Are SEO forums ruining the SEO/SEM Industry Image? Options

[cre8pc]

Jim Hedger of Stepforth Placement Inc. and the SEO Blog is fed up with the constant bickering among SEO/SEMs and has written his feelings in The First SEO Republic Forumed

He writes:

Like thousands of other SEO practitioners, I have been quietly monitoring a raging debate that has crossed several SEO/SEM related forums over the past week. While this debate rears its head from time to time, it remains unsettled and as it continues to unfold becomes more and more unsettling. Given that they differ in tone from forum to forum, there are actually several debates taking place but all seem to have one thing in common, a lack of civility towards other views and a decreasing level of common sense.

These forums have largely remained out of the limelight lately when it comes to black hat/white hat SEO, though we've had some rollicking, and notably civil discussions here in the past.

It does seem to be more fun to visit the other forums and sites that mud wrestle anyone who has a different perspective, or just has a strong view and expresses it with naked abandon. It's like driving by a car wreck and looking to see if someone was injured.

Maybe because I've seen and participated in so many client or corporate adventures but I can't remember ever hating any of my peers for how they do their jobs. This is because the people whom I consider peers in the industry know what the hell they're doing and more importantly, they have the skills and courage to do what they determine is the correct action for their client.

Those folks are nothing like the ding bats who intentionally wreak havoc by knowingly applying methods that they know don't work and put their client's investment at risk.

Jim's feelings are likely similar to many of you. I think that though the SEO industry is growing whacky, there are some interesting developments .

Many of you are expanding your services to provide things clients want, such as help with copywriting and offering usability testing. Many of you are traffic log heros who understand that stuff and can translate it into something understandable for your clients' benefit.

Jim wrote:

Perhaps groups like SEMPO and the various SMA initiatives, along with moderators of each of the various forums represent the collective leadership of the industry. If that is so, that leadership needs to learn to work together to pull the various ends of the horseshoe into the powerful marketing industry we should all feel proud and privileged to work in.

Do you agree or disagree with Jim? Has the industry tanked or is this just what being an SEO/SEM is all about?

[Black_Knight]

It is yet another storm in a teacup really, and why should all SEOs and SEMs have to think alike? PR agencies and ad agencies certainly don't.

Have organizations like the DMA outlawed junk mail? Has any organization made the Reader's Digest "you may have won ..." junk a thing of the past? Do trade bodies in broader marketing even waste time discussing it? Do you think everyone in the world with a marketing degree applauded when those AOL CD's used to drop through their letterbox?

The fact is that our industry is made up of a lot of people who apparently have way too much time on their hands and can think of nothing more constructive to do with it than worry, and I mean really worry, about what other people are doing.

As an industry, we must come across as a complete bunch of manic busybodies spending all our time nosing into other people's business instead of growing our own.

Do you know what the White-Hat Supremacists moves matter to me? Not a whit. Nothing. Do you know how much it matters to my business whether some firm or other uses 'black hat' parctices? Nothing, unless they are using them for a competitor and an easy mark for reporting.

There are almost infinite approaches to SEO and SEM, and even the end goals vary immensely. Some focus on gaining a #1 position and nothing else is denoted as the truest measure of success in a campaign. Some focus on traffic figures, such that getting the most exposure for the site is the only measure of success. Some focus on conversions, even to the extent of trying to discourage poorly targeted traffic because many untargetted visitors could make for a negative first-impression of the brand to them.

All of the above are still SEO campaigns, but the approaches and measures are worlds apart. Each is a genuine offering, and who is to say whether one is more valid than another? Only a fool would wish to try.

I generally feel a lot more comfortable with black-hats than with dedicated white-hats, simply because the former are far more likely to have a live and let live mentality. I dislike bigotry in all forms, and do not exclude professional bigotry from that matter.

[travis]

SEO has the lowest possible barrier to entry of any field of work on the planet. Qualification lengths vary from 20 minutes to a PhD. It's totally unregulated and as such, anybody can stand up and say that they are leaders in the field.

