I Know SEO and I’m No Expert
November 23, 2005 by Mary Jo Manzanares
Filed under Leadership
I love Successful Blog not only because of the content Liz produces, but also because of the way she treats everyone. There is no such thing as people of lower class on her site, everyone is treated as kings and queens. Monday she wrote a piece on SEO Optimizing Blogs which was a practical start to doing well in Search Engines. We all know there are a ton of factors to ranking well in SEs so I don’t think you can ever find a definitive source on this stuff, but her article featured some of the essential points.
More importantly the tone was set in a conversational style that you find the great teachers use. Nobody was talking down to anyone and the information provided wasn’t harmful. Sure you may not think that META tags are that important anymore, but does it hurt to include them, especially when you are using a Blog software that does it automatically for you? Point is with SEs changing their algorithms constantly how can we be certain of the importance of META tags? We can’t really, but it will never hurt to add them in properly (which I admit to not doing on this site).
Enter Performancing. These are the new kids on the block and Nick Wilson seems to be the ringleader. A great site for content, but not for tone. Admittedly they speak similar to myself at times and maybe I am just projecting my bad qualities onto them, but this kind of stuff irks me.
And you know what? You’re not an “SEO” just because you’ve read a few articles. That stuff takes years to learn properly, and for those that are good at it, and i mean genuinely good at it as opposed to pretending they are, it means staying on top of ever shifting trends, and increasingly difficult algorithms just to stay informed.
Was there a need to attack Liz and Eric there? Admittedly one of Liz’s faults is that she is too nice when handling confrontations. Again, I don’t think Eric and Liz attempted to come across as super experts, but they were just sharing their knowledge on what has worked for them. If you are going to call people out, call them on articles that are bullshit and not ones where they are just trying to help people. It has gotten to the point where Liz has crossed out the entire paragraph on META tags. Shame.
Admittedly I go after folks all the time. That’s my style and I do it when I see something that isn’t quite right and I believe Nick was doing the same thing. Maybe it’s because I know how wonderful of a person Liz is that I get defensive, but calling out her site like this was a bit underhanded. Adding META keywords won’t hurt your standings in the SEs unless you abuse them. All the rest of the information was useful and correct to my knowledge. The tone was perfect so why even bother saying they are pretending to be something?
Again I am more than likely being hypocritical by writing this, but if I made a blatant error in demeaning someone I would want someone to point it out to me as well. I have been called an “idiot” many times and a couple of other names that wouldn’t make my mother smile, but you can never accuse me of not listening. Nick, take note.
Funny that Mark Wade shares the exact same thoughts at the exact same time. Makes me feel a bit more comfortable about what I just wrote.
Man, you sure are quick!
Tell ya’ what - it’s a pleasure to know we’re on the same team and have the same thoughts and… feelings?
:-)
Enjoy your Turkey Day!
Mark
Thank you Paul,
You might be the first you ever said I was too nice. Nick knows how I feel about his behavior on my site. I took the conversation offline. I also took the conversation about publicly pointing out such things on his blog over to his blog. I brought Yaro in to set things straight on the Meta tags. Detleting the paragraph caused me no pain and was good model for my readers who need to know that I can admit a mistake.
But you said some words that were very meaningful to me–you said
More importantly the tone was set in a conversational style that you find the great teachers use. Nobody was talking down to anyone and the information provided wasn’t harmful
Thank you. I mean that.
Liz
“Admittedly I go after folks all the time. That’s my style and I do it when I see something that isn’t quite right and I believe Nick was doing the same thing.”
Very much so. But nevertheless, I sent both Liz and Erik an apology today via email. I should have been more careful with my language perhaps…
I think the sentiment stands, that it is very tough to be an seo (and im not one, i just run a site absolutely full of them heh..) and i still beleive that the intro wording (now changed) on Liz’s article gave a sense of “expert” opinion where it shouldnt. But having said that, I certainly didn’t mean to cause anyone upset.
Am I the only one who is getting Paul’s joke?
I too am an “SEO.”
Nick,
I don’t think you made any friends. It sounds like something I would do. But you guys are so professional.
Irrk. Got you on my bullseye. BTW. There is a funny article floating around about Performancing. You can find it. I am not going to thrown any more coals on this fire. OOPS I just did.
If no one can find it. I can help.
Cowboy Up!
As I read your post here I have some mixed feelings.
On one hand I totally agree with you - I’ve been finding that this kind of thing is happening increasingly lately (or maybe I’m just noticing it more). The negative vibe, jealousy, bitchiness and even hatred in our circles gets me quite down and I’d love to see things change.
