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The Difference Between Spidering and Indexing
Shari Thurow’s column over at ClickZ today has an interesting tidbit in it than many small business owners and new SEM practitioners should read and consider. It’s an explanation of the difference between a site being spidered and a site being indexed. Most site owners assume that the two words are one and the same…meaning you get spidered and you are then in the index. As Shari points out, that’s not always the case.
From the article:
The biggest misconception at this year’s conference was the difference between the spidering and indexing processes. The index is a subset of the spider. Search engines access Web content through the spidering process. Then, they filter out duplicates and other bad content and create the index.
A Web site can be spidered and not included in a search engine index.
Go back and read that last line again. Then think about it. It’s not uncommon for me to talk to a site owner or to get an email from someone that’s confused as to why they aren’t showing up in Yahoo! or Google. Usually, these site owners have seen proof in their log files that the spiders from these engines have been to their sites. Sometimes the spiders have been there dozens of times and have visited every single one of their pages, yet the site still fails to show up in the index.
This is where it’s important to remember that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can keep a site from being indexed and ranked. That may mean a simple technical errors like a robots.txt file that’s set to exclude the indexing of an entire site (rather than of certain areas) or an improperly routed 301 redirect. It could also mean that there are serious errors in your code, or that the content of your site is somehow being dubbed as duplicate to another site.
In other words, just because you aren’t showing up in Google doesn’t mean that Googlebot hates you. Sometimes it means that there are serious issues that need to be addressed.
Source: searchenginenews.com
Google Launches Enterprise Software Solution
Google launched a free packaged business solution for enterprises today including online chat, email, calendars, and hosting. Called "Gmail for Your Domain" (a ghastly name that is only slightly better referred to as "Google Apps" within the actual admin area) this application package will allow a business owner or administrator to create a separate account per employee. Each Google Apps account comes complete with the following Google applications: Gmail: Google’s email program is the central offering of this set of applications; it acts as the main portal where the Talk and Calendar functions are provided. Each user has 2 gigabytes of email storage complete with some robust email management tools that allow automatic email filtering, POP email access, SPAM management, and contact management. Required Setup Procedure: Requires that you shift all email protocol from your domain (i.e. http://www.stepforth.com/) to Google so that email can be sent and received using your domain (so that your email correctly displays it came from your domain). Google Calendar: Probably the most feature rich application within this entire package, Google Calendar provides users with the ability to share appointments or entire calendars. It also has a basic event management option that allows you to manage RSVP lists and invite associates to meetings. Check out the full Google Calendar feature list here. Google Talk: An instant messaging and voice chat application, Google Talk automatically allows access to the contact list within Gmail making connections to business associates and employees simpler. Here is the official description on Talk from Google: " a downloadable Windows application from Google that enables Gmail users to quickly and easily talk or IM with their friends for free. Google is focused on developing innovative technologies that enhance people's lives, and Google Talk encourages and simplifies instant communication across the web." Required Setup Procedure for Google Calendar and Google Talk: The only requirement is that you prove you are the legitimate owner of the domain you setup your account with. The activation process is simple; just upload a specific html file to your website for Google to verify and voila, both Calendar and Talk are enabled. Google Web Publishing: This is a free hosting and page creation system (Page Creator) that allows you to create and publish your enterprise site. The site is hosted on Google servers and can only be a maximum of 100 pages in size. Required Setup Procedure: You must add a CNAME to your domain management configuration (usually by asking your hosting provider) which will setup a subdomain (i.e. http://site.yoursite.com) that you can upload and administer through Google Apps. Account Administration The account administrator using a central online Dashboard can administer all Google accounts. Within the Dashboard, the administrator can do the following: * setup domain aliases, * setup email catch-all addresses, * create internal email lists (i.e. staff@yoursite.com would go to… list all in-house recipients) * make minor cosmetic (color) customizations to the company sign in page, * customize your Google Apps system with your company logo, * enable or disable contact sharing; which when enabled provides a central contact list that all users will have access to., * create and update multiple user accounts at once by uploading a spreadsheet with username and password information, * centrally configure individual user privileges, alternate email addresses and passwords, * view access, and email quota statistics for each user. My Take on Google Apps I setup an account to see how this new offering works and I think it has some real potential as long as the needs of an organization are basic. I say this