seo penguin

open book

Jan 17, 2008 seo

i’m not a blogger, that much is probably painfully obvious. and if the lack of blogging skills doesn’t give it away my lack of good grammar will. so, welcome to my mash of thoughts i’ve been carrying around for awhile.

seopenguin has been around since before i went to SES NY with the hopes that i would write up reviews and post comments about the “classes” i sat in on and about the people i met, the things i did.

i had put those up, and then in a move i lost the posts.

to be honest that’s ok. i was just one of the many people who put up a post about the conference and the coverage done by the team put together by search engine roundtable was far better than i could have produced.

seo was a fascination to me when i first heard about it in a 2 hour after school class i sat through one evening after one of my college design courses. a man stood at the white board and flipped through keyword tools, websites and the knowledge he had accumulated. i remember being interested, but design was my life. i wanted to make the web a pretty place, basically.

then i got into a real job and i realized quickly that i need something to do and through a quirk of fate i found myself being the seo along with a designer and i dove into optimization. i devoured it and then i regurgitated it to anyone within ear shot. i was probably annoying considering i can talk for days without getting tired but i loved how it could be amazingly simple and shallow with just basic meta information or how you could dig so much deeper and i had only begun to see how far down the rabbit hole i could go.

that was january of 2006.

i joined seomoz and cr8asite forums, i read search engine roundtable until i thought i found all the nuggets that they had, which was just enough to land me another job as the sole seo of the company. my existence in the seo community until SES NY and this blog was basically nothing more than a lurker of forums and blogs with an occasional question. once SES NY happened and i met fabulous people did i try to worm my way out of the circle i stuck myself in.

i wanted to be a voice in the sea of other voices. i wanted to do something that no one else had done, to find a niche like some people have. i just wasn’t sure how to do that when it seemed like all the voices that people really hear took all the exclusive areas. the niche i didn’t want to get into was that of a blogger that posted more opinion than information. even posts that had information were infused with opinion and i wanted to be an authority on some area of optimization/marketing that was new or was there but didn’t have a representative.

the more i read over the year the more i realized that joining this community was going to be a perfect way to either be idolized or trashed. i have a want to be great and well respected, but i don’t handle the abuse very well. it takes a strong personality to put up with bullshit the way some of the people in the community has.
also, i feel that while i have good ideas and could probably be all right with posting blogs that were a decent mix of information and personal take on it, my own fear of being trashed makes me hesitate… realizing that, i stepped back into the safe enclosure of being a lurker and proceeded to do what i really do best.

people watch. i just watched the community.

i realized won’t be one of those 5% of seo’s that shoemoney, whom i admire greatly by the way, discusses in a blog post that’s been well dissected; i won’t be an A-Class seo that people refer to with starry eyes; nor will i be a bill slawski, or a kim krause berg or any of the other people that i have forgotten to mention here but are well respected in their niches.

yes, i have an ego, who doesn’t? who doesn’t want to be one of those people who’s name is tossed around like a common name of a famous author or house hold item. my respect for those 5% of people is immense and unyielding. i understand peoples frustration with mistakes that these A-Class people have made; or the growing pains that Google seems to be going through; and the knowledge that 95% of all seo’s can’t back up what they say and make guarantees that they shouldn’t be.

i am not A-Class. my name won’t get me business from sony. large companies like starbucks or the sharper image or ben bridges won’t be knocking at my door any time soon for my optimization skills. i use meta keyword tags, i tell people that i will increase their traffic and their placement. in fact i will even say, “i guarantee you” because my people are small businesses, they’re mom and pop stores and marketing to them is something that they know they should have but either

• don’t have the time to do themselves because i’m sure if they could they would
• don’t want to do it themselves and leave it up to me.

95% of the time i make my guarantee. i am not a snake oil salesman, i take my job personally and i strive to give my clients the best that i am. if i don’t make my “guarantee” i try harder.

how many things have you bought that have a guarantee? potato chips have one on their bags. they guarantee my satisfaction. do you stop buying that brand of chip because of the guarantee? no. and they still make money from you even with that “guarantee” so their marketing works.

maybe, one day, if i’m ever an A-Class somehow in my own right i won’t have to say “guarantee” because i’ll be known for getting the conversions and the placement and the ROI. i don’t have that weight behind my name.

it’s been two years and a handful of days since i started seo and the bulk of what i read is negativity against sites, people, search engines and, what is seems, the whole existence of the seo community. and if it’s not negative it’s jealousy or envy of… to put it frankly the popularity of the A-Class people. the traditional end of the year awards and the announcement of the semmy’s seem to have sparked some raging beast in people that is running through the masses tearing at the seams. dazzlin donna has a good idea.

take a step back and chill out. stop reading forums. stop reading any news that remotely relates to internet, marketing or optimization. in two years i have seen that the community post more now about how they feel on something or their opinion on something than on actual news and like mentioned before if news is there it’s littered with how a personal feels about it. yes, there are a handful of people that post just news and manage to project their own opinions on it without making it sound like an editorial.

• what is with the animosity?
• when did the gulf between the 95% and the 5% become so wide and so deep?
• why do i keep reading about people being taken to task over something instead of the latest trends in a search engine or even in marketing and usability?
• when was the last time news about a search engine other than google, yahoo! or live got posted? i know aol and ask are still out there or are they really just not doing anything worth reporting on.

and why are people so upset over the semmys. honestly, it’s obvious as to who was really going to get listed, it’s not much of a surprise and i’m sure the nominees for the semmys are all posts that were well read and useful, so good for all the entrants.
i wish you could all win an award but from me to all of you: your posts, information, comments and insight have been dead useful and i’d give you all gold stars.

i ‘m not sure what this post turned out to be… i don’t even think it has a formal opening, hook, body and closing… but i love the seo community.

can we please get back to the “unity” of what we are?