No matter how many times it happens the supposed linkbait masters always take the anti-SEO linkbait and provide the response desired. We are like Pavlov’s dogs. Any time someone, whether it is no name douchebag or a clueless tech writer, talks smack about SEO we feel the need to respond and give them the links and exposure they are seeking. I understand the desire to defend our profession but there are better ways to do it than whipping up 100’s of blog posts and spreading the negative articles across the social medias. Instead of reacting appropriately we always take the bait, which is why we are targeted over and over.

SEOs are Easy Targets

Most people in or around the SEO industry have blogs and the anti-SEO baiters know this and exploit it for links and exposure. The most recent high profile SEO baiting was Scoble’s post. So many in the SEO community were immediately in a tizzy over it and the blog posts countering it began. That lead to Scoble’s post going viral along with the reactive posts. Because SEOs reacted as expected 1,000s more people saw the original post than ever would have if it was either ignored or if the commentary was limited to his blog. Instead we helped spread the post across the Internets and sent a bunch of link love his way. Hell, the master SEO linkbaiter Shoemoney gave him props for his baiting. I can almost excuse the Scoble reaction because he has a large audience and reaches a lot of people but we respond that way whether it is a big name or someone just starting out. The only people benefitting are those who are casting the bait.

Quit Taking the Bait

If someone wants to get a bunch of links and exposure in a hurry they know that firing up the SEO world is an easy way to do it. Simply throw together a blog post discussing how SEOs are ruining the shining beacon that is the Internet. Throw out some outdated and useless techniques that most SEOs never used and you are sure to get the reaction (and links) you are looking for. Even though it occurs on a fairly regular basis SEOs seem to relish in respnding to it every single time. There is a huge uproar and lots of discussion with a shitload of traffic being sent to the anti-SEO blog post. After a while it calms down until the next SEOs are teh suck linkbait is unleashed and we do it all over again. Let’s stop it now. By all means leave reasoned responses to the author of the article or post but stop sending it across every social media platform and writing countless response posts about it. This will allow for a reasonable discussion without sending an avalanche of traffic and links to the baiters site.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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“Don’t be Evil”. It is fairly well known that Don’t be evil is Google’s informal corporate motto. It looks great and gives everyone that sees it a warm and fuzzy feeling that this huge corporation that essentially tracks everything you do online is like a friendly neighbor. Google still has a pretty good reputation as far as corporations go. Unlike Microsoft, the general public still seems to trust Google and truly believe that they are a force for good in the world. Those who have had direct experience with the Google borg, like online marketers, SEOs, AdSense, publishers, etc. have a much different view of Google than do most people. In my experience Google is no different than every other for profit corporation. They are neither good nor evil but they are solely focused on increasing their revenue and profits. That’s why they went to China and agreed to censor search results. They saw the opportunity that was available in China and felt that the free speech wasn’t as important as that extra money that the China market could add to their bottom line.

Intellectual Property Trumps Free Speech

Google happily censored their results and cashed those checks from China until they found out that their IP was compromised. Apparently the Gmail accounts of prominent Chinese human rights proponents were hacked and in the process some of Google’s IP was accessed as well. All of the sudden Google was vehemently against censoring their results in China and they became huge proponents of free speech. Blogs and news sites all across the Internet celebrated Google’s righteousness and spoke glowingly about their defense of free speech across the world. Chinese citizens even jumped on the bandwagon and began laying flowers at the Google China offices like one would do at a funeral. Lost in the celebration of Google’s refusal to censor results was the fact that they had no problem doing it until their intellectual property was compromised. It was only then that they became the “don’t be evil” defender of free speech and civil rights. I don’t hate Google, although I feel they have too much power and control, but I have a hard time heaping praise on an entity that profits from censorship and defends free speech only when they have been harmed.

Google not evil but they are not free speech heroes either

Google is just another monopoly for profit corporation. They are focused on improving their bottom line. If censoring the results in China or anywhere else adds to that they will gladly do it. Just like many other organizations they are beholden to their stockholders and they need to continue to grow and increase revenue. Google may imply that they are different but the fact is that they saw a huge opportunity in China and willingly compromised their results in order to increase their profitability. It wasn’t until their IP was compromised that they became “free speech” activists and “martyrs”. I have a feeling that many other “evil” corporations would do the same thing. So in the end Google gets to come out looking like they care about the rights of the Chinese people but the fact is they are just upset because their rights had been violated and they didn’t like it. Now maybe they know how we all feel sometimes?

