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Piggy-backing off a large corporation's name is nothing new, but Google... on an aftershave bottle?! This is mad :-)
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
Thanks for the further comments guys! TimDineen - guilty of venting as charged :-) g1smd - You have a very good point and I didn't exactly expect the post to be very popular in the community. It does, however, offer another side to the argument and is, of course, a personal view. Thankyou to those who respected that.
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
Thanks for your comments, guys. They're all appreciated.
I don't blame Rebecca for getting irritated at all - I just feel that perhaps it's often best not to display that when you're in a professional position. Even once it had been done, losses could have been cut by not blogging about it straight away. Of course, we all snap occasionally, but I rarely see those people screaming 'Hey, look what I just did' about it.
We're all bugged by people on IM, and I can imagine that the Mozzers are bugged more than most, but they've put themselves in that position of high regard through their own hard work. They've got a reputation to uphold now, and I think there were far better ways in which Rebecca could have responded. Requesting that the links be emailed, or politely asking that they be stopped altogether would have been the way I'd have done it. I certainly wouldn't have used 'ass' or the other deleted expletives to someone who had requested my help or asked a favour - no matter how many times they asked it.
Rebecca's a great blogger, a great SEO/SMO and I admire her passion for the industry. I just felt that this could have been dealt with in a far more professional manner.
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
The responses are interesting, guys. Thanks to those of you who have elaborated on your disagreement :)
One question for debate, though... What if it was said to a client, rather than another SEO?
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
AndyBeard - Personally, I'd vote based on the quality of the article/comment, which is why I'm about to go through the comments posted here again and give positive votes to the ones I feel made a valuable contribution, regardless of whether I agree with their viewpoint. By the ambiguous nature of SEO itself, we'll never find a topic that everyone agrees on. Offering a differently slanted view on something can often make people think. That's half the fun :-)
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
Hi davidmihm,
Thanks for your comment. You're absolutely right, and I did mention that I empathised with her situation - several times, in fact. We've all been there and it's a pain in the backside. After being on the receiving end so many times, I now see the real use behind the 'block' function on IM clients.
For the record, I wasn't the one who voted the -1 on her post :-) Just like you mentioned in your comment, I'll vote on the quality of something by not voting for it. :-)
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
HamletBatista - Thankyou. In fact, I rarely post my real views or opinions. Sometimes I will post controversial opinions, but sometimes they are just that and aren't always mine. I generally like to offer the other side of the coin to make for interesting debate. I think it's good to consider the possible views and opinions of others - including any criticism in comments.
Rand - thankyou for your comments also. You may be right. My apologies if you were offended by the post - it was merely offering the other side of the coin :-)
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
tamar - Thankyou for your comments. I'll certainly take that into consideration :-)
I agree that it's very annoying to be bugged whilst working, but I do feel that Rebecca acted less than professionally in her response, I'm afraid. I just wouldn't launch a tirade like that against a fellow SEO. There's far more polite responses available - suggest the SEO emails the links to you, explain politely that you're far too busy to be bugged, or, if all else fails, use the 'block' button. I actually quite like Rebecca and I deeply admire the way she lives and breathes SEO, but there really is no excuse for launching into an expletive-filled tirade against another SEO, especially when you're in the position of respect that Rebecca is. Sorry Rebecca - just my $0.02 :)
Amen to that. Apart from the reciprocal love, linking out to authority sites and related articles is good SEO practice :) Neat article.
Nice analogy! There's a lot of people who believe that throwing money at a problem will solve it, or at least help it. Unfortunately this is rarely true :-)
Top stuff! Totally agree on each of your points there. There are many people who come into this industry as 'experts' with little or no experience in SEO. I'll keep an eye on more of your stuff :-)
1. Sent from a Gmail account. This just looks plain dodgy.
2. Subject line - 'Link exchange request'. Hardly going to get my attention!
3. No personalised greeting - just a generic 'Greetings'.
4. 'I'm in charge of getting links'. So you haven't targeted me specially? Gee, thanks.
5. You want me to link to your SEO company's website after sending me a bad link request? Quite possibly the definition of 'irony'.
What's even more worrying is the number of clients who 'shop around' for an SEO company and pretty much spout half of this list and ask what directories we submit to, how many Digg submissions we'll do each day, and my all-time favourite retort to our pledge to concentrate on natural optimisation (heard at least twice a day) - "So is it just meta tags and stuff?"
It's a laugh or cry industry sometimes, but it actually quite humbles me to know that we're one of the ones doing things the right way!
"Everything that we teach people to do in SEO has a purpose, and that purpose is not to make the search engines think our site is better than it is. The purpose is to actually make the site better than it is."
Oh, thank GOD for this comment! Too many people think SEO is about 'tricking' search engines into ranking your site higher. That's bull. True SEO is about building and improving a site in order for its quality and relevance to be increased for both search engines and users. Only then will your increased traffic turn into increased sales. Kudos :)
A different slant and an innovative way to present the information. It seems to be rather focused on blogging, though.
Story: Can SEO Be Automated?
Sure, certain things can be automated - titles can be stuffed with keywords, links can be gathered, but how can a robot create informative copy and valuable content to attract visitors and links? I think we've heard too many predictions of things being automated and our jobs being taken over by computers, so I'm afraid I'm not subscribing to this theory :-)
Story: Why the Fuss about BlogRush?
It's an interesting concept, but where is the data pulled from? Is it crawled or pulled from Technorati, or is it purely data from other BlogRush-participating blogs?
An excellent article as always from Diane, and a great analogy to use. I guess for most of us, our website is our baby!
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