because the majority of companies that I know of would not be comfortable switching their vital communication and scheduling systems to an online model that is not under their control. After all, I do not expect there will be anyone to bark at if Google Apps experiences problems; one of the significant minuses of using a free system (never mind one in beta). Additionally, a couple of the applications are definitely in their infancy. For example, Google Calendar doe not offer any synchronization capabilities for handhelds or PC’s, so if you make the switch there is no way (currently) to update your handheld with your Google Calendar schedule. This chink alone is enough to keep me from making the switch. Oh and I must not forget Google Page Creator and the free hosting service; it is, well, pointless in its current state. After all, there is no way to upload a website other than using Page Creator, which is a website-publishing tool in its extreme infancy. I can only assume that the web-publishing facet of Google Apps was included as a frill. Will Websites Hosted on Google Have an Advantage? Perhaps but the advantage is minimal; Google states in the Google Apps help area that new sites within their system can expect to be indexed within "a few hours of publication"; an impressive turnaround. Hosting on Google will also likely lead to faster indexing of updated content. After all, faster updating would be a considerable tease if (make that ‘when’) Google wants to make a bolder step into the web hosting industry and provide more advanced hosting packages. It is truly a brilliant plan, I mean, how could other search engines compete with a rival search engine that merely has to look to its own network to index a sizable portion of the Internet. At any rate, this basic hosted solution has been around for a while so I don’t want to waste your time with information you may already know (here is more info on Page Creator). How Long Will Google Apps Be Free? If you signup during the Beta test of this program you will get use of Google Apps for free indefinitely according to the Google Apps Terms & Conditions but after the Beta Period you "may not" get the benefit of newly added technologies without paying. The following is relevant snippet from the T&C: No Fees . Provided that Google continues to offer the Google Hosted Services to Customer, Google will provide a version of the Google Hosted Services (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer indefinitely; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Google Hosted Services are considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion) and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Google Hosted Services in the future. Will There Be a More Advanced Version of Google Apps Soon? "For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Google Hosted Services for a fee." (Excerpt from Google Apps Terms & Conditions) . In fact, the answer appears to be a resounding yes since Google wants you to notify them if you are interested in a premium version so that they can let you know when it comes available. What Else May Be Coming to Google Apps? I fully expect that following apps will be included in the near future, just click on them to see their formal description at Google: * Google Notepad (more info) Share important notes with your staff and allow them to search notes company-wide. * Personalized Home Page Okay, I cheated here, Google has already posted that this will be coming and they even have a help menu setup for this already. Essentially this option will allow you to customize the home search page for your employees to a limited degree locking certain areas of their Google start page. * Google Reader (more info) This is a free RSS viewer that allows you to subscribe to and label RSS feeds such as The SEO Blog. I believe this application will be added to Google Apps, or at least should, so that Administrators can keep their employees up to date on their own company’s blog as well as their competitors’. In addition, RSS feeds are a great venue for continued education for anyone in a company; I constantly use them to keep up to date on the latest website analytics tutorials and upcoming web technologies. Ultimately, it would be great to enforce the viewing of certain RSS feeds for employees; much like locking areas of their personalized Google home page. * Google Spreadsheets (more info) Create your spreadsheets online and share them across your enterprise. * Google's Writely (more info) Create documents online, share them and publish them to your website. So You Have More Questions About Google Apps? Well! I tried to cover a lot in this article but I likely missed something so here is a direct link to Google’s help/FAQ area for this new service. Source: searchenginenews.com
Psst, Want a Hot Spot Paisano?
Surgeon General’s Warning: Prolonged exposure to the Internet can lead to physical dependency and addiction. Use of the internet can increase levels of anxiety and reduce attention spans.
Hello, my name is Gord, and I’m addicted to the Internet. I didn’t realize I was addicted until I recently spent three weeks in Europe and had to go through withdrawal. But after hanging around hotel lobbies, trying to get a hit from a local hot spot, I’ve had to face up to the fact that I can’t kick the habit. I need my broadband, baby!
Fear and Loathing in l’Italia
I didn’t go totally cold turkey. I had my PDA to keep up on emails, but it’s just didn’t give me the rush I was looking for. Here I was, surrounded by the culmination of centuries of artistic achievement, and all I could think about was where my Google hook up was coming from.
I speak somewhat facetiously, but there’s a lot of truth here. Here’s an online definition of addiction:
Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance. The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.