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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So I got an awesome spam email this morning which read as follows.

Intriguing to the naive and terminally clueless

I have seen millions of things like this and usually pass them around to my colleagues and associates. So as we were commenting about it in the Google Waves my colleague Heman Patel found the confirmation URL that is sent after you purchase the e-book. We simply added an email address and a name and promptly received the e-book. We are currently looking at it and it seems to be mostly made up of useless crap with a few basic recommendations sprinkled throughout. All of which you can get for free pretty easily with just a few searches. That being said, if you are going to set yourself up as an expert at search marketing maybe you should not leave such a huge back door wide open.

So what did we find?

We did a little crawling (like a robots)  around and found something interesting. When we grabbed an interesting URL, which was very easy to find even if it was not in the Googles and ended up on this page. Simple enough.

We then just added an email address and a username to confirm. Once we were confirmed as paying users we were provided with the link to download the e-book.

Again, the book contained some useful, if basic, information and a lot of bad information. I could critique that but I am more interested in critiquing the spammy nature of the email and laugh at the fact that a “make money online” scam was so easy to game.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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I have a new post over at Searchviews about the new agreements between Twitter and Bing and Google. The partnerships are interesting and have potential to provide interesting and timely results if they are able to eliminate the real time spam. Read the post, Will the Twitter Firehose Become a Sewage-Filled Spam Hose? at Searchviews.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Matt Cutts recent video on why pages disallowed by Robots.txt still appear in Google’s index is the latest display of Google’s arrogance. When you break it down he is saying that Google doesn’t care what you tell them, they are going to do what they want with your site. To get them to follow your Robots.txt directives you will have to jump through some additional hoops.

Rationalizing with Technicalities

I know that he is technically correct in that Robots.txt only tells crawlers what not to crawl and Google is not actually crawling the blocked pages. Matt explains that they are not actually “crawling” the blocked pages but instead are simply indexing them without actually seeing them. This brings up another issue related to search quality but I digress. The problem is that most webmasters place pages in their Robots.txt because they don’t want them crawled or indexed. By indexing blocked pages Google is violating the webmaster’s trust and intentions for the site. Google can essentially destroy a business for violating its guidelines but they have no issues violating the guidelines set by webmasters on how robots interact with their site.

Adhering to Google’s Whims

Obviously if you want Google traffic you have to play the game. Some may be willing to go the cat and mouse blackhat route while most will simply try to follow Google’s ever changing rules and whims. That also means that you have to watch out for Google deciding to ignore how you want your site to be accessed. So if you have your Robots.txt set to block certain pages make sure you add the Robots Meta Tag and set it to Noindex so Google does not violate your wishes by indexing blocked pages. Who knows how long they will actually follow the Robots Meta Tag directives but they claim to do it now. That could change tomorrow or even be patently false right now as Mr. Cutts has been known to say one thing when the reality is completely different. And always remember, Google knows better than you and if you just do what they tell you to do everything will be OK.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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So for some reason I have been suspended from Twitter. It happened last week and I have no clue what I was suspended. I am not a bot (although Twitter seems to love bots, maybe not being is a bot is why I was suspended?), I do not pull the follow-unfollow game (although that seems to be a viable strategy as those people/bots seem to thrive), and I don’t seem to do anything that violates their vague TOS. I simply use Twitter to engage with followers and people I am following and share interesting content. I guess that is not what Twitter wants.

