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Hello everyone, For those of you that don’t know (and that’s probably all of you), my name is Gyutae Park and I work as a professional SEO at a top agency in New York City (blah blah blah). I also run a blog on Internet marketing strategy at Winning the Web so be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed for some of my online tips and experiences.
Now that I’ve gotten that introduction out of the way, you’re probably wondering who the hell I am and what I’m doing on Rae’s blog. As a matter of fact, I’m not much of a potty mouth so the tone of this post might be completely different from what you might expect here. But hey if Will Smith can sell records without cussing, I think I can manage to make a fool of myself without using the special nouns, adjectives, and verbs that account for a large percentage of Rae’s content in keyword density.
Honestly I didn’t think I’d receive the honor of being a guest whore (ironic aint it?). I just can’t seem to lose these days (I’ll have to test this in Las Vegas next week) and my lucky winning streak the past month has included a free full conference pass to Affiliate Summit West, a free ticket to Elite Retreat, an honorary mention in Bruce Clay’s SEO Charity Contest, and now this - real live guest WHORE status at Sugarrae.com. Rae doesn’t know this but I’m also representing the beautiful Garden State of New Jersey - land of full service gas pumps, tax-free clothing and food, endless malls and diners, and well… pollution. Not only do I sit at home Sphinning Rae’s articles but I secretly follow Rae around everywhere she goes (ok, I’m just kidding here. I’m not a creepy stalker, I swear). I guess that would make me Rae’s biatch. Speaking of which, I’d like to theme this post around something similar, but it’s literally a whole new animal. Sheep. People are like sheep and it pisses me off.
In the spirit of President’s Day, I was watching some of the US elections race coverage on CNN when the commentator noted that Obama had an advantage because of momentum. People were voting for him simply because he had the lead. WTH? The next president could make or break the future of the United States and here people are treating the elections like a game of preseason football. Doesn’t seem right to me. In an ideal world, people would do their own research and stand up for what they believe. In the real world, people are sheep, following others around aimlessly and without purpose. Kool-Aid anyone?
In the same way, the SEO world runs rampant with sheep. Newbies worship some of the SEO “experts” and follow them without question, not knowing whether or not they are good shepherds or wolves in sheep’s clothing. There are always going to be bad apples in the industry and they have ruined the reputation of SEO for their own profit. But the root of the problem lies in people - lazy sheep who don’t want to do their own research. Seriously, when was the last time you questioned a tactic or went against the grain? Guys like Eric Lander and Michael Gray are doing it. Are you? (Hm, trick question) Just because Matt Cutts says something doesn’t mean he’s out for your best interests.
And with that I conclude my guest whore duties. Let’s not be sheep, people. Sheep aren’t leaders and sheep are slaughtered. Don’t aimlessly follow the crowd or support a group because it’s popular. In fact, don’t volunteer yourself as a guest whore at a popular SEO blog… (oh crap). Baaaah.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
SEO is not like politics. Well, OK sometimes it seems like it is due to the personalities who blog about it, but really it’s not. Politics is a popularity contest. SEO is a science. SEO is not about “standing up for what I believe”, because “what I believe” could be WAY off mark — unlike politics, in SEO there is (usually) a right or wrong answer (or several of each).
And those answers are really difficult to get because it’s a game of battleship against the engines. “B5?” nope. “F2?” nope. “G3?” — Yay! You ranked for “florida vacation homes!”
A lot of people attempting optimization are not SEO experts going at it full time as their vocation. We/they don’t have the time or resources for conducting double-blind experiments or putting links on a dozen “throw-away” sites to see how they’re indexed and ranked to test a hypothesis.
Many of the “rock stars” aren’t even that scientific about things. They develop their SEO wisdom through a combination of real-world experience (i.e. creative trial and error), intelligence (logic, figuring out how the big machine works), and social connectivity (i.e. call your buddy at Yahoo and get the inside scoop on an algo change).
What do newbs do? Read, read, read, and try what the experts say tends to work. They install some analytics… but all those numbers and correlations can be overwhelming. So when Sugarrae says “build links”, they build links. When Cutts says “submit a sitemap”, they submit a sitemap. When Stuntdubl says “fix your titles” or “change your anchor text”, they do it. Baaaa. And lo and behold - their rankings go up. Wow!
In time, the newb becomes an amateur, and understands concepts like “dupe content”, “canonicalization”, “keyword density”, “PageRank”, “link building” etc. We watch our analytics and try to interpret them. And … we gain a lot of knowledge from SEO bloggers like Rae.
What you’re basically saying in this post is that advice you read from SEO “experts” can not be trusted. That may be true in some cases, but I’ve found it’s not typical at all. SEO professionals - especially those that blog about it - are typically quite open with publicizing interesting techniques and best practices, out of honest good will, with the side effect of gaining respect in their field.
Perhaps I agree with the sentiment of your post - people attempting SEO should actually try to learn what and why and how, by following best practices, experimenting and watching analytics and rankings. They shouldn’t just read the SEO rockstar bloggers and follow in their steps. Then they may make that transition from newb to amateur.
Calling newbies “sheep” is not kind
I extrapolated from your post with my own interpretation. I’m not defending sheepiness, but I do defend the notion that reading and following advice is (usually) not a bad thing, since most of the advice being shared is coming from decent people.
Look to the right at Rae’s blogroll. If you limit your reading to those sources, you’ll be safe from the wolves (with the exception of a certain grey whore - lol)
So - those “bad apples in the industry” — care to name names?
Love guest whore week here. Love it.
As webwitch noted, there’s different classes of sheeple. Following the posts on this site gets more into research rather than following. There’s not many blogs or sites I read these days for new information, but this is definitiely one of them.
I started my foray into SEO about a year ago - so as someone who has only recently lost most of her shiny ‘newbie’ veneer, I’d have to say that I wouldn’t be offended by the term ’sheep’ at all.
It’s what I was at first, blindly following the more ‘trusted and talked about’ SEOs out there until I got a true grasp on what SEO was all about.
I have to agree that some of the ‘hero worship’ that goes on in the SEO industry does throw me a bit - simply b/c while the many ‘experts’ are damn good, damn reliable, and damn GENIUSES, at some point they started out like the rest of us - wondering what the hell SEO was and how they could make search engines list their website at #1.
Can the hero worship please. They’re normal geeks like you and me.
Also, about Jersey - don’t forget the jug handles! As a Philly native, we sometimes call Jersey the land of “No Left Turns”.
>>>Sheep aren’t leaders and sheep are slaughtered
AWESOME quote….
Jersey power!!!! hahaha
I don’t see anything wrong with following the advice of people deemed knowledgeable when you’re a newb - I do see a problem in following it (and repeating it) blindly… test, test, test…. then you’ll figure out not only which SEO tactics really work, but which bloggers are full of shit. :)
I agree with your (ridiculously brief) point, but 50% of this post was waffle and self promotion.
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