It seems to me that going online qualifies on both counts. There’s no doubt that being online is habit forming. But it goes further than that. I realized in the last 20 plus days that it’s hard wired into my physiology. Not having instant access was as foreign as not having my right hand. I use online a lot, mainly to access and assimilate information. I enhance what I see in the real world by researching it online, letting me place it in context for myself. And for the past 3 weeks, every sense I have has been bombarded to the point of overload by input. Art, history, locations, music, literature, architecture, it was all right in front of me. Paris, Florence, Rome: cradles of civilization that I was standing in the center of, and it was if I couldn’t fully assimilate them because I didn’t have access to an essential part of my cerebral hardware: the right brain, left brain and “wired” brain.
What’s It Worth to you Amico?
The analogy carries even further. Accessing the Internet while traveling in Europe is rather like hunting for illicit substances, in that it can be difficult to find and notoriously expensive. Five euros (a little over six dollars US) for fifteen minutes, thirteen euros for an hour, thirty euros for a day…I have a price list for hot spots around the continent imprinted in my memory.
I wasn’t the only one that went through withdrawal. My wife and two daughters showed similar symptoms, but for different reasons. For me, it was losing a logical and information gathering extension of myself. For them, it was losing a communication channel. They have adopted email as a primary way of keeping in touch (and instant messaging, in the case of my oldest daughter), and they felt somewhat cut off. This was somewhat demonstrative of the way men and women tend to use online, something I talked about in a previous column.
This is Your Brain on Hi-Speed
But addictions aren’t always harmful. One could argue that we’re addicted to oxygen. Breathing is certainly habit forming. So is there anything wrong with developing a strong dependency on the Internet?
One theory that I have is that our brains tend to gear up a notch when we go online. There is so much we do through computers that we have difficulty maintaining linear thinking when we’re online. Even if we’re focused on one task, there’s the knowledge that there’s email to check, things to look up, a hundred other things that we could be doing. Being online seems to increase our level of both anxiety and distraction, just because it’s so damn useful in so many different ways. Focus is a tough thing to maintain. We have seen manifestation of this in the way people act when on line. It’s nothing short of frenetic, skipping all over the page, multi-tasking, grasping information in a hundred little forays around the screen. It’s a different interaction from much of what we do day to day. Is it harmful? I’m not sure, but it does seem to be making permanent changes in the way we learn and communicate.
Anyway, I’m back in the office tomorrow, and will once again have my cerebral cortex plugged back into the Matrix. I’ll be wired again. I guess that’s a good thing, but I’m sure going to miss the espressos, Chiantis and Calabrese salsiccia.
Oh well, everything in life is a trade off.
Source: searchenginenews.com
The Problem With Building Content
With more and more companies earning their living by publishing content online, there’s a growing problem in regards to finding that content. The temptation to simply pick up and republish a piece that was found on another site can be overwhelming and plagiarism is starting to quickly run amok. It seems that I’m not the only one to notice this. Evan Roberts has a post this week over at Marketing Shift that notes the same problem.
From Evan’s perspective…
Many respected blogs lift multiple paragraphs from blogs and news stories that can make up an nearly the entirety of the content, and even with a link, that’s just wrong.
I agree with him. While I understand that the very nature of blogging requires that a blogger pick up enough of another post to be able to comment in context, it’s not uncommon to see a blogger pulling enough of the original post to give no reason to even visit to read the rest of the post. That does no favors for the blogger or writer that took the time to put those thoughts together in the first place.
Evan also points to a similar discussion taking place over at Robert Scoble’s blog. Scoble is currently doing battle with some scraper sites that seem to feel that his act of creating an RSS feed means that his content is free for the taking.
Says Scoble:
This is content theft and its not OK. If you are advocating this is OK you simply don’t understand copyright law.
As someone that makes their living by writing, I couldn’t agree more. As a practitioner of online reputation management, I find myself stopping by the blog search engines and the news search engines on a weekly basis to run a search for my own name. Sometimes I find another site linking to my articles, or commenting on something that I’ve said. That always sort of makes my day. Other times, I find AdSense splog sites that are simply republishing my RSS feed with a bazillion AdSense ads around it. While I’m not a huge fan of that idea, they are simply listing a brief snippet of my writing and linking back to me for the full read. Thus, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
But sometimes, I find an entire article of mine lifted and republished on another site. These sites seem to think that just because they’ve made up a bio for me and included a link back to Search Engine Guide that I’m going to be ok with it. Some of these sites have even had the nerve to email me to “congratulate” me for being worthy of having my content “republished” (umm…you mean stolen?) on their domains. As anything that I write for Search Engine Guide is under copy write, I find this to be absolutely astounding. Especially since I nearly always grant permission for a republish if someone takes the time to actually ASK.
