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Never underestimate the power of a group of pissed off SEOs protecting one of their own.  Or at least that is what the whole Iacquire drama over the past week has shown us.  If you happen to indirectly attack someone who is buddy buddy with some other well known SEOs, well, the fireworks will commence.

In one corner, we have Michael King (@ipullrank), Director of Inbound Marketing for Iacquire.  In the other corner, we have Josh Davis (@JoshD), writer and publisher of LLsocial.com, who did all the research and original post about Iacquire’s link tactics.

It all started with @JoshD writing about some suspicious link requests he received which led to the downfall of the SEO agency Iacquire.  But because @ipullrank happened to work for Iacquire, Josh has been vilified in the industry by those who back Michael, despite the fact that Josh did an amazing piece of investigative work, including screenshots, responses and connecting the dots between the various companies iacquire was hiding behind.

And let’s be fair, I am sure that Josh didn’t set out with the plan of getting Iacquire banned from Google, because that was unprecedented for Google to ban an agency who was doing the link buying rather than the site that was benefitting from those link buys.  He was rather highlighting a case where he was repeatedly contacted by someone wanting to buy links, and it annoyed him enough to look into who it was.  As I am sure many SEOs would have done the same if they were being harassed by a company over paid links.

Whether you support outing or not (I am personally not a fan and wouldn’t do it myself, but it is what it is), as far as outtings go, this was the most researched one I think the industry has ever seen.  He could have simply posted some screenshot emails, called out Iacquire for buying links, and not bothered to do fact checking or tried to get responses from both sides.  He made it interesting, he had all the facts.  Yes, it resulted in Google banning the site, but I could not see Google doing something so brazen unless they had absolute proof Iacquire was behind it all.

But talk about circling the wagons.  Michael King is still really a “new kid on the block” who rose to stardom pretty quickly due to his connections with SEOMoz and SMX, but has quickly garnered a very loyal following, judging from the tweets attacking Josh.  Here is a sample (click on each image to go to the Twitter link for each tweet).

Then of course, those supporting Michael under the “he can do no wrong” mentality.

One, I am pretty sure he wasn’t framed, he just had the misfortune of working for the company who got busted for link buying.  And two, what Google did is to show Iacquire and Michael that yes, the rules do apply to them too.

In defense of Josh and his outting, there really wasn’t that many,  although many were tweeting his article without adding personal negative feelings about him doing the outting.

Then there was this exchange, where Yoast stood up for Josh, but I think Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) sums it up best with “Ben, it’s called human professional respect and courtesy.  Seriously.”  And that pretty much says what most people on Team Michael weren’t doing.

And lastly, something that really truly shows what SEOs shouldn’t be about – trying to out someone simply because you don’t agree with their opinion, which seemed to be in response to a comment made on the original Search Engine Land thread about Iacquire.

Would this mob mentality have happened if Michael King wasn’t a Director at Iacquire?  I highly doubt it.  There have been other SEO companies (SEO Inc comes to mind) that had been banned years ago in Google, and SEOs celebrated that fact when it happened.  The same thing happened when a nameless SEO was arrested and charged (I am not naming names because he has paid his dues to society, as far as I am aware) and industry people all circled the wagons to email his local newspaper and the judge that the charges couldn’t possibly be correct, and they had the wrong guy, it must be someone else with the same name.

It’s definitely not dying out yet (as you can tell from the dates on some of the screen shots) and I am sure the name calling and bashing will continue until Iacquire returns to the Google index – if it ever does.  Should Josh have written what he did? I think so simply because he had the facts to back it up, and it was so much more worthy than the usual “OMG ___ has this spammy backlink they must be spamming!” that we often see. Plus if Iacquire had taken a lesson on how not to piss off people with repeated paid link requests, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion – they are the real people to blame because if it wasn’t Josh, I am sure it wouldn’t have been long before their aggressive tactics caused another SEO to do exactly what Josh did.  You know this will show up on some case studies at future conferences about what not to do!