Forums do offer a more specific direction, and as such, do offer some form of leadership. But an SEO forum is like a newspaper. Its only as good as the last posts within it, and in 6 months time, will be out of date. So it lacks that strong definitive style of leadership that an association or organisation can provide.

Forums can destroy creative thought and force people to think all the same way, regardless of the topic. For black and white issues like opening a popup window with javascript, then no harm done, but for SEO, which has more grey areas, its quite dangerous and harmful to progress to have people making definitive statements about what may or may not happen.

With SEO, there are ten different ways to do things based on the client and the situation. So the discussions need to reflect that.

I just prefer an approach based on

(i) research and measurable results
(ii) dont believe anything you read
(iii) test it out yourself and see if the numbers stack up

Patent investigation is certainly something this forum specialises in, and its based on facts that you cant argue with. I like the scientific approach, rather than the crystal ball approach.

We got forwarded an SEO newsletter the other day. It had the obligatory SEO garbage.

(a) No real specific news but some mysterious context in which something may happen, but the timing was uncertain.
( The obligatory quote and opinion from an unnamed source who works at Google.
© Some statement to conclude with which is completely obvious anyway.
(d) Some sales lead to buy somethng

SEO Forums offer a little more. You can debate issues. Its live. Its more direct. These are communities of people who can assist. Thats the exicting edge that a forum offers over a straight message.

Advantages of SEO forums include the ability to talk to people instantly about ideas that you cannot resolve yourself. Thats a big plus. Also, for people who have been trained in only a subset of the field, you can quickly see the bigger picture. I think thats where I really enjoyed this forum as opposed to others.

Disadvantages of SEO forums are realised when people take as gospel what is written and dont investigate the situation for themselves. Multiple people can start to have only one collective opinion, so some bright spark who has that collective opinion will turn around in a thread and say "It cant be that way, because thats not the collective opinion". Regardless of any new research or results, if the research does not conclude with the reinforcement of the collective opinion, then the research is wrong.

SEO forums do offer leadership and can offer people in isolated areas of the planet access to thinking that they would otherwise not have access to.

They also offer some default level of credibility to people who offer SEO services to industry. Thats because business trusts suppliers more who belong to an association.

The industry has certainly not tanked. It is booming and these associations will become bigger and better as time progresses.

In fact, Google does give SEO Forums quite a bit of credibility.

\"Everything you ever wanted to know about Google is right there on the (online) forums that the webmasters run,\" Norvig said. \"There is a lot of truth in there, but there's also a lot of crazy stuff. We just don't tell them which is which.\"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/08/2...e.ap/index.html

[projectphp]

It's funny, but my opinion of the "reputation of the SEM industry" or "Industry Image" is summed up easily: there isn't one. Sure, lots of people now have heard of SEM, but SES do not run newbie sessions because everyone understands "it", and knows what it all is. Many still don't even know there are ads on Search Engines!

As far as image, the collective "we" of SEM doesn't have one in the broader community. If SEM did, and someone asked me what I did, I wouldn't have to spend an hour explaining, and I would have built a website to capture the loads of traffic from people seeking out SEM, rather than building a business through referrals.

The notion that forums are ruining SEM's rep is a stretch at best. This quote in particular makes little sense to me:

A wide chasm has opened between some members of different forums and I fear that gap will further hinder the evolution of our sector.

The more diversified SEM the better. If we all did the same thing in the same way for the same cost, what is the point? SEO and SEM "by the numbers" is about as useful as TV ads by the numbers. To have an industry, thre needs to be good, bad, indifferent and extraordinary members. There needs to be extremes, those willing to push the boundary and those whose sole goal is to stay well within the bounds, as there are companies that are looking for all within that spectrum.

That said, should certain practices be deemed illegal, like the (least controversial in terms of the law) click fraud bots, then the industryt should do everything in its power to distance itself from the elements that promote such a service.

In teh end though, forums are really about community. Diversity is a good thing, as each person will find her own natural forum level, be it civil, hostile, Zealot or agitator, and gravitate where they have the most fulfilling experience. We need SEO asylums where fanatics get together to lynch, because it keeps palces like this friendly and useful.

