Comments on: First Rule About SEO Fight Club is – Don’t Talk About SEO Fight Club!

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:31:50 +0000

I don’t know just how natural Google’s results have ever been and with them releasing their own guideline as to how to do SEO I think they’ve resigned themselves to having to accept SEO to a degree. I’ve never cared much for hats – I hate hat-hair but I think have a pretty good idea on how to connect sites together. Usually there is a pattern behind link buying or other devious behaviour.

Occasionally I break out my tinfoil hat and plot and plan for a bit, but generally speaking I don’t see the harm in listing a site in a portfolio (I would recommend that if you do so that you keep to G’s TOS however).

By: Diego Velasquez

Diego Velasquez — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:18:57 +0000

This is a topic that I think is so ambiguous as of late. Who has Google profiled already (if they are indeed doing so)? Do these profiled SEOs’ websites suddenly drop off Google’s search index? Do the Search Engine companies share info on profiled SEOs? “Optimization” seems quite subjective. I wonder what importance Google puts on footer links anyways…

By: Shaun Anderson

Shaun Anderson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:00:08 +0000

“Google uses a robot (not a person) to rank the sites” – Google also uses human evaluatators and spam fighters.

PS – I know how to keep the bot happy

By: Shaun Anderson

Shaun Anderson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:01:48 +0000

Ben it’s nice to see links from all their client sites when they get booted out of Google lol – talk about Turkey Shoot

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:50:37 +0000

I agree it is a bit paranoid, but hard, honest work is seldom punished, so you can’t really lose with it. However, Google uses a robot (not a person) to rank the sites. If you are an seo consultant then you would have done research with a number of test websites trying out different methods and knowing what makes the bot happy and mad. Some cases allowing you to manipulate it, the problem with that is no one knows when the bot will get smarter, invalidating all your research.

By: Nathan Anderson

Nathan Anderson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:10:58 +0000

You can leave the “fight” out of your statement… We’ve been following the first rule of SEO Club since 2003: Don’t talk about what’s in SEO Club. If an SEO company can’t build their PR without stealing it from clients, they’re worthless. Clients should never be identified in any way…

By: Ben of AusMedWeb

Ben of AusMedWeb — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:00:05 +0000

I love it when an SEO company in our industry starts talking about work they have done for a client.

You pick up some really useful metrics on what they claim to have achieved – eg increase of visitors, ranking for particular terms, amount of online vs offline business. This is often a good point of comparison and also helps you understand the value of your own online marketing efforts.

A+ for transparency
D for intelligence

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:01:10 +0000

normally when a client has SEO company in their foot, put in by their seo company, its to enable views or direct competition to see that its this company that has optimized and possibly designed this web site; not always an intention to link build.

By: Shaun Anderson

Shaun Anderson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:00:13 +0000

Are you trying to stay under the radar Aaron?

You raise a good question. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an individual calling himself a SEO but as you say Google are certainly profiling seo these days it seems

By: Aaranged

Aaranged — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:45:06 +0000

Good observations from an agency point of view, but it raises problems for an in-house SEO such as myself.

Am I to request a different title than “SEO Manager”, or do I exclude myself from important professional networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter altogether? It seems a bit disingenuous to do so.

The simple fact of a company using SEO support, whether contracted or in-house – shouldn’t cause hysterics from Google et al. Of course, “should” and “does” are not necessarily equal.

All in all I think too much has been made of Google’s targeting of SEO professionals. If Google does give special scrutiny to sites that are “SEO’d” it will certainly turn out to be a technique of with diminishing returns as the SEO talent pools increases.

By: Shaun Anderson

Shaun Anderson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:36:49 +0000

@Gregor - I have done it in the past, but every web dev client that has a link of mine in their footer knows about it, and as I say, I just don't do this any more for this site, and I have a NO LINK TO THIS SITE policy for client sites I am linkbuilding for. When I look at some link profiles I am frankly embarrassed for the SEO involved. But then again, it works... still. Reminds me of my Broken Windows post actually....

By: Sudarshan

Sudarshan — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:14:07 +0000

WOW this is a great post….Atleast you are honest with one thing that it is difficult to rank well for sites Man SEO Companies dont agree with this…They will still yell that they can get a site in the first ten in 3 months!!

By: Gregor

Gregor — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:07:58 +0000

I get a bit wound up when I see websites with ‘SEO Company’ stuck in the footer. I wonder if the clients know that their SEO company has done that and I wonder if the SEO company has explained the ramifications of it.

I’ll be willing to bet they haven’t!

I agree totally – keep a low profile. Not just for Google’s sake but for the sake of your clients competitors and your SEO competitors.

By: Shaun Anderson

Shaun Anderson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:02:21 +0000

@Luxs I heard being scared keeps you safe lol

By: Bill Marshall

Bill Marshall — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:04:48 +0000

Hi Shaun
I have some sympathy with your ideas on this and I can understand the approach of simply not putting your head above the parapet. In some ways it does go back to exactly what SEO is – are we “manipulating rankings” or are we simply making sites the best they can be in order that they deserve to rank highly. I’ve always taken the latter approach as my guiding principle despite some clients still expecting a bolt-on approach using some fancy tricks.

There are obviously some grey areas, particularly in the link building side of things but hey, Google force us to try get links to some degree by not ranking good content appropriately because the page it’s on hasn’t got enough PageRank to get into the main index.

There is a sense that if we allow ourselves to be tagged as manipulators then we’re damned if we don’t put our heads above the parapet to say that actually we’re trying to create good content and a good user experience. Bit of a cleft stick really.

Keep up the good work

By: luxs

luxs — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:01:43 +0000

I think this is a bit paranoid ideas. From my opinion all SEO can be separated into two major group: internal web site code optimization and external link building. First part is completely legal even from official Google point of view (like nofollow manipulations). Therefore nothing wrong with mentioning that this part was done by some SEO company.