That’s not to say that I don’t understand the temptation. Search Engine Guide puts out a lot of content on a daily basis and when you have one person primarily responsible for ALL of that content, it can get pretty exhausting. That said, I work pretty darn hard to find and recruit guest writers and to stay on top of their latest articles and submissions. In other words, you will not find a single “lifted” piece of content on Search Engine Guide because we will not publish anything that we don’t have actual permission to publish.
That’s probably a pretty good rule of thumb for any up and coming blogger or web site to live by. There’s a reason that content is valuable. It’s because it takes time and effort and skill to produce it. Just as you wouldn’t walk into your competitors store in order to steal enough products to stock your own, you should never dream of stealing someone else’s work to populate your own site.
Source: Searchenginenews.com
Windows Live QnA Launches
It’s a relay race that never ends. The baton passes from one player to the next as the search engines vie to put up the best of the best in all areas of search and search utilities. The latest runner into the game is Windows Live QnA, a combination search engine, answering service and social media site. The beta version of the site is Microsoft’s attempt to combine “applied human knowledge” with a “dynamic, social community.”
Initially available only in the U.S., Windows Live QnA builds on existing services like Windows Live Spaces and Messenger to flesh out Microsoft’s online community. The service basically works by allowing users to submit a question that can then be answered (and the answers voted upon) by other community members. Think of it as Microsoft’s version of “polling the audience” on Millionaire.
A blog post on the Windows Live QnA blog outlines some of the product features:
* A smooth interface that enables you to ask, answer and vote on a question.
* A free-form “tagging” system that allows you to attach your own keywords and phrases to your question to make it more discoverable by other users. With QnA, you tell us what the question is about, not the other way around!
* Integration with Windows Live Spaces via modules that show off questions you’ve asked and questions you’ve answered.
* See your score constantly increase on the Superstars page and earn reputation stars for consistently giving great answers.
* Windows Live Messenger “gleams” that show when you and your buddies have participated in QnA.
* Email notification that someone has answered your question, or when others have voted on a best answer, via MSN Alerts.
* Ability to tag embarrassing or “adult” questions with the “mature content” tag – which keeps explicit content away from those who don’t want it
* Ability to subscribe to a customer, question or site search via RSS.
I played around with the system for a few minutes and it’s pretty interesting. Think of Wikipedia’s open editor atmosphere of information, but without the encyclopedia style layout. Registered users can offer up their own answers to any question in the index and can also vote for existing answers that they feel best answer the question. Over time, those who post answers that receive votes can build up a positive reputation that’s listed along with their username.
That said, Windows Life QnA currently suffers from the plague that haunts any new social media community…lack of content. While there are plenty of questions being posted, I found few that had answers that would have satisfied me. (Though I fully admit that I was too lazy to take a moment to register so that I could enter my own answers…) It’s an interesting concept and I like the twist of allowing voting on the answers.
There are some limitations however that bring into question the reliability of the site. With so many questions being posted and sorted through on a daily basis, one has to wonder if the 4 days that are “allowed” for answering a question is going to be long enough. After all, despite the fact that I may have been able to contribute answers to several questions, since it had been more than four days since the question was posted, I no longer had the ability to write my own response, or even to vote on the other responses that had been submitted. That seems a little short-sighted for a new site…though I suppose they do need to draw the line somewhere. Then again…there’s no reason that they should turn off voting when they could simply allow for the “best answer” to change over time, depending on public opinion.
If you’d like to play around with it a bit yourself, you can give the site a test run at http://qna.live.com.
Niche Marketing and Keyword Selection: it’s Search Marketing Heaven
The beauty of e-commerce is that you don’t have to pound the pavement in search of buyers—they are already pounding the cyber sidewalk looking for sellers. However, you must still help your market find you amongst the billions of web pages competing for its attention. Strategically selected keywords can be your best friends in attracting niche traffic that is willing to spend.