So, vive la difference I say!

[EGOL]

I think that it is very diverse also and much of that is because there are so many one person shops... and small offices directed by a single person. There you can have anything from evangelical white hat to hard core spamming. It's not like they are representing clients. Anything goes for some of these people - anything.

IMO the real threat to the business person is ignorance - ignorant clients and unqualified SEO companies. There are a lot of companies who don't know what they are doing but who are very very aggressive at rustling up business. Just go to one of the wide open forums and post... "I need somebody to SEO my small biz site" - you will be flooded with poorly composed sales pitches from people who never even post in those forums. Ignorant clients, who sometimes are lured by a low price become suckers - especially when they hope for rankings on competetive terms where not only SEO but heavy link building are required.

[peter_d]

There are flame-wars in every internet community. There is a fierce one raging right NOW about the correct way to grow valencia roses. No doubt some feel that white-sun-hat-supremicist Mildreds' whining about Ethel's recent win in the national flower show is starting to give the industry a seriously bad name.

Way too much time on their hands.

They should be out gardening.

[Adrian]

Everyones got an opinion, it's just the Internet makes it so easy to voice that opinion to the world. Tailor made for those kinds of arguements.

[bwelford]

I think your initial post here, Kim, was an excellent introduction to the topic and for me said all that needs to be said. Many forums are like the crowd scenes you see around spectular traffic accidents. It doesn't change anything but some folk find that kind of stuff interesting. As Peter_d says, they should all get a life, be it gardening or making cathedrals out of tooth-picks.

I believe despite the 'Tower of Babel' aspect to all this pandemonium, it's better that it happens than that it doesn't happen. Visibility may be tough with so many involved but it does allow for more light to be beamed on to shady practices. How can it be improved? Stepforth talks about the 'leadership' of the industry playing a role here. However the SEMPO-type initiatives show the difficulty in that.

I believe the biggest culprits are the search engines themselves. If they would only write clear and understandable terms of service and then be ruthless in applying them, this would cut out a lot of the garbage instantly. However using a search engine is like buying a candy bar where they write a disclaimer saying that although peanuts are not one of the ingredients there is no assurance that there will not be peanuts in the bar. If you have a life-threatening peanut allergy, then that disclaimer is worse than useless.

It's a similar situation if a search engine says the web pages included in the SERPs are in accord with their Terms of Service. However they add a disclaimer that it may not be true. Buyer beware. So if the vendor will not validate their product, it's not surprising that all the snake-oil salesmen come in with whatever they can get away with. No Better Business Bureau can hope to correct this mess. The Search Engines must pick up their responsibilities.

[projectphp]

Mildreds' whining about Ethel's recent win in the national flower show is starting to give the industry a seriously bad name

It is Ethel's doing all the complaining, Mildred is merely speaking the "truth"

Technology is wonderful, isn't it Barry? I don't think there is any other product sold so broken out of the box!

[cre8pc]

Michael wrote:

I don't think there is any other product sold so broken out of the box!

This could be a real key to the crux of the problem. Add to it the immense pressure of competition in some industries, and I can see why tempers flare up.

By way of running my daily searches on usability related topics at Technorati, I ended up finding a reasonably intelligent online publication for the adult industry biz. (This adventure alone illustrates how a G-rated task can land one into the X-world in a matter of seconds on the 'Net.)

The article is about the top 10 ten porn producing countries. Curious to see who they are? (Quotes from the article...)

USA - "Home of the Christian Right and a country that many Europeans view as hopelessly prudish."

Brazil - "The Brazilian adult industry has its own trade organization."

The Netherlands - "The Dutch government is quite tolerant of adult-oriented businesses as long as they pay their taxes."

Spain - "Barcelona is the home of Private Media Group, which is one of the top adult-oriented companies in the world and the largest in Europe."

Japan - "One thing that separates Japan from other major-league porn providers is the fact that in Japan, a lot of erotica is animated."

Russia - "Communist countries are not known for being friendly to adult entertainment, but lucky for the adult oriented entrepreneurs of Eastern Europe, there are no more communist countries left in that part of the world."

