You’ve done the research.  You’ve found the niche.  You’re pretty much first on the scene.

You’ve built the site, the content.  You’ve got the inbound links.  You’ve crushed everyone and are the dominant website result domain for nearly all related keywords in that niche.  You’re at the top for your niche and it’s making fat bank.  You’ve started saving, paying off bills, student loans.  You’re going on vacations.  You work from home.  You’ve got your girlfriend/boyfriend, wife/husband helping you and they’ve quit their regular day jobs and now assist you in your efforts.

You’re on top of the world.  You’re on top of the SERPS.  Your site rocks.  Your content rocks.  It converts awesome.  It’s a great user experience.  You SHOULD be at the top.  We’re not talking fucked-up pharma-spamming, we’re talking quality content, UI, and a great user experience that any FOUR PERSON QUALITY TEAM FROM MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA would be proud to serve to their users if they ever had to look at it.

Now comes the late-players.   They see you.  They see your site.  They want in, too.  They don’t know what they’re doing but they mimic your strategy.  They’ve got the freshness boost, no scars on their record.   There are so many.  The SERPS are in major flux all around you.

Then the worry sets in.

You’ve scratched and clawed to get where you’re at.  You rode the grey.  I’ll leave the term GREY to your imagination and interpretation since that term varies with whomever you ask.

Now, the worry of losing it all is not only a possible reality, but the penalties are now huge.  Then it hits you:  YOU’RE AT THE MERCY OF A FUCKING BOT AND FOUR DUDES AT THE GOOGLEPLEX continually working on automated methods to destroy you.   They control your life.  Your marriage bliss.  Your happiness.  Your retirement.  The worry is killing you now.  You can’t even enjoy your time anymore because you don’t want to get too used to your new lifestyle.

You see people going to their day jobs in the morning, going to their car with their coffee in their hand.    You’re just going to bed because you’ve played Battlefield 3 all fucking night.

So, you come up with a solution.  Go white hat?  Yeah, right.  Enjoy Page 3, dude.  Well, maybe you can pull it off by weaning your site from grey?  You come up with a weaning plan that will take 3 months.  You’re going to slowly remove the grey from your SEO campaign.

MISTAKE #1:  YOU TRY AND SWITCH YOUR GREY HAT SITE TO WHITE HAT
So, going grey has turned you grey.  Yeah, it’s a pun.  Fuck off.

Like a house built on a foundation, your inbound links, however they were acquired, are part of an interwoven chaos of query result relevance.   If you try and wean yourself off of grey hat strategies, you’ll likely find yourself in a precarious situation.  Not only will your core site drop, but all pages that the root domain was feeding will suffer as well.  Google, it seems, is somewhat unforgiving when it comes to SERP drops.  Once you’ve experienced a SERP drop due to lost links, getting those SERPS back isn’t as easy as just waiting it out.    The inbound links that you had removed were aged, long standing links.  You’ve just kicked out one of the support beams for your house.  Don’t think there won’t be penalties.

Sure, your content is strong, your page architecture excellent.  But the playing field is set so only the risk takers win.  If you try and go white hat out of the gate, you’ll never get anywhere.  You try and switch to white hat after-the-fact, you risk losing it all.  SO YOU’RE FUCKING FORCED TO LIVE WITH THE ANXIETY.

NUT-UP SOLDIER
Very few of us have mentors in the SEO-as-a-business world.  I’m talking about someone who has lived your life, experienced what you experience.  You’ve most likely only got one person to turn to in times of crucial decision-making.  THAT’S YOU.  However, if you did have a mentor, someone whom you respected, they’d likely tell you this:  “NUT UP.  QUIT WHINING.  This is how the game is played.  That’s why it’s not easy.  That’s why not everyone can do it.”  

I will tell you that it’s very easy to start getting down on yourself.

Criticizing yourself for playing hard and riding the grey?  Don’t.    This is how the game is played.  This is the life you chose.  This is SEO.  It has benefits.  Money.  It has risks.  Loss of money and lifestyle.  The only thing worse than losing it is having it in the first place then losing it.  If you never had it, you didn’t even know what you were missing.  Yeah, I’m getting all philosophical and shit.

STRATEGIES

Fucking save your cash.  Live like a pauper as comfortably as you can.  If you start to spend your cash with the rationale that “you’ll make more next month,” you’re playing on dangerous ground.    When you check SERPS 2-4 times PER DAY, you’re just WAITING for the blood-warming drop day.   You’re sure it’s going to come.   Right?  You’re already prepping yourself mentally for it.  But when it comes, you can’t fully prepare for it, mentally.  It will always hit you hard.   Your only solace is the fact that you banked as much as you could and didn’t squander it when you had it.

If you started out grey, you’ve got to ride it out.  Which would be worse to you?  Having top serps, making money, then losing it because you couldn’t take the heat of running a grey campaign?  Or getting nailed by an algorithm adjustment and getting your ass handed to you?   I’ll take the latter.