If you are an Internet entrepreneur, a reliable strategy for building profits is to define the narrowest niche possible without squeezing your target market size out of substantiation. There are millions of people surfing the web with a few bucks to spend on a good fix, and if you can articulate the right fix to the right prospect, you’re in business. Anyone who says that niching will exclude too many potential buyers doesn’t know why he is in business in the first place. Moreover, a prospect pool with no common reason to buy from you is a headache that will cost time, money, and more patience than your sanity can afford. Get over your desire to be popular with the whole wide world and instead choose a niche.
Now that we’ve got your ego out of the way, let’s talk about what it takes to implement a keyword strategy that attracts highly targeted, qualified leads to your website.
If you know not only who your customer is (demographics) but how he thinks and feels (vamlues, needs, and desires), you can select keywords that will lead prospects straight to your front door with cash in hand. Start by brainstorming a keyword “seed list.” (If your SEO consultant doesn’t ask for this, take your money and run.) Resist the urge to think in terms of product or service naming conventions, although you may end up using some. People in your target audience may not be aware of such terms, but especially if you provide a niche product or service that has not yet been commoditized in the marketplace. Instead, think in terms of “answers”—answers to your audience’s most burning questions. Answers are what your best (read: loyal) customers will pay for. And if the answers (read: solutions) you provide are not easily duplicated elsewhere, they will pay handsomely.
As you brainstorm the seed list, be sure to cover a range of investigative thought processes. For example, if I am an online shopper looking for a way to protect my old hardwood floors, I am going to search on terms like “antique hardwood floor cleaners,” not “Joe’s Super Sonic Latex Shield for Veneer.” This is an admittedly silly example, but it illustrates the ridiculousness of trying to attract quality traffic by grandstanding, beating your chest, and yakking on in a language that only you, the seller, can understand.
Once you have established a seed list of about thirty to fifty terms, your SEO consultant can then begin the research process, usually with the help of a keyword tool such as Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). Here we find out what people are actually searching on. This is the exciting part (okay, maybe “exciting” is a stretch). Numerous phrases you had not thought of will reveal themselves—an excellent opportunity to brainstorm new content for your site.
During this research stage the important thing to focus on is specificity, perhaps the most overlooked tactic for attracting web traffic that will convert into sales or inquiries. This is as opposed to choosing sweeping or irrelevant descriptors that say nothing about your site’s offerings, product benefits, or how those things relate to the desires of your target market. In short, optimizing for non-descript or one-word terms being searched on by non-descript, aimless surfers is the equivalent of jumping into an SEO abyss. And if a fly-by-night SEO has promised you the ever-elusive top ten ranking, your site is about to be optimized for keywords that no one within a thousand miles of your target market has ever searched on let alone heard of.
Once your keyword list has been finalized, your SEO consultant will map two to three key phrases to each page of your website. At this point, the work of page optimization begins, a process that involves HTML editing, copy editing, page rewrites, and sometimes a total content overhaul. The resulting page copy should flow well and not actually “look” like it has been optimized. If it sounds stiff or silly on account of lame keyword integration, get another SEO. Search engines don’t appreciate this kind of content any more than your visitors will.
A true niche marketing strategy for keyword selection is unapologetic. It zeroes in on the desires of your target audience and doesn’t flinch because of the traffic it leaves behind. If you have a good copywriter on board, keyword niching also creates a website that conveys visitor relevance and stimulates a desire to act. Remember, the goal of Internet marketing is not to generate boatloads of traffic but to increase conversions. Niche boldly, know your audience intimately, and give visitors the specific keyword-rich content they are looking for. Anything more is superfluous and will dilute campaign impact. If you stick to your guns as a niche marketer, you’ll be famous with the people that matter and generate the “specific” ROI you have been aiming for.
Source: Searchenginenews.com
The Arrogance of SEO
I’m tired of the arrogance within the SEO community, specifically with those that claim themselves to be the keepers of all true and correct SEO knowledge. It’s pitiful, undignified, disheartening, and annoying, and I’ve had enough! Maybe other industries have their own similar issues that I don’t know about, but I do know what I see within the SEO community and I’m fed up.
Regular readers of my blog know that I am an avid watcher of the Apprentice. I like that show specifically because I like to see how the tasks are performed each week. From a business standpoint I like to see what the teams do to succeed; from generating the idea all the way to execution and the personality issues in between. Unlike other reality shows, like Survivor, where outwitting your opponents is first and foremost, even to the point of being dishonest in your relationships, the Apprentices is more about business acumen. Those candidates that go on and act as if it is a game like Survivor never become Trump’s Apprentice. Those that learn how to work with personalities they may conflict or disagree with often last the longest.