Time to start anew with a more Twitter compliant profile

Apparently being an engaged Twitterer who shares content with friends and followers is not what the Twitter gods want. Obviously I’m not a celebrity so I can’t become the type of Twitterer that the powers that be most want which is obviously the mundane day to day details of B-list celebrities. Since I can’t do that I need to find another Twitter approved persona. I suppose I could go with the Google Alerts spraying route and just use Twitter Feed to pollute the Twitter stream with press releases and the other garbage that shows up in Google Alerts. That would take time to sign up for thousands of Google Alerts and I don’t want that. After all that would require some effort and Twitter doesn’t seem to like anyone who puts any sort of time or effort into their Tweets. I could always go with Sponsored Tweet route and annoy all of my followers with useless schills for products and services that I never use but pay me a pittance for whoring myself out. Naahh, that would be really fucking weak. What to do?

Time for a bot?

Apparently a bot is the way to go. In fact, instead of just creating a single bot I will create 1,000’s of bots on 1,000’s of different topics and just go crazy. After all, Twitter seems to love bots and if one somehow gets suspended (not likely) I still have an army out there doing my dirty work. And I can always create new bots to infiltrate the Twittersphere.

Or Twitter could stop suspending engaged users

There has been a spate of Twitter suspensions recently. A number of engaged and interesting Twitter users have been suspended for seemingly no reason, myself included. All the while the bots, schills, and b-tarded celebrities pollute Twitter with their nonsense. Apparently it seems that this is what Twitter wants so if I want to get back into the good graces I have to become one of the chosen ones. Unless Twitter makes a change and allows engaged and meaningful Twitter users to thrive instead of the pollution they seem to love I will be forced to create a mass network of bots to remain a part of the community. Or I could just quit…  Nahh  I don’t want to do that.

Update: Jill Whalen just informed that I may have been suspended because I linked to a Google scam site. I linked to the site in an attempt to expose them for being complete asshole scammers but it may have tripped a filter for linking to a scam. I have updated my support request ticket at Twitter and will report the details when I hear back.

Update 2: This update is a lot late in coming but my Twitter account was reinstated when after I explained to the Twitter Gods that I inadvertently tripped the scam filter. Be careful with your links on Twitter because it appears they have a quick trigger on these things, which is probably not a bad idea all things considered.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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ShoeMoney has apparently run out of ideas and beating the shit out of a dead horse with his SEO is dead shtick. And he is doing it again with another SEO bait post. Apparently he is running out of ideas and he can no longer hype up his ability to rip off unwitting victims with his scammy ringtone garbage.The poor horse has been pummeled so much that a forensic scientist is required to piece the damn thing together again. I understand the reason behind his post and am not going to get into that because frankly it is been done to death.  I want to talk about his new line of reasoning as to why SEO is about to die which honestly makes no sense at all. Basically he claims that since Wordpress and other content management systems are SEO friendly out of the box there is no need for SEO anymore. If you don’t think too hard about this it almost makes sense but…

Apparently an SEO Friendly CMS Eliminates Competition?

Either that or search engines are not going to rank sites anymore and will just rotate the top positions randomly. Since neither of those scenarios makes sense it seems that there is probably still a need for professional SEOs. Let’s think about this for a minute, if everyone is using an SEO friendly CMS that means the basic structure is in place. If any of these sites are competing with others they still need to do more than the basics to perform better in the SERPs. The site using the out of the box solution is going to end up losing to the site who decided that base level optimization was just not enough. I suppose it means that there is a need for better and more experienced SEOs but it certainly will not eliminate the need for a professional SEO to do keyword and competitive research, tweak the on-site elements, and provide off-site optimization. All of this is ignoring the fact that a lot of businesses simply do not trust their data to Wordpress and other solutions that can be easily hacked.

SEO Will Die When Search Engines Die

As long as  search engines are used to find content on the web there will be SEOs working to improve their clients’ rankings. No matter how search engine friendly the content management systems become out of the box there is still room for improvement and businesses that want to succeed are going to look to SEO to help them with that. Some people will do it themselves but many business owners would rather spend their time running their business and prefer to let specialists take care of things like SEO.  Using anecdotal evidence like conference attendance to claim that SEO is dead is not really compelling.  But it is a good way to generate attention and maybe a few links.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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I am well aware of the fact that Google is always experimenting with their SERPs. I have seen many different formats and types of results show up for different search queries but I have never seen a SERP with everything at the bottom of the page. Has anyone else seen this before. This SERP has Local Search in the middle of the page, which is not uncommon, but it also has News Search, Shopping Search, Book Search , and Blog Search Results all stuffed into the bottom of the page. Check it out, click on the picture to see the full screen version.