Know that any great idea you come up with in terms of wordage, UI, design, or on-page strategies will be copied by every one of your competitors:   You can rest assured that any ideas you deploy will be copied.   Think that the search engines will rank your content first because you fucking wrote it?  Not always.  Fucking BingHoo is dumb as shit.   BingHoo allows competitors to outrank my site often, with my content, that they copied and pasted.  DMCA them?  Perhaps.   Don’t take it personal.  Well, try not to anyway.

Don’t make any major changes near the holidays:   If your niche is dependent on sales of products, the time for experimentation is SPRING, not FUCKING NOVEMBER or DECEMBER.   Got a great idea that you’re sure will convert well?  Great, save it for SPRING and try it out then.

Try to realize that your life is short on this planet.  You make money, you live, then you die.  It’s that simple:   If you do have a bad-SEO-day, and shit hits the fan, and it looks like it’s game over, your only hope to get yourself out of your funk is to get back to basics.  Could you have done it differently?  Sure.  Could you have played it safer?   Sure.    Would you have had the same awesome results?  No.    This is how this shit works:   Grey hats at the top.  White hats in the middle.  Black hats near top briefly, then nuked forever.

This is the gift and the curse of top rankings.

Seven pages in to this 66-page report I realised that these guys weren’t really competition. The report was so chock full of disinformation, ignorance, and random stupidity that any SEO work they end up doing is likely to be of pretty abysmal quality.

But I’m still bloody annoyed. Annoyed that witless chimps like that get to write site audits for big UK brands. It’s testimony to the FUD surrounding SEO – as well as the general ignorance about SEO pervasive in the corporate world – that clueless halfwits manage to talk big corporate management types in to buying their services.

A Look Inside a Useless SEO Audit

So what exactly did this report contain? Let’s take a look:

Fairly early in the document, in the context of competitive analysis, it says that the amount of results that Google says it’s found for a given query is an indicator of how competitive that query is.

Really? It’s a pretty piss-poor indicator, if you ask me. Sure, you can use it as one aspect of broader competitive analysis, but the report does no such thing – it mentions this metric right at the start of its competitive analysis section, and doesn’t do much to put it in its proper context. Which is pretty fucking stupid.

Secondly the report claims, straight-faced, that the links shown in Google Webmaster Tools show "the full range of backward links that Google has indexed". At which point I loudly proclaimed ‘GTFO’, to the amusement of my colleagues.

It gets better. Shortly after that proclamation, the report has the audacity to refer to "Google Page Rank" aka; toolbar pagearank, (yes that’s how they typed it) as a valid indicator of a site’s quality. Oh dear.

They go on with blowing shotgun-sized holes in their feet by referring to ‘inanchor:’ and ‘intitle:‘ search queries, implicitly assuming that the bullshit Google serves you on such queries is actually accurate:

"The fewer results that are returned for an ‘inanchor:’ search, the easier it should be to achieve high rankings for the keyword being analysed".

And it goes on and on… using the ‘site:’ command to measure indexation, recommending using the ‘title’ attribute on all links to improve SEO, using the ‘link:’ command as the primary method of finding sites that link to competitors, and recommending the site’s HTML code should be W3C valid. (They see the 20 validation errors on the site’s homepage as a strong indicator the code needs to be improved. Fuck off. 20 errors is about half of what I consider acceptable for large ecommerce sites like that one.)

Where’s the beef?

It’s not all bullshit of course, the report contains some actual useful tips. But not only is it immersed in such horrendous beginner errors, it also features some glaring omissions: nothing at all about site structure and semantic tagging – which for the site in question has huge potential – and nothing about the site’s dismal URLs either.

This sort of shit pisses me off to no end. It infuriates me that such uneducated ‘tards successfully manage to peddle their quackery to big companies. It’s not just the fact that they get paid to write uninformed shite like that – it’s the fact that they probably get away with it, time and again, because their clients simply don’t know any better.

The people who wrote that report probably consider themselves to be pretty clever, cutting-edge SEOs. And that, most of all, ticks me off, seeing the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

As I sat here reading an article (on WSJ) interviewing, (Google CEO) Eric Schmidt, I was sort of struck stupid by a few of the statements. Are we, the general public, just a bunch of idiots shitheads looking for guidance from Google? Is it true that we really can’t think for ourselves?

To whit, a few quips;

“Says Mr. Schmidt, a generation of powerful handheld devices is just around the corner that will be adept at surprising you with information that you didn’t know you wanted to know.”

OK hold the fucking phone here… Google wants to tell me things I DIDN’T want to know? Am I such a dork that when I search for Pizza it’s going to give me porn? If I wanted sausage on that, I woulda’ ordered it ok?

And how about;

"As you go from the search box [to the next phase of Google], you really want to go from syntax to semantics, from what you typed to what you meant. And that’s basically the role of [Artificial Intelligence]. I think we will be the world leader in that for a long time."

Uhm… so Google is going to think for us? Fuck what I put it in the little box, allow Google to tell you what you actually meant.

So, let us recap so far;

• Google will tell me what I am thinking
• Google will be giving me things I didn’t know I wanted?

Further to that he stated;

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

Dear lord jebus on a stick… these guys are freaky. Is it just me or does this all smack of some Orwellian nightmare?