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Occasionally I see this commercial on TV for a credit union. It tries to be hip and edgy in a Poochie the Dog sort of way in a sad, desperate attempt to stand out and seem relevant, yet ironically I couldn’t tell you the name of the company if you held a gun to my head. The commercial starts off with a guy taking off his suit jacket and tie and talking about how this credit union is different because it’s so hip and casual–so casual that its employees just have to wear a button-up shirt and slacks instead of a full suit and tie. Now that is casual!

The man then hops on a Segway and rides it roughly ten feet while explaining all of the awesome benefits to joining this exTREEEEEEMEly cool credit union. He then gets off the Segway and is about to enter the credit union before he turns around, smirks, and adds, “We even blog.”

My reaction:

Holy shit, no way. A blog?!!

You are kidding me, credit union. You mean to tell me that you blog? I thought that was just something cool kids did on their LiveJournal or MySpace profiles! How did a stuffy, fuddyduddy credit union schmooze its way to the popular kids’ table and manage to start a blog, which is clearly only something supremely awesome and super fun companies are allowed to do? At this breakneck rate of technological adoption, I’ll be blown away by the credit union’s Twitter account five years from now!

All kidding aside, no. Just no. This is fucking embarrassing, credit union. If I had an account with you I’d close it out of sympathy shame. You think you’re so casual with your tie-less business attire and the fact that you ride a Segway and blog, two pop culture references that haven’t seemed innovative for at least a decade?

I know who to blame for this: Old Spice. Ever since Isaiah Mustafa very suavely pitched the company’s products in a classy-yet-humorous way, various brands have scrambled to copy the ads’ tone and have failed miserably. The only thing the copycat ads accomplish is a) Making you feel embarrassed for these companies for having a profound lack of imagination, and b) Getting you to realize how good the Old Spice ads were. The only copycat exception I can think of is the Dollar Shave Club ad, which emulated the fast-paced absurdity of Old Spice quite successfully. But for the most part the brands that saw what Old Spice did, laughed, and exclaimed to their marketing team, “Hurr durr this is a funny and successful ad campaign. Do exactly this for our brand!” crash and burn in a spectacularly cringe-inducing manner.

Which brings me back to this crappy credit union’s commercial. My biggest gripe with the ad isn’t that it’s a failed poor man’s poor man’s Old Spice commercial, it’s that it feels like watching your dad awkwardly try to rock out to popular music with his hat turned backwards and flashing the peace sign because he’s confusing it with the “Westsiiiiiide” gesture. This Old Spice-type brand persona doesn’t fit for a credit union. It could, much how Geico manages to successfully churn out odd and amusing ads for something as mundane as auto insurance, but it doesn’t, mainly because this credit union is trying to copy a completely different industry’s ad campaign without understanding why it worked in the first place. If your goal is simply “Do what they did because it worked for them” without understanding what elements made the campaign so successful, you’re deaf to the giant WHOOSHing sound of the point flying far above your head.

You absolutely can find inspiration from various sources–you don’t have to just scrutinize your competitors in order to determine how to make your company better. Oftentimes you can be motivated in other ways, like, say from a men’s line of fragrances and skin products. However, you can’t just take a success story and shove it in your employees’ faces while barking, “This worked for them so make it work for us.” Have some fucking common sense–”Facebook has a ‘poke’ feature so we should, too” should make you roll your eyes and echo the lecturing tone you heard from your parents when you were a kid: “Well, if Facebook jumped off a cliff, would you?”

Is humor an appropriate tone for your brand? If so, what kind of humor can you use and how can you incorporate it in a way that makes sense? Do you really need all those social media sharing widgets on your site if you specialize in funeral services, or are you just thinking you need them because “They’re popular with the kids nowadays”? Excitedly wanting to copy a successful element of a popular brand or website is like buying a Saint Bernard because they look cool without thinking about the fact that you live in a studio apartment on the 30th floor of a high-rise in a major metropolitan area.

