then SEO is worthwhile.

If you're selling a product, it doesn't matter how you got to the top of the search rankings, all that matters is you get there and sell more units.

Posted at 5:47PM on Feb 8th 2007 by Adam Cains

30. I am sorry, but I am going to have to disagree. I work for a white-hat firm that does optimize pages. Sure we start by building a solid pages, but we also consider placing the tags that have higher value in specific places and get google-related traffic by natural means. I of course won't go into details, but it is all white-hat and no faking who we are. Just because you have an awesome product/site/design doesn't mean that you will get traffic through that alone.

PS The site listed is not the firm I work for, it is my person blog.

Posted at 7:23PM on Feb 8th 2007 by Matt Sandy

31. You mention the term idot a bunch of times. Whats your take on legitimate content publishers like webmd and nytimes doing seo on their sites. They have great content why should they feel the need to hire an inhouse Search marketing team? Are you saying NYT should not show up for a news story?

Posted at 9:56PM on Feb 8th 2007 by Roodie

32. I agree that most of the so-called SEO gurus are just big bags of lying wind.

That's not to say that there aren't some legit people doing some valid work, but how come most of these firms or their sites and blogs don't rank well in Google, Yahoo or MSN? Surely if they had a real clue on the subject, they'd make sure their own sites and blogs ranked highly. Just for the promo and web cred alone.

The basics of SEO are just that: BASICS. It's not complicated or mysterious, but it can be time-consuming.

There is this whole sleazy underbelly of 'net marketing gurus' pushing some pretty questionable techniques and fleecing large numbers of people into believing that if they just buy expensive programs, ebooks, seminars and services, they will be come internet millionaires. Part of what is preached has to do with questionable techniques of SEO /SEM/SMO/etc and that's how they give the legit SEO people a really bad name.

These scamming gurus make their money by pushing these worthless products and they are all in it together, utilizing each others large mailing lists. And by expensive, i am talking U$97 to 397 for a PDF ebook and thousands of dollars for courses, as much as 12 grand, plus, Plus, PLUS. And like any good drug dealer, they keep these people/suckers on the line with ebook after ebook and course after course.

An email I wrote on this subject was published here - http://www.seogurubusters.com - halfway down this place-holding page for an upcoming site (which I don't own or manage, but which I may write for when it comes online).

Posted at 5:12AM on Feb 9th 2007 by Tari Akpodiete

33. This is completely untrue - and shows little understanding about the dire needs of those who must resort to Search Engine Positioning to survive.


--> Search Engine Positioning - or e-Promotion (which are REALLY the accurate terms) - must be done to focus and fine tuned the presence of your product or service over the Webm when you are competing with thousands of other hungry businesses offering similar services or products

--> If you are a smallish business, you must do this to even get a fraction of the eyeballs that are mostly going to larger companies

--> A decade ago, there was only the Yahoo directory to worry about - it brought in huge amounts of traffic - The Looksmart directory was second place because of its priority postioning BEFORE MSN's SERPs

--> Overture was taken off also

When Google partnered with AOL and then Yahoo and then Netscape and then Go - it completely altered the landsape.

Webmasters were no longer concerned about the Titles given to them by Yahoo and Looksmart editors - tHEY NOW HAD TO OPTIMIZE THEIR WEBPAGES - OR COMPLETELY DIE

--> As Google became more popular and Yahoo and MSN started using Organic SERPs first - SEO became a matter of life or death for many websites

--> Large companies get links without any problems, they get written up constantly and any press release will now be picked up by wired news services and blogs within hours or days at the most/

This will give them tons of backlinks. And, if that is not enough, they can outbid ANYONE of PPCs if they wanted to.

--> Social Media promotion is one more channel that is takinng the place of the press release. Press releases are fine for large firms, but Social media is the only form of Viral Networking many startups have. IF WHAT THEY ARE OFFERING IS NO GOOD IT WILL DIE. Social Darwinsm at its most obvious

The lack of perspective & insight & empathy shown on this blog post and comments is truly bizarre.

Let SearchEnginesWeb help you. Won't you please, let SearchEnginesWeb help you.

Posted at 7:46AM on Feb 9th 2007 by SearcH EngineS WeB

34. SMO stands for "serious money-making opportunity" among the opportunistic marketers seeking to cash in on the latest trend. Seriously, social media is about participating in communities in, around, and outside the topics of those for which you drive. Anything else will be called out and publicly stoned in the global community.