Time for a name change

And that was just some of the search related madness I came across in it… not to be outdone, he also talked a little social… ready for this one?

According to Scmidt,

“we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.” But have no fear because Google also predicts that, “…. every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites. “

WOW… just… WOW… This guy really has been smoking some of the good shit and I’d be ever so grateful if he could send me a pound or two of it.

Anyway… just had to mention it as this had me more than a little freaked out by the visionaries over at the big G.

THE SEO CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL!

It all started out innocently enough. I posted a couple of job openings on the SEOmoz marketplace and indeed.com looking for a mid-level experienced SEO project manager to add to our team. All of the usual suspects responded. You know the ones. Ignored the “full time in-office opportunity only, no outsource operations or net-commuters” and sent me their broken English “Dear Sir/Madame I’m Habeeb and my team can get you to #1!” form (spam) letters. After I deleted those without reading passed the first sentence carefully filed those away for future reference, I stumbled upon a real gem.

Holding a MS from NYU and claiming vast experience in all areas of search, analytics and email marketing – he almost made it to the “to be interviewed” pile. That is of course until I got to the part of his resume that read:

SEO CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL

WTF? Since when did our industry elect a governing body sanctioned to pass out certifications?

I quickly fired off an email to him telling him that there was no industry recognized certification and that representing himself as holding one disqualified him from working for us (common sense is one of our prerequisites).

He replied in short order to tell me I was misinformed and that he did in-fact have such a certification obtained from seocertification.org. Oh goodie! Let’s take a look!

Before I’m even 10 seconds into the site I note that they didn’t even apply one of the most basic SEO fundamentals: Canonicalization

Observe:
http://seocertification.org
http://www.seocertification.org
http://www.seocertification.org/index.php
http://seocertification.org/index.php

Well hmm maybe in googles new search engine little details like this don’t matter anymore. I mean what do I know compared to these l33t SEO experts? I am, however, confused how they proclaim to be  “The pre-eminent source of information, education, and certification assessment for the constantly evolving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry worldwide” on same page as they list Alta-vista and Lycos logos as if those were still remotely relevant.

Those names ring a bell? Oh yeah, that’s right, they died about the same time as the first Playstation and dial-up Internet. But hey maybe I’m making a snap judgment. Best to look at the testimonials before walking away from an opportunity to “Benefit from Industry recognition, Enhanced job opportunities & increased customer satisfaction”. Let’s see…

“I wanted to keep you posted on the current ranking that my new site has received from MSN’s Search Engine. I’ve copied and pasted the results as of today. I’m delighted to say the least for receiving a position in the top 5 for the keyword ‘seo optimized’.”

OH SNAP! I want to know how to rank for useless keywords in search engines that no longer exist too!!! But how long does it take to learn such amazing skills?

“I actually found myself glued in front of my computer once I had registered and downloaded the Study Guide. I didn’t want to stop reading and practicing the test questions. All in all, I spent 3 days doing this and then felt I was ready to take the exam.”

Crap. I must be doing something wrong. Here I was under the impression it took years to hone your skills in this industry but apparently the geniuses at seocertification.org managed to compress all that information down into a digestible 3 day study guide.

LET’S CUT THE BULLSHIT:

Q: Is there a real SEO certification?

A: To make it short and sweet – No.

SEO is a constantly changing field, moving with the winds of the geeks at Google and other search engine behemoths. With each “feature” change and exploit and counter-exploit in the improvement to the search algo, what is a proven tactic today may be obsolete in a month. In such a dynamic field, any such “certification” at present will be rendered pretty useless in just a year’s time.

In addition, there is a sharp difference between being “industry-certified” and obtaining a “certificate of completion.” To sum up the difference, certification means being truly tested and approved as an expert by the industry’s recognized certifying body, such as the MD certification for physicians. A certificate,meanwhile, is just a fancy piece of paper which, depending on the situation, can interchangeably be used for either wiping your ass or impressing a potential employer who knows nothing about the position he/she is interviewing you for. Take your pick.

In the end, you don’t need a PhD (or certification) to know the difference. It all boils down to common sense. Would you pay for “SEO certification” from a site that’s not optimized, and lists engines you haven’t searched since Netscape Navigator?

I think not. But then again, I’m not certified. What do I know, right?

Until we break out laughing.  Which is what happened last night when I found out that Google has a new search engine.  And while some Internet Marketers are in an uproar, apparently others are making millions!  Or at least that’s the opening salvo at one asshat site, GoogleCaffeine.com.  So I had to speak up.  Because this one is just so over the top that I nearly puked my breakfast out all over my desk…

No Link Juice For Dino

I’m not going to give a link to Dino Vedo, the mastermind behind that crap.  Just mentioning it was more than I’d normally prefer to do.  But Jesus Horatio Christ, you’ve got to see this bullshit for yourselves.  But before you go – be sure to put on your grease-monkey overalls.  That way, when you puke your guts out all over the place, at least your clothes will be protected…

Anyhow, for those of you too afraid that actually seeing the site will cause you to laugh so hard you’d rupture your spleen, just envision the typical endlessly scrolling one pager douchebag marketing pitch that offers naive, dumb, or otherwise mentally deficient people the opportunity to find fame, fortune, and, once they realized they’ve been sucker-punched into a load of craptastic bullshit, endless fits of frustration…

Except Dino boy takes it to a whole new level.

