searchengineland.com — Jason Calacanis is riled up about SEO, telling the world that "90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman" but Jason -- and a lot of other people -- need some more education about the myths and misperceptions of SEO. So let this open letter do both.
Feb 8, 2007 View in Crawl 4
dannysullivanFeb 9, 2007
No, it's not hard to tag things. Of course, only Yahoo uses the meta keywords tag, and it carries little weight. So if you've been thinking tagging your pages have been helping, um, you're pretty screwed.Look, I've spent 11 years now dealing with site owners big and small, with great content, who make lots of basic mistakes with even the simple stuff. They don't necessarily build their own sites, and being a site designer doesn't mean you are a marketer or an SEO or a conversion expert or many other things. People have all types of different skills. If you lack certain ones, you find someone that can help. And you don't deserve to be skilled because you don't know every single thing under the sun.
penbeatsswordFeb 9, 2007
@voyetra8:It's sad that your attitude is so widespread here. If Digg is ever going to be taken seriously as a legitimate source for news of any sort beyond the latest Bush-bashing or Apple-loving stories, users need to understand that "spam" does not equate with "something I don't like, based on a stereotype."From Digg's "How Digg Works" page:Bury. If you find stories with bad links, off-topic content, or duplicate entries, click “Bury.” That’s how we get the spam out of the system.This story does not fit any of those definitions.
mtekkFeb 9, 2007
@dannysullivan:The fact of the matter is most people can't tell the difference from when someone is parodying an attack, as you claim to be doing, and when they are actually attacking. Most people can't take a joke either, if they could the world would be a better place as I'm sure you'd agree. I know there is a difference, and to me your article still came off as an attack. However I didn't read Jason's article, but I'll assume you are correct that his article was an attack (I really wouldn't doubt that his article was an attack). "...Facts are the basis of argument. Facts, in fact, should win arguments -- if those listening to argument actually care about the truth...."Facts can be the basis of an argument, but the real basis of an argument is a difference in agenda/opinion, arguments need conflict not facts. Facts alone don't win arguments, hell look at O.J. he won yet the facts point to him as the best suspect. In arguing the truth doesn't matter as much as how well the parties involved use their "facts". Feelings/emotions have more power, and that's where PR comes in and all the FUD causes a land slide in which people such as yourself try to clean up. Its how the world works, sad but its true."That didn't help with you. Didn't enhance your understanding of the SEO industry in anyway? I mean seriously -- you read it, and didn't just read it to pick out stuff to argue a point?"Just completely disregard my first post, I wasn't finished reading the article and subscribed to "intellectual dishonesty" in it. In my response I assure you I did read the article, and it did come off as an attack. After reading the article for a second time, I realize that if I had been at the conference that you were talking about that Jason did the old foot-in-mouth thing the article wouldn't have come off as so. Some context is missing around the conference, though you did do a decent job in laying out the story.FTA"SEO does not mean "gaming the system" to 90 percent of us if you're talking the SEO industry itself. Heck, I don't even know if 90 percent of the general public thinks that."I'd assume he was talking about people like him, which could boil down to 90% of the blog sphere who has had to deal with spam. Though I'd estimate it to more like 40-70% of the blog sphere as many don't even know of SEO as you stated in the article. Again it's a misconception as you stated in the article. It needs to be overcome but as your second article points at, digg is the perfect example of why there is such a PR problem with SEO. The best thing that could be done is as you are trying to do, educate the people, and to attack and call out the "black hats" instead of writing (Yes i know you are working on it/have done it in the past) something that may be perceived as an attack on the ignorant. The link bombing that some in the SEO field are doing on Jason is not helping at all to which you agreed the actions are "childish". I'd rather not discuss the SMO thing, as the idea of paying someone so that your article gets to the front page of Digg (for example) is unethical. I realize that may not be the full story to SMO, so don't quote me on that as how SMO works.
mtekkFeb 9, 2007
@dannysullivan:"With Jason, you can see this. He's both upset with firms that might be "white hat" but he feels do nothing; black hat but feels do nothing; black hat and produce spam and so on. So it's not just a black hat/white hat thing."I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here other than Jason is oversimplifying things."Second paragraph of the story:"I love Jason. I really do -- he says what he thinks, with passion and clearly deeply cares about things. And I've enjoyed some of the arguments we've had via instant messaging on this topic recently. But Jason -- and a lot of other people -- need some more education about the myths and misperceptions of SEO. So let this open letter do both.""Wow, I can't believe I missed that. I guess I shouldn't try reading a legal case and then other things back to back. That does make all the difference in the world for the tone of the article. Also, I realize I mucked up my parentheses, they should have been a word or two in front of where they ended up, but you got the gist of it.As for SMO its on a completely different page than SEO, yet as you said faces a similar situation ahead of it. I haven't found a really good article yet on it but what I implied before involved schemes where they use "dummy" accounts to get enough votes to get to a homepage (a la Google link bombing but with digg). Jason was probably getting at that but made an oversimplification. I'm sure there are other SMO methods but that's what stuck out the most. That'd constitute as a "black hat" method for SMO.
dannysullivanFeb 9, 2007
> I think you should work on the attitude of your writing. The article was interesting - as was Jason's - but the article and all of your comments here on digg have a very defensive / negative connotationYou have read the tone of the comments I've been responding to, correct? People who haven't read the article, who aren't actually responding to points in it, who are being sarcastic and so on? If anything, my responses are actually pretty mild. Sure, I could play them down even more, I suppose. I'll keep that in mind, Similarly, you might consider a few responses to those with comments that are attacking in nature to perhaps being up the standards of Digg commenting.
mbertulliFeb 9, 2007
Didn't we all learn the childhood lesson that goes something like this: "the few will spoil it for everybody" ?In every industry/profession/specialty there are going to be a few idiots who claim they can when they can't. I for one have hired a few "senior programmers" who have managed to walk right through a pretty thorough interview process only because they've gotten really good at interviewing/taking tests. They sucked at their job, and were quickly let go, but they still left a bad taste in my superiors mouths when hiring this certain skillset. Point is, everybody is affected by the same crap that the SEO world is going through. A few idiots are allowing for a nasty stereotype to be built that may or may not be true.
sloppygamerFeb 9, 2007
Very well said mcanerin. The vast majority of Digg users are ignorant fanboys who know very little about what they digg and/or bury. It's sad when some stupid top 10 list about Family Guy makes it to the front page when legitimate stories are buried based on some hidden group agenda. Digg fanboys are nothing more than time-wasters who are sitting at their $35,000 per year job and throwing away company money.
starfighter01Feb 10, 2007
Jason was wrong. // gosh, isn't this easy?
Closed AccountFeb 10, 2007
You didn't read it, but marked it as spam based on the user name and domain name? Wouldn't you say that's a bit ignorant? This is actually a compelling read and a firey topic.