The Sad State Of The SEO Industry
 

An interesting opinion...


Barry Schwartz is one of the most respected journalists in the SEO industry and when he wrote this article called The Sadness In The Industry the other day I was a bit surprised.

When I wrote Why I dont Like 95% Of The SEO industry it seemed to upset a lot of people who thought it was a blanket statement about SEO. It was not at all. It was a statement about the PEOPLE in the industry. Pretty much every established SEO who has been around a bit that I know agreed with the post or atleast thought the points had some validity.

I had Danny Sullivan (the godfather of SEO) on my webmaster radio show and I felt it was a very good show. From the beginning it was pretty clear that we agreed knowing SEO obviously is a very powerful skill but the industry needs to be held to some standards. There was a lot more to the discussion but that is the just of it. After the show there was a huge backlash against Danny for not coming at me with guns blazing? I think that even opened Danny?s eyes a little more at what I was talking about in regards to all these people who call themselves SEO?s.

So the current state of SEO is no surprise to me. While I am not a professional SEO (I have never been paid to do SEO) we attend many internet marketing conferences and have become very good friends with the most accomplished SEO?s walking the planet.

You pretty much have 2 groups of ?old school? SEO?s:

Those who have celebrity status for what they have written about - These people have become venomous? They hate the fact that new people have come along with their blogs and made them irrelevant. They are super jealous of anyone who is recognized more then they are. The occasionally make forum posts or blog posts outing other SEO?s tactics so that people remember they still exist.

Those who have celebrity status for what they have accomplished These guys have distanced themselves from the industry. They used to blog, be apart of forums, have radio shows but they have slowed way down. They never really cared about the spotlight in the first place and now that there is all this venom in the industry they would rather rack up contracts with companies for actually *DOING* SEO then writing or talking about it.

Honestly I think the SEO profession is a victim of its own success.

I love SEO? I love the way it works. I love optimizing sites for search engines. SEO is a important part of internet marketing. I still believe SEO will become less important as time goes on but that does not mean I do not respect the skill ATM.

I feel very insulted when I am labeled a SEO and have for a long time. Are you proud to labeled a SEO?

it's all bullshit because it is a moving target that is subject to change overnight

alot of people understand the basics to the way the algorithms work, so unless an 'expert' has some kind of conduit to inside knowledge within the search engine companies, those that are selling themselves as seo experts are just salesman :2 cents:

wow, I've never seen that picture before. Thanks Johnny Cash:thumbsup

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Mainstream SEO much be much more brutal that adult SEO

and yet another copied article that 90% of GFY will treat as your own :winkwink:

I'm into bare feet and money,..... not SHOES.
:winkwink:

Celebrity status for SEO? Gimme a break. Are they in it for the glory, or the money?

There are people who succeed and don't need to brag about it or need fans.

SEO isn't going anywhere, and I could care less about others doing seo. But I can't stand drama queens.

Thats where the real money is made...

professional seo, 'celebrity' seo, how pathetic. goOgLe is jew, you all work for jew

I don't know a single "celeb" SEO.

What bugs me about the SEO is that the links are so irrelevant Or at least a lot of them are. And then you find one in the top 10 thats not, and bam its replaced by one what is.

I've been awake for way too many hours to make heads or tails out of this.....

Can you source that article for me?

amen to that.

Optimization is an art form. Most people try to overthink it. It's really just math with words. Get the formula right and it works every time.

shoemoney.com

A website is good enough if the SEs dont see it. SEO is indeed a profession.

That's the reason why I wouldn't call it an art. It's knowledge combined with the skills to automate certain grunt work on a very large scale, much more technical than many people think.

Yea, no kidding, it's 10% knowledge 90% sales, they are all really just trying to convince people that they are better than the next guy... when in reality they are all probably equally clueless, "real" seos couldn't be bothered to write blog posts, hang out on the boards, or to attend some lame conferences...

That is something I find interesting about the mainstream online business versus the adult... and maybe it's what ShoeBitch is referring to about the SEO celebrities.

