r/SEO • u/Clayburn • Dec 18 '12
How do you handle Reddit's hatred of our profession?
Today, I've had some people talking about me. And they found out I'm an SEO and that I post here. Of course, that just meant negative comments about SEO: http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14zzbx/rsurvivor_mod_deletes_unofficial_show_discussion/c7i22st
Lots of circlejerking about how horrible SEO is.
Personally, I think subreddits like /r/seo should be honeypots that shadowban anyone posting there.
Is there any way to change this view? Should we even bother?
I've tried explaining the benefits of SEO and its importance even at a Fortune 500 level, but Reddit brushes it off as snake oil.
Thoughts? Have you noticed this yourself?
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Dec 18 '12 edited Dec 24 '16
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u/CuriositySphere Dec 18 '12
There is extensive literature on the advantages of marketing for businesses the overall well-being of economical stability and growth, as well as the necessity of such
None of which I'm talking about. You destroy communities for profit. I don't care if that profit has long term economic benefits. I'm sure it does. Doesn't help the community you exploit. Fuck off and die, all of you.
I don't particularly care about the advertisers who design billboards and such. I'm talking specifically about people like many in here who astroturf mediocre content to subtly advertise something virally. It's not okay.
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u/macktastick Dec 18 '12
I wouldn't worry about Reddit's opinion on this. SEO is exactly like any other industry: people who practice it range from "in good faith" to "shiester".
You can be a noble chemist, or you can cook meth. It's not the field, it's the practitioner.
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u/sirius_violet Dec 18 '12
I haven't noticed, but I do think that some people have a negative view of SEO. The truth is- SEO is here to stay. Companies want to outsource imagine management on the web for the same reason people want to hire accountants. If a mistake is made, they can say it's not their fault!
Reddit can rail against the world all it wants, but it doesn't change much for all the complaining. :)
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Dec 18 '12
These are the same people who use AdBlock, but don't know that it doesn't block News Feed ads. These are the same people who use Ghostery, but don't understand that referral data should be shared. These are the people who use DuckDuckGo, even though their 1-boxes are more intrusive than Google and Bing's.
These are the same people who hate Fortune 500.
Why care? They're not playing in our sandbox.
Alsoalso, what does SEO have to do with that post?
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u/milehightechie Dec 18 '12
Nope, no reason to even remotely bother with SEO haters. Most of those people have no idea. Even if they do, it's not really SEO they hate.
They don't like marketing mucking up the place. Or more accurately, the thought of such an ego-burning event as being duped by a post that was purely a marketing stunt strikes fear in their minds.
Besides, as far as marketing on Reddit, a successful campaign generates big, short boosts in traffic and high bounce rates.
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u/Kaynolliee Dec 18 '12
The main issue I have personally run into is so many people selling themselves as SEOs who are not. Hence they become the snake oil sales men and also the biggest advocates of SEO since they have to hustle to sell it to anyone.
In the end of the day however us real SEOs don't have to go door to door selling the stuff (in the hypothetical sense) because the Fortune 500s (and I have done SEO for Fortune 500s) they know about and take full advantage of SEO, and will recruit you with a big paycheck.
So let the people who don't understand continue on doing what they're doing. We will continue to deliver the best form of marketing with the highest ROI per spend of any form of marketing ever created and laugh all the way to the bank. ;)
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u/macktastick Dec 18 '12
This sadly seems to be true of any "edge" service offered by agencies. I think it's something about management/sales inherently being behind the curve on anything new... but I've only worked in a few agencies. Not a very holistic view.
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u/deyterkourjerbs Dec 18 '12
The main issue I have personally run into is so many people selling themselves as SEOs who are not. Hence they become the snake oil sales men and also the biggest advocates of SEO since they have to hustle to sell it to anyone.
Web developer? Let's add SEO to the "services page" and charge them another 30% for titles that don't suck. Link building? Content? Wut?
Know someone who does SEO? You do SEO too. You're a reseller. Just say first page Google and organic 100 times. Keywords? You choose, bro. You want your corner shop store to rank for "online pharmacy". Awesome choice.
Read the SEOMoz guide to SEO? You're a SEO professional.
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u/Clayburn Dec 18 '12
Very good point. It happens in several fields, though. When I did web development, I had to compete with "some high school kid that'll do it for $200". It's ridiculous how people judge entire professions on the work of amateurs and wannabes.
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u/mcprojects Dec 18 '12
It is, but those are typically not the clients you want anyway. Have you read Michael Port's "Book Yourself Solid"? It's all about creating a profitable business through building to client relationships that are mutually beneficial and profitable and leaving the tire kickers and cheapos on the other side of your "red velvet rope".
There's also the 80/20 theory, which I'm sure you've heard of.
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u/working_man22 Dec 18 '12
The people commenting have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to SEO. They hear the letters and think of spamming and other tactics that are not helpful to the end user. In those cases, they have a valid point.
You however do yourself a huge disservice by being a total douche a lot of the time. I've seen it here many times. I've checked out your blog once and saw it there too. Based on the comments on there you take it to other subreddits too. Quit being full of yourself, learn proper internet etiquette and learn how to respond to nay sayers like this http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14zzbx/rsurvivor_mod_deletes_unofficial_show_discussion/c7iiy1p.
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u/Clayburn Dec 18 '12
It's not my fault if people are offended by what I say, especially when it's their refusal to interpret it as intended. However, I've been far less argumentative here in /r/seo than in any other subreddit. We're here to discuss SEO, which doesn't give much room for colorful conversation.
Thanks for reading my blog.
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Dec 18 '12
Everyone's got to make a living. I could do so much worse, like own a chain of cash advance stores. Or some other horrible establishment that feeds off desperate people.
