Fear Settles Over the SEO Industry

Reading through other SEOs’ blogs recently, and generally keeping my finger on the pulse of the search marketing world, I have noticed an insidious mantle of fear settling over the entire industry. Even a few died-in-the-wool search professionals are falling prey to this unease. Why?

At first it might seem that the Outers are simply looking to position themselves as the ‘goody-two-shoes of SEO’ as far as Google is concerned. But I see it as more sinister than that.

A few months back a tiny minority of prominent search consultants began ‘outing’ other SEOs or high profile businesses who they deemed were making use of ‘Black Hat’ SEO techniques such as buying links. I don’t want to get into the whys and wherefores of this situation because I’m only a small-scale consultant and I don’t want any of the big guns blasting me out of the water. I’m not scared; it’s purely a policy of self-preservation. However, someone I respect highly is Aaron Wall, and he said it all in his blog post.

I think that industry-wide fear is precisely the effect that’s required by a few high-profile individuals intent on carving an even bigger share of the market for themselves. Those who are at the top of their field and would like everyone to look to them to see which way to jump next. To create a situation and then set yourself up as the judge and jury is a great way of making those who are not in-the-know look to you as the ultimate expert, is it not?

Stand Your Ground

I’m not falling for it. I’ll keep on in exactly the way I have so far. As a matter of fact the SEOs in question have taken a nosedive as far as I’m concerned. I no longer regard them as the industry-leaders I once did.

And while we’re on the subject of outing, I’m also in agreement with Aaron about those who consistently expose little-known loopholes that top SEOs use to get good ranking for their clients. Of course as soon as Google knows that we know, they have to do something about it. This kind of thing gives me the creeps.

Let’s go back to our example of link buying. Buying links only recently became a no-no, and even though Google has made it quite clear that link-buying is frowned upon, we cannot really see the point in penalizing websites for an activity that’s really difficult to track. I’ve never bought links. Not that I personally think it’s wrong; I’ve just never done it. But I think it’s totally underhanded to out someone just because they’re doing it.

My advice to anyone who is thinking of hiring an SEO consultant, or maybe even doing a bit of work themselves, is go for it. Don’t be put off and made to feel that if you can’t afford the big boys that you shouldn’t attempt SEO at all. And no, I’m not going to use their strategies by ‘outing’ anyone here. I’m afraid you’ll have to do your own detective work.

But if you notice that on their blog someone has made a practice of exposing the practices of another professional on several occasions, be wary of them. They might pick on your business next.

PS: If you doubt that working when you haven’t had enough sleep doesn’t do you much good, consider this: I tried to publish this post earlier on and it just wasn’t working out for me. I thought WordPress was up the creek. I had an appointment to go to so I thought I’d sort the mess out when I got back. Of course I just discovered that I was tryingt o publish the post as a page. Duh. I need sleep.

PPS: While I was faffing about Glenn over at Divine Write beat me to it. lol. Well done Glenn.