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Went Hot: February 5, 2008 - 8:14 am
Posted By: MattMcGee 213 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchenginewatch.com)
Category: SEO
17 Comments
Went Hot: February 5, 2008 - 8:14 am
Posted By: MattMcGee 213 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchenginewatch.com)
Category: SEO
17 Comments
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Comments
Here we go again ...
Doh! Unbelievable.
Yet another misinformed opinion... or is it?
If they have read that "95% of all SEO is bunk" and "95% of all SEO 'experts' are fraudsters" then they will believe they are doing their readers a good service in having them avoid getting burned by signing up to something that will take their money and harm their business.
So, it really is time for the "leaders" in this industry to define what SEO is, and to define that everything else is spam.
I'll take issue with the fact that the "rant" post used the word SEO when it should have used the word "spammer" or "fraudster". Sure, thats semantics, but to equate SEO with SPAM is constantly hurting this industry.
And, while that happens, the outside world WILL continue to say that SEO is bunk.
It doesn't help that small businesses get pitched by all-in-one providers. YP reps visiting my office equate PPC as SEO and make questionable suggestions. On top of that small businesses receive emails, faxes, and telemarketing from "SEO" companys. If your only exposure to the industry is by way of contact with any of these parties, your likely to be left with bad feelings about effectiveness.
remember, people like this once mocked the idea that you could sell products and make money on the internet. They will be kissing our a$$es soon enough!
Yeah again. I started to Ignore those who say dont do SEO or SEM. Recently there was an post in the Local Newspaper and We did Blogged about it.
http://sphinn.com/story/26363
Update: Search Engine Watch feedback for Mark's post has been incredible. SEOs are rallying around his leadership on this issue. Very cool. Check out the Amex Open Book forum for comments.
Hah... When I read this kind of stuff I just think, somewhere successful small businesses that employ SEO, in house SEOs and the independent affiliate marketers alike think, "yeah, that's right, no benefit here, you just don't worry your pretty little head with this SEO stuff."
with such an open mind, the author is bound to be successful at everything. lol
Hey Matt,
Thanks for getting this out there. I really do think that we (all SEOs) should do a better job of taking the mystery out of search engine optimization. I try to do that with my SEW columns (they are certainly not too technical, intentionally). Our Industry should do a better job of making this more mainstream. Certainly, our jobs are made more difficult by the fact that there are "so called" SEOs in the Industry (and some real ones, too!), and that a successful SEO project requires buy-in from several levels of management at a large company to make it work. I met recently with a large company who asked "should we do SEO?" and my reply was "do you think your company will put the resources into it?". But, to suggest - as Cuban Council did - that you should "not hire a so-called SEO specialist" does not provide business owners with good/accurate information, so I felt it had to be addressed.
Keep this topic hot until AMEX takes notice!
Hah... When I read this kind of stuff I just think, somewhere successful small businesses that employ SEO, in house SEOs and the independent affiliate marketers alike think, "yeah, that's right, no benefit here, you just don't worry your pretty little head with this SEO stuff."
I couldn't agree more. I am starting to like these articles. I was scared that I would be hurting for clients a year ago, but nope, getting better all the time. All the while my clients are ranking above their competitors that buy into this stuff.
Great catch and article, Mark!
Hmm
AMEX thats the Credit card company that takes a much bigger cut of CC payments that all the others right!
If 200 flower shops in New York want to be in Google's Top Ten for flowers new york 95% of the SEO workers servicing their websites will obviously fail. Telling those 200 small business owners not to waste money on SEO could be viewed as a sound general advice.
However, it is the task or perhaps even duty of the SEO worker to demonstrate to the client that the lucky 10 are those who will risk their money in order to get a large share in the online flowers market in New York, while those who are asking for SEO price quotes in order to choose the lowest one will most probably end up in the other 190.
There is more than one way to skin a cat and not everything that is remains that way. In other words, "flowers new york" isn't the only way that service is searched and those in the top 10 aren't guaranteed those slots forever. SEO is the probably one of the few places a smal businesses efforts have a more equal playing field among the big guys, just takes hardwork, homework and little clever thinking.
Small business enterprises have no equal chance on the Web anymore:
1. As competition grows all those virgin niches derived from "flowers new york" will be exploited and become highly competitive too.
2. The current Top 10 websites can afford to spend part of their profits on high-quality SEO to maintain their rankings while all others must use capital.
3. Consequently, the rate at which the relevance score of, say, the page at # 10 will go up will most probably be much higher than the rate at which the relevance score of the page at # 11 can rise in order to catch up and bypass it.
And as this will most often be the case then new websites whose owners tend to choose the lowest price quote for SEO work have no chance at all.
Re Amex and the SEO profession -- I picked up this story just yesterday from Webpronews and blogged it. My observation is that the Amex/OPEN page on meetup.com has two PDFs. The second, smaller one, has more sensible observations about choosing an SEO -- even suggesting that you might need one.
Such conflicting advice from Amex/OPEN is obviously accidental, as the larger OPEN BOOK was compiled for Amex by some agency and the comments by Cuban Council were not questioned. Perhaps the second booklet was written to counteract it? We'll never know.
I have concluded that this is "good" for the SEO profession, for it leaves a lot of unoptimised sites in the wild, thus making it easier for businesses who have optimised sites. Amex comes out looking like a goose, but at least they published the other more-informed booklet.