Think this shit through; don’t just react when you see something cool and blindly try to copy it. Don’t be the out-of-touch credit union that’s trying to Poochie the Dog some business from you. If you don’t understand the “how’s” and “why’s” behind a company’s success, you’ll just end up embarrassing yourself and failing miserably when you try to do the exact same thing.

Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

Today one of my old favorite sites has hit the auction block on Flippa.

The reserve price is at $170,000.00 with a Buy it Now for $225,000.00.

Here are some interesting stats from the listing:

• The auction is listed Listed on the Auction it says the site makes $1667 in gross revenue.
• Pageviews (3 month avg) 35,923
• The Alexa traffic rank is 46,061
• The forums have had 2 new posts in the last 2 weeks.
• The site did not make a blog post from March until May (its made a couple in recent days).

The Valuation:

I have been hit up by about 5 people so far this morning and I am sure I will get hit up by more so I thought I would just post what I have been telling people.

Guy Kawasaki one time told me there are 3 times to sell a site. To early, just right, to late.

I have been on about every side of that. With NextPimp I sold the site waaaaaaay to late. With AuctionAds I sold the site to early. What are you going to do.

But I digress…

Ok so with this site lets just break down some numbers.

First of all the gross revenue is listed. People forget someone is going to have to run this website. So what are you going to pay that person?

Just to break even you can’t pay someone over 24k/yr or $12 a hour. That would be fulltime of course.

I think to really blow this site out to become an authority again you would have to have a full time person. Blog updates, forum moderation, selling advertising, JV partnerships. All that shit takes a TON of time.

Lets pretend you get the site profitable after paying someone (or yourself) to run it. If you double revenue the site would be doing 24k a year in profit which I don’t think should be THAT hard.

Being the site has been on a MASSIVE downtrend and your taking a total gamble I would value it around 10-20k.

But that is just me… if I was to buy it. And I would turn it into a fricking nascar with ads.

The real value is the database of people interested in SEO. But being that the site has been neglected for SO long you can’t really contact those people out of the blue….

I would guess 99% of the existing traffic is coming from Google (especially looking at their compete and Alexa stats) looking for keywords to help their SEO. But from what I can see the matches are from years ago (sometimes 5-6 year ago). So the value to users is going to be very limited.

Again I would pepper the shit out of it with ads.

I think its a lost cause to being the site back as the authority it once was. I have tried with previous sites that were crushing it.

But maybe I am way off. Where would you value this site and what would you do if you owned it?

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How can you instantly find yourself ostracized by a subset of the SEO community, on a matter that doesn’t have anything to do with SEO? Well, aside from going to work for whatever company is considered “The Enemy” by SEOs that day, it would be opening your big mouth with opinions on certain topics that you should have known to wire your mouth shut over.

And let’s face it, there are a lot of hot topics out there to pick and choose from to rankle people’s ire. Komen pulled grant funding from Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program over the abortion issue. President Obama came out in support of gay marriage while certain states were pulling out the stops to prevent it from ever happening in their own states. Yes, it is all hot topic news and people are debating it endlessly. But you should probably think about how your debate will come across to people who don’t share your opinion – like me.

Someone I respected and considered an expert in the industry ranted about how supporting gay marriage was wrong, evil, that marriage should be between a man and a woman because that was how God intended, those who think otherwise are going to hell, on and on with the whole nine yards. Yep, he went there. And best (worst?) of all, it wasn’t just Joe Webmaster ranting like a lunatic to his subset of “real life friends” who might share his opinions on a personal blog or real-life-friends only Facebook account, but it was Joe’s SEO Consulting jumping up and down with a “Look at me and F you everyone who thinks gays should be allowed to marry.” And let’s just say my paraphrase was worded much more nicely and politically correct than what he actually said. Real professional there “Joe”.