Taking It To A Whole New Level

Dino’s really gotten creative – where he takes real-world terminology and concepts, then twists them into a panty-knot of unreality that still “sounds” right.  At least to the hordes of Shoemoney-esque wanna-be’s in the world… :-)  And he does a stellar job of spinning the daisy-chained panty-knots, to the point where, I suppose, if you really do come from the Brad Fallon fanboy fold, you’ll just be dazzled by the level of bullshit…

Exhibit #1 – The Opening Shocker

Yeah- isn’t that frakkin special?  Ole Dino touts his offering by associating himself with CNN, Twitter, bing and Google.  Like he’s been featured in some bullshit frakkin television show or somethin…  Although I’m sure he’s not lying TOO MUCH given that he’s using Google’s brand in his frakkin domain name – and so far Google hasn’t slapped him for it. Just do a search for Google Caffeine and sure enough, he’s there in the SERPs.

(Hey Matt – ya may wanna slap this boy Dino at some point, ya know?  Because if you don’t, I will – and if I slap him, it’ll be so hard he won’t see stars, he’ll see frakkin water-buffalo’s that look like dancing girls in brown mud-soaked bikinis…)

Google’s New Search Engine?

So I guess the rest of us shlubs in the SEO business didn’t get the frakkin memo from Matt.  But apparently Caffeine wasn’t the change to the process of indexing we’d been led to believe (thus called their new search index), but they went and threw out the entire existing algorithm! OMG no wonder every one of my client’s sites plummeted into the basement!

Oh. Wait.  That didn’t happen.

No, not one single site saw a drop of any significance with Caffeine’s rollout.  I must be one of the lucky few, I guess…

Anyhow – I love how he uses the George W. Bush “you’re with us or against us” tactic there highlighted in yellow – don’t you?  Except instead of cowing people into thinking their either patriots or terrorists, he’s going for those half-a-brain hopefuls that he lures to the site to think – Hell – I’m either gonna be on the side of the whiners, or I’m gonna finally get my chance at makin millions! Yeehaw!

Exhibit #2 – The Classic Tangible Asset

And lookie here – Dino then shows his “mind-of-a-3rd-grader” readers the awesome book they’re gonna be offered later on down below the fold… though it’s just an e-book and it’s not so unheard of for e-book writers to make such a representation.

But just look at this sucker – “Master Google’s New Search Engine…”

“Rank Higher in Caffeine” – don’t you just love how these jackass marketers take real-world terms and play off them?  (Except Caffeine is the name given to a change that  was made to the index,  it’s not the frakkin name of the Google database…)

Of course, if you want to rank higher in Caffeine, it’s helpful to learn how to optimize your site for it, which will help to ensure that you don’t end up doing the Google Dance!

Okay, I apologize – after that last sentence, I had to go over into the corner of my office and sit on the floor so I wouldn’t go into an asthma-induced coma from laughing so hard!  Fortunately I’m back to my senses now…

Of course, such a stellar pillar of the Internet Asshat Offering world,  Dino Vedo himself, shows his face.  It’s nice to see he’s willing to let the world know who he is and what his before-I-am-Arrested-For-Internet-Marketing-Fraud mug shot looks like. :-)

Exhibit #3 – Chock Full Of Typical Bullshit

The rest of this too-good-to-be-true “sell ice to Eskimo” pitch is just chock full of motivators.

Don’t Waste Another Minute!

Warning! Results May Shock You!

Get a FREE Tip To Improve Your Ranking In Caffeine Right Now!

See What Our Customers are Saying…

Quality Over Content Is Key!

My guide purchase is entirely Risk-Free and is backed by 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!

$49.99 – “Launch Exclusive Offer

Everything you need to arm yourself to fight the Caffeine update is here, now it’s your turn. Get started today!

———————————————————————————————————–

Exhibit #4 – The Testimonials Circle Jerk

One of the more typical bullshit hype games Vedo plays is the crappy Testimonials circle jerk.  This is where Vedo solicits customer testimonials from his circle of jack-off buddies in the internet marketing scam business.  In this case, for example, we’ve got a testimonial from none other than the very Don Leadman himself.

Just do a Google search on Donny boy, and you’ll see where this is going.  The first result in the SERP for Donny comes from MoneyFanClub – “For the Online Money Makers” :-)  In this entry, Donny posts a forum entry that has the subject line of:

$7,500 in 30 Days with $47 investment. Real Business! Money Back Guarantee!

Of course, since Donny is just a n00b to the whole ripoff-your-high-school-jock-followers-who-are-dumber-than-a-bag-of-rocks crowd, he’s only got a “Junior Member” status on this site.

But let’s not go crying for Don Leadman just yet.

