I think what we’re seeing here is that bad apples within your sector are blurring the lines in the eyes of consumers and potential SEO customers so much so that from a buying standpoint it’s becoming extremely difficult to tell who is real, who is good and who is just a wannabe.

While it was definitely inappropriate for Jason to make those comments publicly in the company of an SEO audience, you shouldn’t blame the man for having an opinion and the balls to state his opinion publicly.

He’s not the only one who shares the frustration when shopping for an SEO vendor. He just happens to be one who voices his frustration and (unfortunately) makes generalized statements in doing so that wrongly link individuals to an entire industry.

Bottom line is that there are a lot of sheisters out there. There are also a lot of well-meaning folks who have read a few books and who are just trying to make a living and put food on the table by labeling themselves as SEO experts.

The proof is in the pudding. Don’t look at this as an opportunity to bash Jason. Look at it as an opportunity to put some standards in place for what folks should look for when hiring an SEO consultant/vendor/firm/agency. Get a PDF buying guide out that talks in laymans terms about WHY long-term commitments are necessary. You and I both know that it takes 3-6 months to see good results from SEO, however the average consumer hiring and SEO firm may perceive a proposed long-term agreement as a way to just take their money regardless of performance. Talk about what type of performance one might be able to expect.

If you’ve already done this, great. Send me a link and I’ll pass the PDF around. I’m not speaking of simply sending laypeople to a site with a ton of content. They don’t have the time to read that. I’m speaking of a 10 to 20 page PDF that is double-spaced for easy reading and addresses the snake oil issue.

Truth is that most folks who control the dollars are finding it very hard to tell the snakes from the good folk. That’s not Jason’s fault. Don’t shoot the messenger. He didn’t deliver the message very well, admittedly, but hey – that’s Jason. Address the issue, not the person. The issue is: How does a firm with money locate a good SEO firm who can get page one (not slot 1, page one) results in a cluttered sector where there are so many “Me Too’s”?

Adam Boettiger

First, Danny, I do not know why you even waste your obviously valuable time with people like Jason. I am not going to slam him as I do not know him at all. But from the two posts that I have read, it sounds like his view of people who optimize websites for a living, independently, has been tarnished to say the least.

He must have been wronged somehow, someway, by someone in the SEO industry to have such a negativity towards the whole industry. For that I am truly sorry.

You find the same type of people when you talk about almost every area in society. One bad cop or a ticket you feel is undeserved and all cops are bad. A bad car salesman and they all are trying to burn you.

Jason says something about all the thousands of bad seo’rs. He is probably correct in this estimation, but when you consider how many seo;rs populate the industry that comment does not hold much water.

It seems that by some of his comments he must do some of his own “Web Page Optimization” (WPO’rs ?) for getting rankings. Either that or he must spend an awful lot on advertising, because he wouldn’t spam. ( we hope )

Until everyone HAS to pay ( shh ) to get a page in the search engines and with the search engines tweaking their algorithms to give their users the best possible search results and giving website developers tips on how to get higher search results for their sites then a web developer would be foolish not to optimize.

With millions and soon to be billions of competing websites on the horizon, I for one will use any (legal) tips and tricks to help me rank higher in the search engines.

Like I said at the beginning of my post, I am glad I found this site and intend to return often as I see it being a wealth of knowledge that will help me optimize my sites. With Danny at the helm and his worthy crew of SEO shipmates any website building entrepreneur is sure to become a “True WEB MASTER”.

Keep up the good work, and in the ultimate words of Arnold Swartzeneger “I’ll Be Back”.

wrecker69

Like Todd, I can point to case studies where our SEO work resulted in some jaw-dropping ROI figures. And guess what, no blog spamming! Picture a Fortune 500 client with a 100% Flash site in an industry where pre-purchase research is essential and the sticker price is $1 million per sale. It’s amazing what some template modifications and a little keyword research can do. There is tremendous potential business value in SEO.

Yes, snake-oil salesmen exist. A smart buyer will see through their claims very quickly. This makes it important to continue to educate, build consensus on best practices, and act ethically in our clients’ interest.

Dan

What Is SEO?

Let’s get our definitions straight, as part of the education process:

* Search marketing is the umbrella term that encompasses any act of generating traffic from search engines. The two main areas under search marketing are search advertising and search engine optimization.

* Search advertising — or paid search — is the act of buying listings on the search engines. You know, Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft
AdCenter, Ask Sponsored Listings. No snake oil or black hats there! Let’s not talk about misleading ads, arbitrage, clickfraud, blackbox pricing systems or other concerns some have, of course.

AdCenter caught my eye (standing out there on it’s own, starting the line) but I had failed to not recognise that no comma had followed the underlined Microsoft, ending the previous line.

I quickly clicked on a link to the underlined AdCenter hoping to find information relating to Looksmart’s AdCenter only to be somewhat dissapointed to find it was for Microsofts ‘own’ adCenter.

Looksmart has made mention of it’s Advertiser Center in a press release on Apr 13, 2005 and it’s clearly obvious it had been in operation well before this period.

http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/releaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=160061

Looksmart then makes a referral to it’s AdCenter in another release made on Feb 28, 2006 and has clearly ‘branded’ the AdCenter (abreviation), as is shown here in it’s article headline.

http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/releaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=188919

Microsoft introduced it’s own adCenter at a much later date and a ‘pilot’ of it’s offering was discussed (at length), within this blog, here …

http://blogs.msdn.com/adcenter/

I feel strongly that the SEO/SEM Industry (& others) should take more care when making mention of either Co’s AdCenter or, adCenter and I guess the solution is to precede each Co’s offering (as you have done so in your post) with the respective Co’s Name (& of course) a ‘proper’ branding of each Co’s respective advertising center.

It CAN be confusing, but it is to be hoped (coming from a Looksmart shareholder), NOT to be confusing enough to the (apparent) many, many small, medium and large publishing/advertising businesses that are either taking up on or, already do operate with the Looksmart AdCenter, as it has ‘tricked’ me, as described.

Whilst on the subject, a recent announcement made by a Scandanavian Search Co introducing it’s own version of an adcenter, but has (thankfully) chosen to call it a more origional type name by dubbing it, “AdMomentum”.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/02/04/financial/f213542S65.DTL

There is no doubt (I feel) that ethical SEO/SEM will/should continue to grow it’s own type involvement, along/in-line with the total (overall) industry’s known advertising related, growth predictions.

LookingConfident

And, I love the comment comparing the use of the word “gay” with “SEO” as well. As someone who is both, I say RIGHT ON!

;-)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6657712

In some ways I think you let Jason of lightly. Maybe you should remind him what a “link farm” is, and compare it to his previous enterprise.
Here is an interesting link
http://www.technorati.com/search/spam.weblogsinc.com

Of course that isn’t the only way massive networks of blogs could be looked on as gaming search results.
As an example a while back I wrote a discussion piece about Wordpress.com and their tag system which has a significant effect on search. (url was longer and didn’t want to risk breaking the theme by not including link text)

Im many ways adwords specialists with experience in different kinds of landing page design might make better SMOs than SEO experts. There is lots of work that needs to be done in ways to convert social media traffic.

If you are cutting out the stuff about Digg and Jason Calacanis and you will have a nice SEO 101 article left.

Btw. during your break down of search engine marketing did you mention SEO and Paid Search (PPC) but forgot the 3rd one: Paid Inclusion.

A minor oversight. Paid Inclusion is not making up much compared to the other two, but is still part of the whole mix. It’s not part of Search Advertising.

Nothing else to add. Everything else was being said. Cheers!