So I did what any pissed off industry colleague would do. I removed all traces of him from everything he was connected with me socially so I would never see his opinions on ANYTHING, whether SEO or gay marriage (and I am sure if I cared to look, I probably would have found some choice opinions he had on abortion too). I will never again link to him as an expert or recommend his expertise to a client, which I regret to say I had done. Not exactly what a SEO consultant who is constantly trolling for clients should be doing. And I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, judging from the comments going back and forth.

If he had simply said “Not happy with the President’s decision today” or “I am not a fan of Obama’s stance on gay marriage”, I probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at it – and it wouldn’t have cost him referrals from me and others.  After all, everyone is entitled to their opinions, I just choose not to want to associate it with someone who is so openly trying to force his thinking  upon others.  I would have thought “not something I would come out and say, but whatever.”  But his rant bringing up God, the bible, sexual health, and all the kinds of homophobic slurs that get actors kicked off of tv shows, I am just not cool with.

Heck, maybe he thought his statement would gain him some new contacts/followers from people who agree with him.  Well, it sure got him noticed, but not in a good way.

A couple years ago, another SEM came out pretty hardcore on the abortion issue as pro-life.  And yes, he got the same treatment from me.  It wasn’t just a casual “I am pro-life” comment, but a whole rant about anyone who thinks they are pro-choice are all baby killers and don’t deserve to have kids of their own, sparked by something that had happened in the news I can’t even remember now.  Same thing, everyone is entitled to their opinions whether I agree with them or not, but why try to force it down other people’s throat in a threatening way?

The other thing is this industry is a pretty progressive and young industry.  At any time at a conference, chances are good that you will be sitting in a bar with a pretty diverse mix of straight, gay, transgendered, pro-life, pro-choice SEOs, but the difference is most of us respect each other’s opinions and we won’t try and argue with you about why our view is the right one and how anyone who doesn’t agree with it is going to hell.

Have I ever gone toe to toe with someone over any of these hot topic issues?  Well, having been in this industry for as many years as I have been, I am sure the topic has come up over late night bar sessions at a conference with the drinks flowing. Heck, it could be a pretty lively debate at the bar, but then that is only in front of maybe a half dozen to a dozen people – not the thousands of people who will see your ravings on Twitter or Facebook. And have I ever gone out and tweeted / Facebooked / G+’d it? Hell no. First, it isn’t really anyone’s business and two, I have better things to do than get into a debate over something people usually have very strong and passionate opinions about.  And the fact I can’t even remember having a conference bar conversation about it means either we have more interesting things to talk about than what we feel about gay marriage or the discussion was respectful enough that it didn’t end with someone telling those that agree with gay marriage are <expletives> that should go to hell.

Just like I believe everyone should have the choice to marry whomever they want, or do what they choose to their own bodies, I cannot respect anyone who comes out so vehemently on the opposite side of the fence than me. If that is your opinion, keep it to yourself. And that is precisely what I do, I won’t try and force my own personal opinions on any topic on you.

Still want to get your voice out there without pissing off the masses that have the the opposite stance?  Bring it up casually in the context of something else, as Shoemoney did a few years back when he discussed about who he was voting for in the last election. Pretty non-offensive way of putting your opinion out there on some hot topics without coming across like a douche.

At the end of the day, feel free to harbor whatever opinions you have on the hot topics, I respect the right of anyone to have their own opinions. But keep it to your damn self when it could affect your business and you come off looking like a total douche to those on the other site of the fence from you.  And trust me, now matter how much you rant and rave, we aren’t going to suddenly change our minds and decide the grass really is greener on your side.

And I would love to hear comments – but I really would prefer they are on how you preceive others when they post about these hot topics, rather then your own personal opinions of said hot topics

Added: A couple people commented that I only bring up people who are opposing my personal views on hot topics, but I have definitely given the same treatment to those who share it, because they have gone about it in the same offensive way.  One of them was someone who ranted back at the anti-gay marriage guy with some anti-religious slurs and another was just a non-stop stream of anti-Republican propaganda during the last election.  Like I said, I respect people having their own opinion, what I don’t agree with it is a mudslinging approach to ANY opinion, whether it matches my views or not.