Yep - the old attack post can get people some attention - but at what cost? I think the same message can be communicated in much more constructive ways without battering each other around.
My mixed feelings come in because Scrivs I find it quite amusing that these words are coming from your lips. While I love a lot of what you do one of the critiques I’d give you would be along similar lines to your post here.
You and one or two of the bloggers you work with can be up there with the worst of them.
I guess it’s a fine line - I can appreciate cynicism, telling it like it is and accountability etc - but I’m getting a bit tired of it all.
I wonder what could be achieved if we all decided to spend the time we normally would put into critiquing each other and put it to something a bit more productive. Most of us are pretty small fries - if we just focused our attention on working together instead of dragging each other down I suspect we’d go so much further.
Did I not admit to being a hypocrite for writing this entry? And I think you and your boys hear from me is because you guys (well mainly Wright) continue to make claims and then do the opposite. You are known for your friendliness and honesty and being in the game as long as we have there seems to be some conflict between what you preach and what you are doing.
As for Rundle and liberalcowboy it isn’t my job to control them. They have their beliefs and they believe strongly in them. They do come across as being harsh at times, but inside they are good people.
I do think you want a world where everyone minds their own business even when they see something wrong happening and for everybody to just smile and nod. It’s not about being negative all the time, it’s about seeing stuff happening that you don’t believe in. Nick believes that if you don’t know SEO you should talk about it, but he went about it the wrong way. Today Mike believed that if b5 is going to make a statement and say no more celebrity blogs then there won’t be. liberalcowboy believes that he is right and the world is wrong.
I do man up to my mistakes and I am well aware of what actions I take (as you can see in the entry), which is much more than others in this community can claim to.
And last time I checked Duncan wasn’t the greatest boyscout…
Hey,
My harshness is in jest. I emailed Nick in nice terms. The only one I handle harshly is * and we know who * is. And most anyone would believe he’s not ethical. I call it the way it is. A lot of people like that. A lot of people don’t. So what. I respect you Darren. I will take this to heart. But its not going to change that Nick’s slight of hand wasn’t right. It’s a lot different than just being an ass like me.
Yep you say you’re being a little hypocritical with your post and I guess I was just saying that that rang true with me.
Please don’t take it as a personal attack on you - just thought that since you mentioned it that you’d be happy to have people comment on what you’re writing.
To be honest I wasn’t really thinking of b5 when I was writing my comment this morning - I actually find your comments there helpful on most occassions. The way I see it you’re taking time out to help us improve what we do - I appreciate that.
I also never made any claim that any of the b5 team are boy or girl scouts (including myself - I’ve on occassion been as bitchy as anyone else). In fact at b5 we’ve on occassion had to pull each other into line - everyone has a bad day from time to time and I think being accountable to each other is a good thing.
In terms of Mike and David - I have no doubt that they are good people inside, I respect you each for different aspect of your blogging, I was simply commenting that you all have a hard edge to you in the way you talk about others from time to time. That’s cool - it’s your style but it does have an impact upon others just like the performancing guys have had an impact upon one of your bloggers.
You write - ‘I do think you want a world where everyone minds their own business even when they see something wrong happening and for everybody to just smile and nod.’
I don’t think that’s particularly fair. Take a walk through my archives and you’ll find examples of when I stand up for things I don’t believe in. Perhaps it doesn’t happens every day but I’m willing to do it.
‘It’s not about being negative all the time, it’s about seeing stuff happening that you don’t believe in.’
Yep I totally agree with that - I guess the question I’m trying to discuss here (as you are in your post) is that you can achive this in a number of ways - some more constructive than others. All I was expressing in my post is that I’ve noticed it happening increasingly happen in less constructive ways over the past 6 months. Your example at performancing is just one of these examples.
My hope is that we can find ways to critique each other that lifts up the community we’re all part of instead of bringing it down.
With regard to Mike today - cool, more than happy to hear his feedback. He’s expressing something we’ve talked about as a group and something we could improve upon. A note though - We never promised that there would be no more celeb blogs - 10 days ago we said there would be other types of blogs launched in the next few weeks along side our celeb blogs. There’s been one already and more will follow.
Happy for the feedback.
Scrivs, my man, I’m sure that you are right about some things here.
One - Nick’s a prick.
Two - Liz and Successful Blog are both A #1 Dukes of New York.
Three - Most bloggers don’t realize that they are just bloggers. In the big scheme of things, that don’t mean jack.
Four - We all, me included and lined up first, need to quit policing the blogosphere and just try and add to the blogosphere.