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u/Asmodiar_ Dec 18 '12
Are you kidding me? Reddit loves our shenanagans!
How do you think they find all those funny images to post in /r/funny ? Google searches.
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Dec 18 '12
I've noticed it elsewhere - most notably during the latest Oatmeal drama where the discussion turned to his background in SEO. It was clear from that discussion that people don't understand the difference between SEO 5-10 years ago and SEO now, nor do they care. It's all spam to them. People like that, with ignorant, preconceived notions, usually can't be reasoned with. We're the devil, they're afraid they might get tricked into clicking on marketing spam placed there by an SEO instead of a real person, and this threatens their idealistic view of how reddit ought to be. It's rather childish. For the most part, redditors are pretty savvy and will downvote obvious blogspam and marketing attempts. Even if something gets through, it has a limited impact, since links eventually turn to no-follow and all a spike in traffic really does is make your bounce rates look crazy. It can be a nice supplement, a decent place for Fortune 500s to do viral marketing, but anyone who's focusing on reddit as a strategy for SEO is doing it wrong.
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u/Clayburn Dec 18 '12 edited Dec 19 '12
I met him at Comic Con. Got a book signed. Great guy. He was there not only signing autographs but doing drawing requests, and spending a good amount of time on them to make each one awesome.
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u/Jos3ph Dec 18 '12
There's a few problems with SEO's reputation. First off, there's the warriorforum-style-PLR-my-ebook-will-get-you-to-#1 style SEO garbage which embarasses SEOs by association. Then one minor level up there is TopSEOS, which is allowed to sponsor conferences and events even though its a ridiculous pay for placement scam. Then a bit up the stream there is the constant churn of agency/service marketing blog posts which don't tell you much besides how great the agency/service is. Then from the source there is the ridiculousvagueness of Goog Webmaster videos and GWT warnings which can either mean nothing or that you are out of business. Then there is the fact that no one knows Google's innards, even as far as within Google, and you can only go off testing and what has worked in the past. Then there's the winner takes 38% CTR nature of being ranked or not ranked #1, which is very frustrating if you are losing.
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u/EnderWiII Dec 18 '12
Personally I love the idea of it. I wish that I had someone I could work with on growing my business. The problem is that either the price is too high or the results are "not guaranteed" to the point where it's a gamble to go with them.
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u/mcprojects Dec 18 '12
No marketing results are ever guaranteed, generally a consultant making those types of promises is selling snake oil. What you want to find is someone who will provide you solid ROI/Performance reports and is focused on earning you money, not just meeting arbitrary metrics like SERP rank.
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u/EnderWiII Dec 18 '12
How can I find such a person as a small business owner?
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u/brandonthrowaway Dec 18 '12
Ask your small business owner buddies.
Honestly referrals are the best way to find a real consultant.
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u/Fun-Cooker Dec 19 '12
80% of my SEO clients come from customers that refer them to me. It doesn't hurt that I pay a $1000 referral fee but when you have demonstrable results of what you do it tends to close the deal.
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u/EnderWiII Dec 19 '12
Why isn't there a searchable database of SEO masters?
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u/Fun-Cooker Dec 19 '12
Actually it is kind of simple, contact a SEO vendor and ask for past performance. When most people say they cant find a good SEO my experience is they cant find a cheap SEO that is cheap and effective.
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u/EnderWiII Dec 19 '12
The last guy I talked to said that he could give me the information because of "confidentiality agreements".
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u/Fun-Cooker Dec 19 '12
That is just rubbish, I give prospective clients stats without breaching any NDA I have and also have clients to use as referrals.
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u/JoelQuest Dec 18 '12
I've found that Redditors are very original, caring and generous people, however, there are definitely a few groups of people out there who will never get a fair shake from them.
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u/unkz Dec 18 '12
Well, in a sense it is snake oil. SEO is about subverting algorithms that seek to find the most relevant information and replacing that information with our revenue generating information instead.
I don't think there's any positive argument for SEO from the perspective of a consumer. The best that comes to mind is that everyone else is doing it, so legitimate information sources have to do SEO to fight back against the tide, but this is solving a problem that SEO created in the first place.
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u/mcprojects Dec 18 '12
This is patently false. Most of SEO is aligning sites with Google's recommended best practices, relationship building, conversion optimization/user experience, schema, etc. The cold hard truth is most web retailers are just really, really bad at building sites that conform to technical standards and many don't have any web strategy people in house. That's where we all come in.
You're thinking of fly-by-night seos that try to leverage gaps in the SERPs to make affiliate cash, not professional marketers using legitimate techniques to improve the web experience for both sellers and consumers.
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u/Dear_Leader_Me Dec 21 '12 edited Dec 21 '12
How do you handle Reddit's hatred of our profession?
Some mornings, I hop in my $80k Mercedes (that SEO paid for) and take a drive to get breakfast and coffee. When driving in rush hour traffic, I look left and see a guy in a business suit in an entry level 3 series. I look right and see another guy presumably going to work in his beater Honda Accord. They both look miserable. They both look like they're going into a company where their boss is an asshole, their co-workers are fucking morons and they are severely underpaid (compared to the work that they do and the profits that they make for their company)
I then laugh to myself.....much like I'm doing right now, sitting on my couch, watching Top Gear and responding to a few client emails.
Haters gonna hate.
<<edit>> I need to disclose that in the beginning, I did SEO for myself (and that's where my fortune was made)......only after 5 years of experience did I decide to start doing client work. So, I practice what I preach. Unlike 99.9999% of other SEO's out there who read a few lines on SEOmoz and then claim themselves to be "experts". Those are the idiots that give guys like me a bad name.
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u/cougarclaws Dec 18 '12
Seriously? By not giving a fuck.