It turns out that Dino’s wanking partner Donny likes to call himself a “Lead Offline Marketeer”.  Whatever the frak that means…  He’s got a site called OfflineMarketingPro.com  – where he opens with:

“Near-Bankrupt Father-To-Be Discovers Untapped ’Real World’ Goldmine Of Easy Money With Nothing But A Laptop And A Hunch…”

And that site’s – ya, you guessed it – another scrolling land of fantasy opportunities…

Exhibit #5 – But Wait! There’s More!

Donny doesn’t rest on his laurels.  Nope.  See, back over here on Dino’s site, Donny’s testimonial shows that Donny has another site – YoungAffiliate.com :-) and let’s not forget or ignore his other domain BigBackLinkBomb.com!

Exhibit #6 Bringing The Jerk Full Circle

Just do a search for Dino Vedo and you’ll be SHOCKED to learn he, too has other fish frying…

DinoVedo.com for example.  Where he bills himself as

“A young entrepreneur turned millionaire”

And VedoMedia.com Where his tagline reads “Seo Experts, Marketing Gurus, and Super Affiliates…

Yeah, Seo, not SEO. 

In Conclusion

So let’s just skip right past the asshat “before you go are you sure you want to throw away your life” pop-up that opens when you leave the site.  Or the fact that even though Dino displays an Authorize.net secure checkout button, a BBB Online Reliability program button, an Authorize.net Verified Merchant button, and a “100% Secure Purchasing” button, none of these is clickable.  Because when you click on Dino’s “Order Now” button, you actually go to “TrialPay.com”, which is secured using Verisign, and has a McAfee Secure icon…

And that’s kinda like the Internet Porn payment system of douchebag Internet marketing…

Which means that if you’re one of the dumbest jackasses on earth, none of that matters.  Even though it’s Bullshit.

And The Feather In This cap

The icing on this particular bullshit cake?  When I came upon this particular dung-heap, I tweeted about it.

And to that, Dino Vedo himself responded

:-)

Greetings, SEO Bullshit readers! So my pet peeve is receiving unsolicited emails, especially when our marketing brethren take it upon themselves to add my email address to a list of marketers. I hate it even more when there is no unsubscribe and the sender claims it’s somehow “personal” or that I’m not on a “list.” Eeesh, it makes me want to vomit on my shoes or kiss someone with terrible teeth.

I should know better than to engage those I perceive as spammers. Like trolls and rouge affiliate marketers, those I consider email spammers seem to display a peculiar sense of entitlement. Really. Who the hell are you to add my name to your little sales list?  Because I use GoogleApps, I don’t see much actual is-it-spam touch my inbox. SO, when I DO feel as if I’ve been spammed, I take a moment to make sure it does not happen again.  Here’s a thread from last month, which I was going to leave alone until the writer emailed me again a couple of days ago.

Maybe my skin is a tad thin. Maybe I should just press delete and forget about those who strike me as dweebs. Either way I hope you enjoy this little exchange, culminating in my protracted rant to the sender. BTW, the English language hacks and misspellings are straight from the writer’s pen. I’ve messed up the URLs so no outbound links are given from this publication.   :) -aimClear, Duluth, Minnesota-

From: Tanu Sinha
To: Marty Weintraub
Subject: Hi Marty
Sent:  May 22, 2010

Hi Marty,
This is a one of a kind opportunity to instantly corner a big piece of the  SEO traffic online.

As you may already know SEO Agency is one of the key words that searchers  use when they want to spend more on Seo than someone searching for a Seo  consultant for example. SEO company and SEO agency are two of the three best converting keywords for the SEO industry.

www. Search Engine Optimization. net was recently sold for a reported $60,000 to  Patrick Gavin the founder of Text Link Ads.

I am offering you the opportunity to own:

www. SeoAgency. net and www .SeoCompany. net

Both equally valuable domains.

According to the Google keyword tool; set to exact match:

SEO agency  gets 4400 US searches per month and 12,100 searches per month  globally. The average cost per click on Google is $4.39 if you were to buy  Google AdWords.

SEO company gets 27,100 US searches per month and 60,500 global searches per  month. The average cost per click on Google is $6.55 if you were to buy  Google AdWords.

As you know the first step for someone that needs SEO is for them to make a  website so why not own one of the top three best domains for web design  www.WebDesignCompany.com

The keyword web design company gets 18,100 US searches per month and 49,500  global searches per month.  The average cost per click on Google is $4.61 if  you were to buy Google AdWords.

We are considering offers.

Financing Available!

Price:

w w w SEO agency. net $30,000
w w w.SEO company. net $35,000
www Web Design Company. com $45,000

Our other SEO company may also be for sale at the right price:

In business for over 5 years with an A rating from the BBB and zero negative  remarks anywhere on the web.

Here is the current revenue:

14 Clients:

$1500/mth
$500/mth
$5500/mth
$1600/mth
$350/mth
$1000/mth
$1000/mth
$1000/mth
$800/mth
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Total Monthly Revenue: $17,148
Please email JP to jeanpierrek@mac.com

Best Regards,
Tanu Sinha
Constant Click // An SEO Agency
{email} tanu@constantclick.com
{dir}   305.663.7305
{fax}  800.683.7341

View our BBB rating here http:/ /www . seflorida . bbb. org /Business-Report/Constant-Click-LLC-92015936

Constant Click only uses ethical Search engine positioning and Internet marketing services to increase your website visibility and improve your conversion rate. We do not perform any activities that will get your site blacklisted, banned or penalized on Google or any of the other major search engines. In addition we do not use cloaking, doorway pages, micro sites, keyword stuffing, hidden text, external landing pages, link farms, temporary bought links, or black hat techniques of any kind.