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Last fall Demand Media announced they were cutting back on the number of freelancers they were paying to churn out thousands of articles for their websites. Until then they had been well known for their “content farm,” but the company decided to shift their focus to “more targeted categories and other forms of content such as slide shows, video series and feature articles.” They wanted to build on existing content and make it better rather than continue to pump out a bunch of new basic content. The move is unsurprising–at the end of the day, I feel that the quality of content is more important than the quantity, which is why it is so damn hard to find halfway decent writers.

For a while, the company I work for tasked me with hiring freelance writers to contribute original content for one of our websites (I’ve previously blogged about the vetting process and have also given some tips to freelance writers applying for blogging jobs). It was quite a learning experience, to say the least–I started with a huge pool of writers and whittled a vast majority of them down because most of them weren’t great.

Some of the biggest problems with finding quality talent include:

1. Bad writers, even if they’re free or cheap, still won’t be worth your time. If you don’t care about the quality of the piece you’re about to publish on your site and don’t mind broken or improperly sized images, numerous typos, and formatting issues, then feel free to skip this part. I, however, like having a semi-professional looking website and think shoddy work reflects poorly on the company. The amount of time I was saving by not writing an article was wasted on having to spend an hour cleaning up weaker writers’ work–fixing typos, resizing images, breaking huge walls of text into easily readable chunks, tweaking confusing sentences, etc.

2. Your expectations often won’t be met. A good pitch or a foolproof idea is easily ruined by the execution. I can’t tell you how many times I got excited by an idea proposed by one of my freelance writers, only to have the concept pretty much ruined by weak content and a poor end result. I’d try to guide the writer to a better end product by making some suggestions, but I eventually found out that poor writers, no matter how much guidance or feedback you give them, still can’t spin gold as effortlessly as a naturally gifted one. Eventually I’d cut these writers loose because although I liked their ideas, their execution was consistently lacking and it did me no good to essentially rewrite their work (see Point #1) every time to meet standards.

3. Weak writers lack a voice. Think of your favorite writers. They all have a distinct voice or tone–you could practically pick it out of a crowd or correctly attribute something they’ve anonymously written because you know it so well. Good writers have a natural voice you can quickly pick up and become attracted to. You can feel their frustration, their anger, their humor, their elation. Bad writers, on the other hand, feel stale and stilted. Every sentence feels like you’re running into a wall–it feels disjointed and impersonal. I can tell when a weak writer is unable to establish a voice and when one is trying too hard to force a voice, at which point it just comes off as fake and over the top. You can’t force natural talent.

4. Good writers can be bad, too. Writing is a difficult discipline that requires consistency, even when you don’t feel like it. I’ll be the first to raise my hand and confess to being lazy and uninspired from time to time–my guest posts go through dry spells and my personal blogs occasionally collect dust. It’s difficult, therefore, to rely on contributors for good consistent work. I had a lot of good writers who would go AWOL for a while before occasionally emerging with a good piece of content. Good writing is hard to come by, but so is frequent writing. Combine those two and you’ve practically got a mythical creature that a few rednecks have sworn they’ve seen but leaves you only partially convinced.

It’s extremely difficult to find contributors who you can trust, who won’t link out to shady sites or steal images, who know how your content is supposed to look and feel and can abide by those rules, who can bust out insightful, well-written content in a unique and compelling voice on a regular basis. You can find thousands of writers who would jump at the chance to build their portfolio and write for your site. But ask yourself whether it’s worth your time and your audience’s time to rely on mediocre or so-so content just for the sake of having it. Try to find that mythical Sasquatch writer or someone as close to it as possible, because when you do find him or her, you’ll have a rare talent indeed and your site will benefit greatly.

photo credit: t_buchtele via photo pin cc

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