The SEO community seems to have a Survivor mentality rather than an Apprentice mentality. Many claim moral superiority in their own tactics while working hard to discredit or badmouthing anybody that does things differently. This isn’t a black hat/white hat thing, it’s a “my ways are the right ways and your ways are everything that’s wrong with the industry” thing. That’s actually what is wrong with the industry. To be fair, there are a lot of things that constitute good (ethical) and bad (unethical) business practices. In SEO, however, that word “ethical” has taken on a whole new identity to mean anything that company X says it should be. Last year I read a very prominent SEOer’s book which stated that submitting anything but your actual business name in the “title” field to an online directory, such as Yahoo, is “unethical”.
Come on. Really?
Business ethics are pretty much universal and there are very few instances where ethics apply only for a particular industry. Cheating your clients is unethical. Lying or misrepresenting what you can do is unethical. These are universal. Using keywords in the title of your directory submission is not.
(Note: I’m sure there are certain business ethics principles that only apply to certain industries due to the nature of those industries, such as ambulance chasing for lawyers, but you’ll pretty much find universal agreement that these practices are considered unethical. For instance, insurance brokers shouldn’t ambulance chase either!)
For some reason many in the SEO community frown upon many sound business practices as “unethical” even though these practices are routine business procedures for many successful and “ethical” companies. Maybe because SEO is online we are dealing with a slight variation of a practice, but at its core the principles are the same.
Let’s take an example of cold calling. In the SEO community, cold calling is often considered “unethical” or said to be done only by the most sleazy of SEO firms. My firm does not cold call, however I’m not opposed to cold calling as a sales strategy; for SEO or any other business. Many legitimate businesses rely heavily on cold calling in order to maintain and grow their businesses. Should they suddenly stop this practice their business would suffer, if not fail completely.
To be sure, nobody likes getting cold calls, or calls from telemarketers at their homes. But just because I don’t like it doesn’t make it unethical. Many businesses would simply call it a necessary evil, but to others it is certainly a legitimate sales technique.
The argument against cold calling in the SEO community is that good SEO sells itself. In a round about way, this is true, but I’m not one to wait around for that to happen on its own. Anybody who makes a good product ultimately produces a product that sells itself, but marketing that product is still important and essential. Good SEO often generates good word of mouth (the most effective form of marketing there is) but not always, or at least not always as frequently as one would like. In my experience, many very happy clients don’t like to give word of mouth because they want you to be their “secret weapon.” Either that or the pool which they have to spread the good word is limited.
Getting good word of mouth from colleagues is easy if you’re a great networker and have many friends in the industry. I’ll admit that networking is the skill I most lack from my business toolbox, but that doesn’t make my SEO services any less excellent. The alternative to great word of mouth is simply to be in the top position for ultra-competitive keywords like “search engine optimization” but from a business perspective, there are many legitimate reasons why you wouldn’t want to be in those positions. SEO guru Dan Thies had made this case himself in the past.
Yes, good SEO does sell itself, but that does not take the place of other forms of marketing. Even the most well-known SEOs understand this which is the reason many of them advertise on sites like Search Engine Watch, actively engage in PPC advertising and are known to sponsor or exhibit at events such as the Search Engine Strategies conferences. Not many would argue that these well-known, well-networked SEOs are good at what they do. But so much for good SEO being enough to sell itself. Marketing is an essential component to any business’ success.
SEOs that cold call do it for exposure and to draw new potential clients. Again, I’m not making a case here for myself or my own business, because we don’t market this way, but why should legitimate companies be considered sleazy for using this form of marketing? I think the simplest answer here is that many SEO companies that do engage in cold calling often are the sleazy ones, selling promises that they can’t deliver and getting sites banned from the search engines. Scorched earth SEO! Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. These companies are unethical because they participate in unethical business practices, not because they cold call. It’s silly to lump all cold callers in the SEO industry with those that are ethically challenged in other unrelated ways. Like I said earlier, nobody really enjoys getting cold calls but businesses do it because its a form of marketing that works for them.