———————

Marty to Jean-Pierre

Do I know you, to receive unsolicited email? Or is it spam?

Sincerely,

Marty Weintraub: President, aimClear
Office: 218-727-4325
Twitter: @aimClear

———————
From: Jean-Pierre Khoueiri
To: Marty Weintraub
Subject: Unsubscribe
Sent: May 23, 2010 1:11 AM

It wasn’t a mass email, it was sent to specific individuals, and since you are not on our list there is nothing to unsubscribe from.

Best,
Jean-Pierre Khoueiri
Constant Click
305.331.4893 cell

———————

Marty to Jean-Pierre

Please remove us from your not-a-list list :).

Sincerely,

Marty Weintraub: President, aimClear
Twitter: @aimClear

———————

Marty to Jean-Pierre

Jean-Pierre,
Just for the record, the reason your email tweaked me was because I found it ironic that a company would brand about being “ethical” marketers in a lightly-customized spam mail to the personal email of someone they don’t know personally.

It’s hilarious to say that the email was sent to “specific individuals” and not to a “list.” That’s a riot, dude. Does that mean that those on a “list” are not “individuals?” I think you meant to say that it is not a mass list. Still, the fact that you’re talking about individuals means that someone, somewhere has a “list.”  WTF?

You did not do your homework about us enough to personalize the spam to the point where I might accept the inquiry. The kind of customer you will reach who DOES accept this type of junk may not be the caliber potential buyer you seek.

This is my pet peeve: email solicitations that don’t have unsubscribe links. Just because it came from your Outlook or Gmail email does not mean that the responsibility for unsubscribes is abrogated.

Regardless of how you paint the non-list list, the email solicitation violates spam rules. Any company that takes that approach must have pretty cheesy clients.  Why would we want to buy THAT? I am on holiday with my family. Why would I want to wake up to your spam?

A better start to the spam might have been:

Dear Marty,

We’ve never met but we are aware of you by way of your SearchEngineLand, SearchEngineWatch and aimClear Blog articles over the years. I saw you speak on agency business models at SMX Advanced last year.

We don’t want to break any spam rules, so if you are not amenable to an approach by an industry peer regarding the sale of our agency and its assets, please type “remove” in the subject of a response email and we won’t contact you again. Just so you know, this email is not to a list, per say, rather personal to 5-6 agency owners. Thanks in advance if you continue reading… Thank you for your time, sir.

I think I need to blog about this. I may reproduce the entire thread for the benefit of readers and let them decide :).

Sincerely,

Marty Weintraub: President, aimClear
Twitter: @aimClear

———————

From: Jean-Pierre Khoueiri
To: Marty Weintraub
Subject: Unsubscribe

Marty,

Didn’t mean to disturb your holiday mate. Surely, mine wasn’t the only one you didn’t ask for. And as opposed to an offer for cheap seo services or viagra like most spam you might get, this email actually had something that might be interesting for an seo/internet advertising agency.

I wasn’t under the impression you had to know someone personally to send them a message. It would be the equivalent of never saying hi or making an offer to someone if you don’t already know them.

What I meant by individuals and not a list, was that these where sent one a time and not a list. No there is not a list. Sites where targeted for their vertical, and sent an email, there was no record kept of who was emailed.

Didn’t want to do homework on dozens of companies/  We have 3 interested parties all in our price range.

Let me know how the blog goes.

Also, I own Internet Advertising Agency. com if you’re interested.

Best Regards,
Jean-Pierre Khoueiri, Dir
Constant Click // An SEO Agency
{email} Jp@constantclick.com
{dir}   305.663.7305
{cell}  305.331.4893
{fax}  800.683.7341

———————

3 Weeks Later…

———————

From: Jean-Pierre Khoueiri
To: Marty Weintraub
Subject: Unsubscribe

Marty, I was just reading something that reminded me of you http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

Your was not part of a bulk send :) hence not spam.

Best Regards,
Jean-Pierre Khoueiri, Dir
Constant Click // An SEO Agency

———————

Marty to Jean-Pierre

Spam is as spam does :).

Sincerely,

Marty Weintraub: President, aimClear
Twitter: @aimClear

Edward Lewis Has Earned the Right to be Called : SEO Hall Monitor

*Final Update*

Shutting down a site as soon as the community questions is a sign of a scam. The same way search engine submission is a scam, in our industry at the moment, SEO Verification is a scam. There is no real body or authority that is geared to give you that stamp. For a few hours the site was turned to an “April Fool’s” prank, but I dont buy it, and neither did Alan Bleiweiss. In fact the whole proposition was seen as so insane, it managed to bait The Mad Hat to post for the first time in years. Todd Mintz took out a few minutes to point out:

Seriously folks, if you want to verify the quality of a SEO vendor, ask for references. Read their blog posts. Look at their LinkedIn page and see how much a part of the SEO community they are.