Posted at 3:39PM on Feb 9th 2007 by Brian Solis

35. Interesting read, both the article and comments (my work blocks streaming vid so I'll have to check that at home). I love doing SEO for smaller companies around my local area where I can offer them a reasonable price for quality services. Example, I live in a town of less than 100,000 people, yet they have six bike shops, all indepedently owned (one microchain). I consult for one of them and it is important (to them) that I do. They don't know much about it, nor care to. They are focused on selling bikes and I'm focused on getting the site to show up on the first page of the search engines. I am an honest, small business operator myself and the work is not overly complicated, but it takes a lot of effort and time. I read a lot, maintain reports and documentation of work done, and make modifications where needed. We come up with good PR stuff sometimes that can be helped with SEO and it is honest work to me. I guess I forget that their are huge firms giving crappy service, but I just model the quality, honest examples I find like SEOmoz.

Posted at 3:58PM on Feb 9th 2007 by mfshearer

36. Hi there guys. I'm the guy in the video. Apparently I represent all that is wrong and evil with SEO or SMO. I guess I take a pragmatic approach to getting traffic. If something works, use it (within reason). If not, I don't. All the SEO "purists" out there think that you should focus on providing very high quality content and the rest will come. High quality content is important, but it's only part of the equation.

In my opinion, only worrying about content is like playing roulette with your website. If the ball lands on red - you win and get a lot of traffic. If it lands on black - you lose - no traffic despite having all the great content you spent all that time to put on your site.

As far as I'm concerned, and I know not everyone will agree with me, but you need to be out there seeking links and promoting your site aggressively, especially if you want to compete with the "big boys." If you have great content, those people will stick around - if not you're wasting your time.

That's what I do, I aggressivley promote websites. Yes, sometimes I go to far and get penalized or banned, but if you're not willing to push too far, you're not going to find out what the limits are either.

Posted at 5:02PM on Feb 9th 2007 by Gary Ruplinger

37. Totally agree with this one: "The whole point of social media is TO BE REAL NOT FAKE!!! ".
Just as well, good SEO should concentrate on user usability
and getting real traffic, among others via search engines using relevant search terms.

Posted at 1:26PM on Feb 10th 2007 by seosos

38. i don't critize people that work for a living. people can agrue that every trade is bullshit but i don't hurt people's feelings for personal gain.

Posted at 8:09PM on Feb 10th 2007 by blahbla

39. Jason, you say "There are some whitehat SEO firms out there I know, but frankly the whitehat SEO companies are simply doing solid web design so I don't consider them SEO at all ... if you make great content, keep your page design clean, and stick with it you're gonna do just fine in the rankings."

The fundamental problem here is the definition of SEO. You extol the value of clean page design, great content, and solid Web design. Guess what? So does every reputable SEO firm. Those are all elements of a successful SEO strategy.

There are many Web design firms out there without a clue about designing a page in a way that makes the quality content on the site most easily indexable to search engines. That's SEO.

There are, of course, many designers out there who have those skills, and I'd bet that they themselves define those skills as SEO skills, and market them to their clients in that way.

Posted at 1:46PM on Feb 11th 2007 by Kevin Newcomb

40. Hi there,

First of all, you're mostly correct. You're one of the few people who has the cojones to say it too...so much respek for that. Big up yaself.

The problem with "standalone SEO" is that, for the most part, it is an attempt to band-aid many of the problems that exist in web design today. Bad code, poor usability, lack of a proper marketing message, etc. and so on. But no problem...we'll all just reciprocally exchange links or get involved in co-op schemes or create doorway pages or use redirects and all will be right with the world...until a search engine comes along and gives us the beating we so richly deserve.

The SMO thing...I can't remember the last time I found something useful on a "Web 2.0" site. They're so dominated by the types who go around registering 5000 Hotmail accounts and tapping proxy servers that they have almost killed the concept. Lazarou is right...let's see who's talking about these types of sites in 6 months once these idiots have REALLY messed them up.

As far as the 90% snake oil salesmen...I partly agree. There are snake oil salesmen out there. There aren't many...but they do exist. The problem is that the few of them that do exist are masters of the spin doctor game, telling newcomers what they want to hear rather than things that will actually help them build quality sites. So what ends up happening is that you get the great unwashed, armed with a fountain of misinformation, running around trying every stupid little pet trick imaginable to get their sites to rank.

P.S. You may want to watch SearchEnginesWeb and the stupid things he has to say. If you let him talk too much, he'll irritate you and your users. Just ask Matt Cutts about that sometime. :)

Posted at 11:40AM on Feb 12th 2007 by Adam Senour