Let’s take up UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) commonly referred to as SPAM. Nobody likes getting SPAM in their mailbox largely because it comes in mass quantities, you get the same emails to everybody@yourdomain.com, and its nothing you would ever be interested in. The Can-SPAM act was developed because sending out millions of emails costs a fraction of sending out thousands of direct mail pieces, and the ease and low-cost of sending out mass quantities of UCE creates a burden on computer resources as well as time being spent sorting through these emails on the user end.
But I don’t believe all UCE is SPAM. I received an email the other day inviting me to speak to a local gathering of business people from my area. I didn’t ask for this email and it is commercial in nature, does that make is SPAM? Most would say “no” because this is an email that I welcome. So now the definition of SPAM is any unsolicited email I don’t like but not the ones I do like. Therefore the true definition of SPAM is really dependant on each individual person because some UCE is welcome while other UCE is not. One person’s trash is another person’s opportunity.
Before we go any further, let me say that my persona distinction between UCE and SPAM is the automation. If the email was sent to me through an automated process I would consider it SPAM. If it’s simply an “opportunity” that I find annoying, but was sent to me or my business by a real person then I would say it’s not. But that’s only my definition.
If, however, all UCE is SPAM, then there are a lot of other business practices that should be considered as such and, if not regulated, should be given the same moniker of “unethical”. Direct mail is one. Is Safeway unethical for sending me coupons every week. I have not been inside a Safeway for years, but I keep getting their coupons in the mail. What about those fliers about missing kids. I didn’t ask for those, are the organization sending those out ethically challenged?
Watch any episode of The Apprentice and you’ll see teams not only cold-calling but often just dropping by businesses in order to try to sell them something. Nobody asked for them to call or come by so should Trump fire these teams for participating in “unethical” activities? Any team that took the view that cold calling or drop-ins were unethical would summarily lose the task and then someone would undoubtedly be fired for not doing enough to win.
I don’t have a problem with any person or persons in the SEO industry having an opinion about certain things. That’s all well and good and they are more than welcome to share what they believe for themselves and their own businesses. The problem I have is the self-righteous blather that spews out when these individuals believe that their way is the only right way. If they do it then so should you. If they don’t do it then you shouldn’t either.
This is nothing short of arrogance on the part of those that make a sport out of looking down on those that participate in marketing practices that they believe to be “unethical.” If one or more or even most SEOs consider something unethical, does it really make it so? Not at all, and this kind of self-righteousness doesn’t belong in the SEO or any other industry. It’s okay to have your way of doing things as long as it falls under your own personal ethics and the broader spectrum of business ethics as well. But your way isn’t the only right way, nor does anybody hold the monopoly on ethics.
The two examples cited above are in no way intended as a defense of these practices but more of a realistic view of such practices in the overall business sense. Disapproval of certain SEO practices is not limited to these two examples but is seen in many forms on many different topics from both black hat and white hat SEO as well as with practitioners of “textbook SEO” and “SEO 2.0″.
I never really understood the extreme “camps” that SEOs often find themselves in. I once stated on a forum that I thought that “the SEO community is [like] a prison environment. You’ve got to find a ‘hat’ to hang out with in order to find protection.” Things don’t seem to be as black hat/white hat as they once were but we still see an extreme arrogance on both sides of the spectrum. There are many SEOs who do things that I wouldn’t and I know I do many things that others wouldn’t.
Rarely do I condemn the tactics of other SEOs unless I know without a doubt that such tactics are derived from lies and/or lead to a site getting banned by the engines. The liars would undoubtedly be the ethically challenged ones while those that get their clients banned are only “unethical” if they have misrepresented their services. If the client was fully aware of the potential consequences then ethics is not really a factor. I personally think using any SEO tactic that might get a client banned is a bad business decision, but that decision is up to each business owner and their clients.
So why can’t we all just get along? Well, mostly because everybody thinks they are right. You can call it the religion of SEO where each camp believes they hold the keys to the only true path. But the last I checked, Google (or anybody else for that matter) never claimed to be the Way, the Truth, or the Life in regards to SEO. It’s one thing to make your points known and stick to your own beliefs in regard to what is right and wrong. It’s another to condemn practices that are routinely employed by other successful businesses as a standard form of marketing.
But maybe there is something to this whole arrogance of SEO. Maybe some of us truly are more right than others and some legitimate business practices really are unethical for the SEO industry. Maybe this industry has risen to a higher plane of existence in the business world. If so, perhaps we should start referring to our industry as SEO Almighty!
Source: searchengineguide.com