SEOAly just labelled the service a Verified Failure, and hit the nail on the head. On the other hand, Kim took a very balanced and mature look at what happened, and where Charles Preston made a mistake – in underestimating the industry which he aimed to “verify”. Geeks on Steroids have now grabbed the original domain that Charles Preston started the first version of this service., and is planning on making it a tribute site to verified SEO.

The site is no longer operational (archive here – thanks Sebastian!) and Charles Preston never responded to my challenge:

I will pay the $99 fee to Verified SEO if they can prove that the site and the verification process is run by “Industry Veterans”.

Binding Contract.

If there are no truths to these claims, wait for a whole host of SEOBullshit Articles.

Clearing The Air on VerifiedSEO.com

Peek a Boo I see you!

Peace out.

****************Previous UPDATES BELOW***************

Dr Pete Gets Unverified for SEO

You Have to Love Dr Pete.

*Update 1* Get your Own “Say No To Verified SEO” Badge here.

*Update 2* Nick Wilsdon Hits a hard and simple argument:

Nick: It says an awful lot about your claim to be ‘industry veterans’ that you

(a) don’t know who Edward is without Googling his name and

(b) you just called him Ed.We are, however, most certainly qualified to verify an SEM vendor’s past success record.

VerifiedSEO: Actually anybody could do that, it just helps that we have worked in the SEM industry for a long time.

Nick: What absolute BS.  So you’re saying you don’t need to be qualified to investigate the work of another professional. So we can grab someone off the street to verify the work of an accountant, lawyer or doctor? The body that certifies professionals has to have some kind of credibility within that profession.

*Update 3* Jill Whalen uncovers some interesting “rankings” that one of the founders boasted about. To quote Jill:

Can’t imagine how Verifed SEO could judge SEO when rankings they got for their clients were for kws nobody searches for #guineapigseo

• consumer debt collection software
• debt collection management system
• online debt collection software

According to Google’s keyword research tool, even now, a few years later when there’s more competition, there are exactly NO searches at Google for those keywords. (via Sphinn)

We are in your Reputation.

*Update* 4: And the Verified SEO Story Hit TweetMeme Home Page

And, lemee tell you when it comes to being an SEO type that can handle the vast number of duplicate newbie questions that’s’ one thing. You know what I mean…the same question on the same topics over and over from another brand new poster….we all get them and that’s a part of forum life.

• META keywords?  Gosh, a quick search here would outline what all SEO practitioners know, eh?
• <title> is just how important to an on-page optimization? Did you search for that here or even on Google to try help your clients?
• PR is the thing to try to get as high as you can, so where do I go to get a PR of 9? Huh? PR means nothing to an SEO campaign….so what are you even talking about?
• Automatic subs to directories, that’s primo help for an SEO campaign, right? Good golly you newbie, did you think to check on that here in the forum by doing a search maybe?
• DMOZ wont’ list my site or my clients site…howcum? And a DMOZ link is also primo, right? Did you even bother to do any research on that directory on your own first?

And that’s about the first few items that we all get in SEO forums, queries that for the most part are out-of-date and out-of-the-running for anyone who wants to run a valid successful SEO campaign for themselves or for clients. This one needs to get used to in forum lifestyles I think we’d all agree….

But that’s not the biggest part of the whole forum lifestyle that I’ve seen develop greatly over the past say 18 months or so….it’s people who ADVERTISE on their own website that they’re competent, reliable, knowledgeable SEO practitioners – and then they come to our forums and ask questions just like what’s above, eh!

Yup, that’s right. Most forums allow you to add to your Profile, your own website and I’ve taken to always search every newbies sites to see “who they are” and what they “say they know”. Many many are from offshore and even more of them have yup, fully couched, perfectly copy written SEO pages that prove to every visitor, they KNOW what they’re doing when it comes to SEO!

AND THAT PISSES ME OFF, EH!

If you know so much, then why do you come to our SEO forum to ask what anyone with even like 6 months of SEO experience would KNOW is bullshit?

Who did you talk to to learn these “facts” about SEO and why do you come to forums spouting off that ‘everyone knows’ that directories give great link juice (when you asked only yesterday as to the definition of that very term!)?

Why do you think that we, SEO practitioners who know how to be professional  and yes are willing to help teach new folks to our profession on the best practices of same will help you fraudsters, you scammers, you snake-oil salesmen to succeed?

Why do you complain bitterly that you can’t add a sig for some backlink juice till you hit a certain number of posts – and all of them are defending use of META keywords…sigh!

You’ve all got some gall, eh, i.e. trying to sell my knowledge instead of your own!!!!

If you think that such knowledge will ever be passed on by me – or any of the other long time SEO forum members who’ve proved they’re there to help, then you’ve got another think coming!

I hate this segment of SEO practitioners, even though it’s a small fragment of us all, that expects to be able to sell a skill without having learned it first….god forbid that they actually get any clients….and if they do, then please please I hope that they’re in the exact same channels as our own!