Google Kitchen Sink

Google Results Getting Uglier

I’m wondering if this is something that others have seen (maybe it is old news) or if Google is looking to make their SERPs even more cluttered and messy going forward? With the Sponsored Listings showing up closer to organic and the inclusion of every type of result Google has available this page is looking cluttered and really trending toward the problems with older search engines. Let’s hope this is just a test and that they avoid cluttering the SERPs with text blobs like this going forward.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Title says it all. As I become more and more immersed in the world of SEO and search marketing I am noticing that it is creeping into every aspect of my life. The following are by no means comprehensive of search taking over your life but they are the most common and prevalent signals that you may be living the life of a Search Geek.

1. You look for and point out the SEO mistakes on every site you visit.
2. Your friends and family have stopped sending you forwarded chain emails because they are tired of being accused of spamming.
3. You use acronyms for everything even if there is no reason to.
4. You forget that phone directories still exist until you see the new one on your doorstep once a year.
5. Your 8 year old daughter will only use Firefox and tells her friends exactly why it is better than IE.
6. Your friends and family have stopped asking about your work since they don’t understand what the hell you are talking about anyway.
7. You get upset when people use Google as a verb.
8. When you go out to eat you look for user reviews on the menu and can’t believe that restaurants have not embraced user generated content.
9. You are always trying to figure out a way to copy and paste when writing with pen and paper.
10. You start referring to telemarketers as Phone SPAM and junk mail as Mail SPAM.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Unless you don’t read, listen to, or watch the news (or talk to anyone at all) you are probably aware that the economy has been in the shitter for a while. Since we are repeatedly reminded of this fact it’s kind of hard to ignore it. Some may argue that the constant focus on the economy by the media is contributing to the continued malaise but that is a discussion for a different article. I am interested in discussing how the economy is affecting search engine marketing. More specifically I want to explore how it is affecting SEO and the way search engine optimization professionals are changing the value associated with the services they offer. For the most part traditional publications as well as digital media and search marketing blogs are extolling the virtues of search engine marketing but there are still issues with some in the industry devaluing their services in an attempt to gain new clients.

SEO is extremely valuable, especially in a recession

I have read countless articles that promote search marketing as an alternative to other online (and offline) marketing initiatives, especially in a recession. While I would argue that search engine optimization should be included in any marketing budget the point is that many marketers are realizing that it can provide positive long term ROI at a fraction of the cost of other digital marketing and traditional media. With SEO there is no media cost, you are simply paying for the knowledge of the search professional. Now some marketers have a hard time wrapping their heads around search engine optimization because of the fact that there is no media to buy. The somewhat abstract nature of SEO is sometimes confusing and even scary. This leads many marketers to devalue the worth of SEO and in turn leads many search professionals to lower their price just to win new clients. In the current economy this ends up hurting all of us and lowering the perceived value of SEO. Search engine optimization is extremely valuable and can benefit all websites in both the short and long term. Unlike other marketing efforts which stop delivering results when the budget is spent, SEO continues to deliver benefits long after the engagement is over.

SEO Whores devalue the worth of all SEOs

Too many SEOs are looking at the current economic environment and lowering the price of their service in an attempt ton win more clients. In doing so they lower the perceived value of their services and this hurts everyone in the industry. Quality search engine optimization requires deep specialized knowledge and a significant amount of time consuming research. Each engagement is going to be different so it’s not something that can be replicated from client to client. By lowering their prices these SEOs are saying that their specialized knowledge and time is not worthwhile and in a sense whoring themselves out to anyone with a few bucks. Search engine optimization is a knowledge based industry and that knowledge can provide a significant positive impact on businesses who utilize it. If you are a shitty SEO by all means be an whore because your services are not useful. Quality SEOs need to understand the value of the services they offer and price them accordingly. Don’t be a whore to compete with the bottom feeders or to combat the battered economy, charge what you are worth and prove your value to your clients. If you are good at what you do your clients will see the value of your service for a long time.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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