Five - You were hypocritical with some of what you said…like I just was, but you do seem to listen and even learn on occasion. Keep up the good stuff, drop the bad stuff.
nice comment Mike - particularly like #4…very cool.
I also agree completely with #5 - Scrivs is cool because he’s more than willing to learn, adapt, change in the midst of his telling it like it is.
Dang !
Even *I* must be learning if Darren agrees with me.
Now, if the Scriver-dawg agrees, the Apocalypse must be near.
But if he just appears in the third person, the end of the world is not immenent. Nor is it immediate.
I love you too Mike heh…
Really, im not sure what else I can do after apologizing and closing the thread, so I’ll just leave it at that and get on with writing.
I’m willing to allow those that were offered apologies to accept them and move on.
I wasn’t offered an apology, after you dissed me in an email, so I don’t have to accept jack-crap.
You deleted ( which seems to be your specialty ) my account at your site, after I complained about your vulgarity, and now I get an email everytime someone intro’s themselves and I can’t get in to unsubscribe from the raggedy thread.
Bad karma, crappy attitude, vulgar mouth, propensity to whine and cry, ability to pick on people who are trying to help others…you got it all, dude, you are the total package. How many little old ladies have you let go of halfway across the intersection this week ?
I’m gonna drop it, although your opinion , word and deed now mean squat to me and others. Hopefully thousands upon thousands of others. Tens of thousands would suit me.
Live long and prosper. Be happy. I love you, too.
If i remember rightly Martin, your account was blocked because you were disrupting the site, and being a nuicense.
Thanks for letting me know you have email problem going on though, i’ll fix that now.
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Gee Nick, you kill me with your kindness and attention to detail.
My name is Mike not Martin. Martin has not been in this post or these comments.
I disrupted noone. I emailed you PRIVATELY and you treated me like dirt, as is your style.
Privately I told you the utter vulgarity was a turnoff to the message you could spread, IF you’d not turn people away with your utter vulgarity. It’s almost like a teenager away at summer camp for the first time. Let’s curse real loud and show the world we’re men. Yeah, right.
I hope you do fix the emails, though, as I want nothing from ThreadWatch anywhere near my inbox, nor on my monitor.
I’m glad you remeber none of the details, shows how little attention you paid to me before you spread your poison. Seems to be a character flaw or something.
Two eyes, two ears, one mouth. God put them in that ratio for a reason. Maybe if you listen more, read more and SAID LESS, you’d be better off and might, I know this is s stretch, might have someone who listens to you.
Maybe even a friend.
Have a great day. It’s Thanksgiving here, so I’m gonna go give thanks that I’m not a sour SOB, like you.
Hmmm…
Ya’ know Nick, I had a friend once who, for the umpty umpth time came home Christmas morning after staying out drinking all Christmas Eve AGAIN and did the exact same thing he had done so many, many times before. He walks in the front door and hands his wife a hand-written note apologizing. The last time he did it, his wife told him “Don’t Move! I’ll be right back!” went into their bedroom closet, came out with a shoebox, opened it up and threw all the hand-written apology notes she’d been saving all those years right in his face saying disgustedly “There’s all your apologies, for what they’re worth!”
The Point? Nothing changes if nothing changes…
Tom never had another drink until the day he died about 17 years later, and lived a different life.
Has anything changed in your life since yesterday when you offered your apologies and said “I hope we can put this to bed?”
Or is this “So, to pick something as “light” as i can, so we dont risk anyone thinking im singling out their network heh..” an example of your continued sarcasm with hidden motives?
Man, you seem like a talented communicator. You have a following. TW is mentioned in places I’d love to be mentioned. Yet, you continue to “sound” the same. How about walking away from this? Can you do that and move on? Can you DO something different?
Or will you give me that lame-a** excuse I’ve heard a million times - “That’s just the way I am.”
Think you might be being a bit oversensitive there Mark, this whole incident has been on my mind, how could it not be heh.. It just came across in my writing, im kinda keen to avoid upsetting anyone else you know?
Sorry, sensitive isn’t what it’s about Nick. It’s about change. Don’t let it “come across” in your writing,
Walk away from it…
Don’t think about it - Be certain…
Lesson learned - Move on…
You’ll be better for it.
Nah…. you’re just seeing things that aren’t there mate.
Im out, got some other stuff to do,
have a good thanksgiving
Delusion is ugly.
Just in case there’s still a discussion here - it’s worth bearing in mind that there are many specialist areas within SEO, and everybody has their own different points of focus. Take any 10 SEO’s and they will have very different approaches. Yes, there are basics - but it’s a very entrepreneurial discipline.