Idiots, eh!

What Do You Mean I Have Unrealistic Keyword Goals?

You want to rank for “shoes”, “I-phone”, and “credit card”?  We really do need to sit down and have a long discussion about your strategy.  Not only will these keywords cost you more than your company is worth, but they aren’t even the most qualified keywords for your site!  100,000 visitors a month from the keyword “shoes” isn’t going to be cost efficient for selling your custom one off Native American moccasins.

What? I Need To Actually Add Keywords To My Site Content?

Yes! People actually think that by signing up for “SEO” they can magically have their site rank for keywords regardless the fact that it’s not even mentioned in their copy.  You want to rank for a certain keyword, you better be prepared to include it in your page content.

HTML Text Is Ugly – Do Your SEO Thing With My Existing Flash Content!

You want to rank for your keywords but you want to use technology that the search engines have a very hard time reading?  You absolutely have to be open to fixing your on page elements. If you’re not open to this you need to pack your bags and go home!  I’m not saying that we can’t work around your flash, but you need to understand that at a minimum a text block will be needed.  (For the simplicity of this article let’s not get into SWF Flash embedding.)

My second gripe about content is the fact that people never seem to actually want to write it.   Not every SEO is a fantastic content writer; however a competent one can guide you in writing a very SEO friendly content piece.  Remember, you sell your products or services because you know your industry best.   If I had your knowledge I would create my own site and make myself all the money!   …and no jackass, you cannot add two sentences without mentioning your keyword and still expect your page to rank number one.

Frequently Update My Content? No Thanks I Don’t Want To Do That!

Is it absolutely necessary to have frequently updated content to rank for keyword? No! However link building is a hell of a lot easier if you’re at least open to the idea.  Why can’t you add a blog to your site?  Add monthly articles? Or create a small news section?  Think about it this way, why the hell would anyone want to link to your site?  If you don’t have the utmost amazing free standing content pages, frequently updated content should be something you’re looking into.

Ok I Will “Buy” SEO But I Need To Rank In Two Weeks!

#Fail!  Unless you are targeting keywords that have very little competition the odds of you placing number one in two weeks are very slim.  This is given the assumption that you can even get the search engines to fully re-index your on site changes within this time.  SEO requires patience and regardless what you think I am not holding your rankings prisoner until next months SEO payment.  God knows if I had that type of search engine power I would be making a ton more than I currently am.

SEO Is NOT A Free Ride To The Top.

Contrary to that guy who called you last week, SEO isn’t a get rich quick scheme.  You will actually have to do some work. Yes it will cost you money, and yes it will take time.  The worst part about SEO is that nothing is actually guaranteed!  However, if you’re willing to put your time, effort and money towards a functional SEO campaign the odds are definitely in your favor.  If you think that you’re going to write one check and sit your ass on the coach and get rich, you need to think twice.  Search Engine Optimization isn’t for everyone, are you really interested in SEO?

You know how it goes:

Salesman: Hi Sir, I’m calling today about your website

Owner:  Oh, yes?

Salesman:  How would you like to put your website in front of thousands of potential visitors every day?

Owner:  Why, that sounds amazing, but how can you do that?

Salesman:  With our secret techniques we can get you #1 position on Google this afternoon!

Owner:  Wow, you must be good!

And we all know the outcome of this fabrication:  A Pay Per Click campaign that will exhaust itself faster than you can say “Whoopahh”!

It’s companies like this that annoy me so much because they are taking valuable budget away from a client where they could be easily investing in their long term rankings which will ultimately last a hell of a lot longer than the second it takes to max out your credit card!

Who’s The Guilty Parties?

The company offering this as a long-term, sustainable solution; simple as that!  The regular perpetrators are print & media agencies, small web design companies & IT support companies who have a web designer in their midst.

Don’t get me wrong, PPC has its place in high yielding, quick-reaction and absolute targeting, but when it comes to snakeoil sales companies selling this shit as SEO it really does boil my piss.  PPC can be used VERY effectively providing there is a profitable return-on-investment, but to be sold purely as a guaranteed #1 solution is just insane – especially in a very competitive industry where CPC’s are astronomical for some people.

I thought this tactic had died out in the early 2000’s but apparently enough time has passed that there are enough gullible victims at the end of a phone line once again :(

I’m not #1 anymore, what do I do?

I would honestly hate to be the account managers on the end of the phone having to explain it to these poor souls that they have to spend, spend & spend money to remain on the 1st page and then be questioned why their competitor is always there on the 1st page.  I imagine it goes like this:

Account Manager: Oh, that’s a Natural Listing

Owner:  A what?

Account Manager: Through SEO

Owner:  That’s what I just bought

Account Manager: No, you bought Sponsored Listing where you pay to be there and once your budget runs out you are removed

Owner:  What?

All I can hope is that the clean cut, honorable SEO’s get to these companies first so we can at least educate them on the difference before they spend their yearly budget on a months 1st page listing with these snakeoil salesmen – and if they do happen to get stung, I hope they can make their money from the deal and prove me wrong!

But I doubt that will happen.