Germany - "In 2004, Secure conducted a labor-intensive survey that analyzed which countries other than the United States were hosting the most adult-oriented material on the Internet; Germany's .de suffix topped the list with more than 10 million pages of Internet porn."

United Kingdom - "Despite having some of Western Europe's more restrictive obscenity laws — certainly compared to much of Continental Europe — the fact is that Great Britain has a long history of erotic expression."

Canada - "Next to the United States, it is the biggest adult entertainment producer in North America."

Australia - "According to SecureComputing's 2004 survey on non-U.S. Internet porn, Australia was right behind the U.K. with a staggering 5,655,800 pages of online porn, and that isn't including all the adult films and DVDs that are coming out of Australia."

Plus, there were 13 other countries listed as "Honorable Mentions".

A few things struck me while reading this, (aside from the gorgeous naked guy buns in the banner to the right of the article.)

First was, "My God, no wonder Black Hat SEO's have so much fun" which was followed by, "I'm in the wrong business" to "How in the world (I didn't really use the word "world", exactly) does one optimize and market in the adult industry without needing to perform desperate measures?"

Rather than feed the debate over which type of search engine optimization and marketing "Hat" is ethical to use, it might be enlightening to walk in the shoes of those who are in the hot seat. It made a lot of sense to me to hear one famous so-called "black hat" practitioner admit at one SES Conference that he got no personal self-satisfaction out of his work for the Viagra folks and he admitted that a great technique has a very short shelf-life.

In the face of uncooperative search engines with technolgoies that require a scientific background to understand and spies to dig up some clues on how to get web sites safely and effectively into them, combined with examples of enormous competitive industries out to kill, I'm inclined to keep my mouth shut, wince and watch.

Maybe someday something will make sense :02:


(PS. Thanks Barry, for the nice compliment!)

[Brad]

There are now so many SEO forums that leadership is impossible from that quarter because it's to Balkanized. Everyone wants to find their niche and forums are no different. But there is a difference between gently finding one's own muse and bullying others into following one's own formula for politically correct brand (or whatever you can call it) of SEO.

I think a lot of the current tempest in the teacup is a reaction to something very akin to, IMO, bullying behavior.

In the five years I've been hanging around most of the people that took the time to give me advice and teach myself and others on the very basics, are now considered blackhats but back then they were just considered experienced SEO's. A vocal few have really gone out of their way to try to demonize these folks, probably in part from a sense of fear of reprisals from Google. Anyway, these folks took the time to teach me and while all I do is WH I'm not going to condemn them - I figure I owe them.

I have to agree with BK - people do have too much time on their hands, plus it's summer and everyones bored so they get into a rumble just for entertainment purposes.

[Michael_Martinez]

I definitely don't look to the forum operators for leadership. There are a few well-known names, but their level of expertise is about average and not likely to reach exceptional any time soon.

It wasn't clear to me that the debate in question had something to do with the black hat/white nonsense. There are SO many widespread disagreements in the SEO community right now, it's tough to keep up with them all.

[sanity]

> get a life

I totally agree. Some of these people must have a lot of time on their hands if all they can do is spend their times worrying abut other SEO's and other forums. I'm all for a diversified industry but cannot stand the wholier than thou "prechers" who feel the best way to bully this industry into adopting *their* views is to abuse them. Great way to build up your reputation. :roll:

I generally feel a lot more comfortable with black-hats than with dedicated white-hats, simply because the former are far more likely to have a live and let live mentality.

Yup. And as Kim said I genuinly admire any SEO who can go head to head in the porn/pills/gambling industries.

[Advisor]

Great discussion!

First, I have to say that although I've met Jim H. and he's a super-terrific guy, I have a lot of trouble getting through his articles because he says what he wants to say in the first paragraph, and the rest is basically just a repeat of that. So, the quote here from the article, pretty much sums up his thoughts.

Everyone here made some really great points, and I too don't really think there's any big debate or lack of civility going on anywhere other than one forum in particular. (One in which Jim is a moderator.)