If you are in, or follow, mainstream online business or listen to WM radio you see that some of these 'big names' in mainstream are at almost EVERY conference, and on EVERY panel talking about whatever and hob nobbing, or name dropping Matt Cutts and other supposedly high search engine and other affiliate people.

I think this is probably more of what the SB is referring to in regards to some SEO's being up on a pedestal.

:2 cents:

shoemoney owes whatever little internet fame (did i really just say that?) he has to that picture posted above. he got into the ringtone game early...before it was profitable. right around the time people were hacking Nextel phones with nexjal (or whatever). he provided a place that howard forums refused to become and the rest is history. he had the traffic and the members when ringtones really hit with crooked rebills and misrepresented ads.

right place, right time. period.

thats the case with most of these "internet celebs"....it's either that or who you know.

Shoemoney is such a moron its not even funny...check out WF to see him get assraped back and forth (and with good reason) :)

All the guys I know who can't cut it in SEO any more now work for SEO companies and most are getting shitloads of cash for it.... go figure

Yep, guy is a douche to the 9th.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh He's on the WF most hated list for sure, many good reasons! But I'm too curious, I'll check out the beta of his new toolset anyway.

Agreed. That seems to be the case with a lot of these 'celebs' in mainstream online. They made their fortunes, and now peddle their advice.

I always wonder, and anyone with any sense should as well,... if you have the SEO game clocked so well. Why not make millions doing the affiliate game? Why settle for $50-75-100k working for someone else if you are so good?

I've had some of these SEO people call me from time to time. I used to entertain them a bit by listening to their sales pitches. The funniest part was that each one was different. So one would tell you one thing, and the next something completely different then the 1st. If you brought it up to them on the phone, they would say the other must be some noob consultant.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Now most of these "experts" are on forums and panels talking about being experts, leaving out the part about in 1997..

I just noticed some Shoemoney drama taking place today that some guy is blogging about here: Shoemoney Blog Meltdown

I think he's a mod over at the DP, and the queen of the azoogle ads section.

Agreed. Might be spicy.

Wow.

What I find most interesting in this is that ShoeBitch is doing shit he bans others for.

If you ever criticize him in a thread, even if half joking, he bans you. If you do a search on DP (the more recent ones) for any thread slamming him, his blog, whatever. You find that most of the people in it are banned.

Hippocracy at it's finest.

:disgust

Guys like Shoemoney are annoying. Pretending they are rich to get noobs to sign up under their affiliate code. It's no different than those guys at 3am telling you how they'll get you rich if you sign up for their program.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

So I take it you are not one of his, "Shoeperstars"?

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

He recently said in an interview that he'd make 500 bucks a month from all his referred webmaster IN TOTAL :1orglaugh So it's really ONLY noobs.

ShoeMoney ShoeMoney is offline
Status: Inactive

The Shoemoney Show Is Officially Cancelled

By Daron | June 10, 2008

In a meeting today and after several discussions, a decision has been made that the Shoemoney Show on WebmasterRadio.FM is officially canceled. We here at WebmasterRadio.FM have enjoyed working with Jeremy Shoemaker and his cohorts in business online. He had a unique style about him that will always spark debate, which is one of the reasons we asked Jeremy to host a show with us.

As with others, personal & professional time constraints can weigh heavy sometimes on a show host to do the research and schedule their guests, etc?that sometimes its time to take a step back.

We appreciate Jeremy?s contribution, and remind all of our listeners, that you will be able to still listen to archived shows on-demand anytime you like.

Good luck to you Jeremy.

http://blog.webmasterradio.fm/2008/0...lly-cancelled/

Pure gold...

I really think it's far easier to get ranked, get good ranks, and get traffic today than it has ever been.

Today, I think it's harder for spammers, it's not as easy for them to buy a bunch of temp/trash domains, burn ip's, get 100's of listings under the same group of keywords, and choose where they do and don't want to redirect traffic. Good times!

So... SEO is much better game today. Today we simply have a few 1000 more people fighting for the same words/rankings.