Most other forums have members of all hat colors who get along nicely. We don't always agree with each other, and perhaps would not use certain techniques ourselves, but geez...who really cares if Big Black Hat spammer cloaks his viagra site? I sure as heck don't!

I don't think that "newbies" or anyone else needs protection from spammers/bh's as there's plenty of great info out there on the art of SEO. If someone chooses to hire someone from the darkside, then whatever -- it's their choice. (I won't generally take on clients that have previously gone that route, because I question their judgement and don't like to work with people whose judgement I question...but that's a personal preference.)

As for the 'too much time on their hands' statement, I'm am really tired of reading that one more than the debate itself. Some people like to post at forums -- a lot! So what? It doesn't mean they have too much time on their hands, it just means that's what they'd rather do than go outside and play, or go shopping, or whatever. It's their business how they spend their free time. If their clients aren't complaining, then who cares if they're out there debating what they like to debate 24/7? (Yes, I take offense to this one because it's often said about me...usually behind my back, but don't think I don't hear it )

[rcjordan]

>yet another storm in a teacup really

Yeah, for the, ummm, results-oriented SEO, public forums are generally water-cooler conversation areas now. I don't often see discussions on technique that get above the pedestrian level and *if* they happen to stray into dangerous territory someone is often handy with a big bucket of FUD to deflect it.

[Black_Knight]

Some people like to post at forums -- a lot! So what? It doesn't mean they have too much time on their hands, it just means that's what they'd rather do than go outside and play, or go shopping, or whatever.

I was the first in this topic to make the "too much time" statement, but it was not about posting in forums.

...have way too much time on their hands and can think of nothing more constructive to do with it than worry [...] about what other people are doing.

It was about the amount of time spent on other business than their own. It was about the complete waste of time on something that seems to be a symptom of classic paranoia.

The athlete who falls into the temptation to keep throwing a look over their shoulder loses speed each time they do so. The athlete who keeps their focus on their own race, their own objective, is always the more efficient.

[sanity]

It was about the amount of time spent on other business than their own. It was about the complete waste of time on something that seems to be a symptom of classic paranoia.

I think you'll find most of us were agreeing with that sentiment too.

[Renee]

As a newbie to the web business, it is very difficult to sort out the info that you see on the SEO/SEM forums, and as some of them are highly touted "leaders," it can be downright discouraging to wade through all the junk and try to figure out what's a gem and what's a stone.

In some forums, I felt as if I was visiting a virtual lunatic asylum, until I happened upon Cre8atsite. Early on, I read a post by Ammon that encouraged tons of research, and echoed here by travis:

(i) research and measurable results 
(ii) dont believe anything you read 
(iii) test it out yourself and see if the numbers stack up

If you're not already in the business, the forums are where you get your education. They're very influential, and newcomers may have to learn the hard way that applying SEO techniques they don't understand can knock them out of the SEs.

Insisting that there's only one methodology and raising it to near religious levels of worship hinders growth no matter what the topic.

Caveat emptor.

[Brad]

>>time on hands

Ditto what BK and sanity said. It has nothing to do with how much time anyone spends posting in forums.

[Feydakin]

The fact is that our industry is made up of a lot of people who apparently have way too much time on their hands and can think of nothing more constructive to do with it than worry, and I mean really worry, about what other people are doing.

This comment struck me.. SEO/SEM is not, by far, the only industry that is stratifying itself as people jockey for positions of authority on the subject at hand.. The easiest way to do that is shout down those that have differing viewpoints.. But there are also many more subtle efforts..

I see this every day in the jewelry trade.. (I was in tech for 15 years and switched careers a few years ago).. But, for now, most of the worst of it is hiding behind the curtain of trade only events and publications.. But it is starting to see itself spill out into the mainstream.. The rampant hate that is spewed by some, and the followers that they attract, is probably the worst aspect of it..

What I have noticed is that those that have the most to shout about tend to be both the least qualified to be shouting about it and have little show for their efforts other than a following.. For us, we've come the realization that the best way to deal with these types of issues and people is to ignore them and continue to sell..

Oh, and hello everyone

Steve