Destroying Reputations for Fun and Profit (& Why SEOs Need a Code of Conduct)
As many of us know, Michael Gray of Wolf-Howl.com doesn’t like it when people make sweeping accusations against SEOs. Hell, most of the time I agree with him. For example, Calacanis’ repeated attacks on the SEO industry are pretty lame and ill-informed and Michael’s responses to them were fair enough in my opinion.
Michael’s general message in his defence of the SEO industry is that there are good SEOs and bad SEOs, just as there are good mechanics and bad mechanics.
The “few bad apples” argument.
Fair call.
Presumably Michael would like to be included among the “good SEOs” and most people would regard him that way - certainly his blog is one of the most respected in the industry.
But recently, Michael has gone a little beyond the limits of cool.
Last week, the hapless Christina Warren of Download Squad was unfortunate enough to make some throw-away remark about the SEO industry. Michael Gray got upset about it.
This is the specific sentence that Michael quoted and the part he had a problem with:
There’s lots of talk within the tech community, especially the blogosphere about using SEO and how it’s GOOD for bloggers and doesn’t negatively affect readers/searchers/regular users. This is a lie. Instead of Search Engine Optimization, SEO should really stand for Search Engine Opportunism, because that’s what it really is.
Fair, enough. I would probably have a problem with that if I were a professional SEO too.
He also has a problem with this partial sentence:
we do object to gaming the system and using loopholes
But here is the entire passage in context:
There’s lots of talk within the tech community, especially the blogosphere about using SEO and how it’s GOOD for bloggers and doesn’t negatively affect readers/searchers/regular users. This is a lie. Instead of Search Engine Optimization, SEO should really stand for Search Engine Opportunism, because that’s what it really is. Look, we certainly don’t object to gaining revenue from ads or page-views on a web site, that’s why we are able to do what we do; we do object to gaming the system and using loopholes to insert web sites into search queries that really have nothing to do with the content. Techniques to make sure your relevant content shows up in corresponding searches is one thing — inserting back-door code that is aimed at getting higher page ranks and more page views, regardless if the targets are actually correct, is another.
Taken in context, those three sentences together in their entirety represent a reasonably balanced view of SEO.
Christina is pretty clearly aiming her attack at “bad SEOs” and ones who would attempt to insert irrelevant results into SERPS. (We’ll just ignore the flagrantly out of context second quote that Michael cherry-picks).
That is hardly a revolutionary sentiment by Christina.
Michael reacted to the cherry-picked sentences (60 words out of a 620 word post) by writing a blog post entitled “Christina Warren of Download Squad is a Clueless Idiot” (while quoting only the sentences mentioned here in isolation).
He then asked his readers to link to the post.
Now anyone familiar with even rudimentary SEO will know that writing an article on a well established blog with lots of trust and then getting a few inbound links to a that specific post will mean that the search engines will rank the post highly for the keywords the post was aimed at - especially if the terms are not so competitive.
At the time of writing, Michael’s post is ranking 9 in Google if you search for Christina Warren.
Now I am totally open to correction from Michael here, but this seems like a pretty clear attempt to get this post to rank well for Christina’s name.
As far as I can tell, it is an attempt to damage her online reputation.
Any future employer who looks up Christina in Google will be confronted by the assertion that their potential employee is a “clueless idiot.”
To add cowardice to insult, Michael has closed comments on the specific blog post, meaning Christina (or anyone else) cannot respond to his opinion on Christina at the source.
Michael seems to have decided that Christina deserved to have her name dragged through the Google mud and there isn’t much anyone else can do about it. Not many of us have either the knowledge or the influence to compete with him or rein him in and to top it all off, the victim is even unable to respond directly to the post regarding the accusations.
This might be called character assasination for the digital age.
Now let’s put aside the question of whether Christina deserved this treatment. I don’t think she did, but others might disagree. Whatever. There is a more pressing concern raised with this scenario.
Who exactly, is Michael Grey to assume he has the right to use his mini-celebrity and knowledge as an SEO to damage the reputation of whoever he deems deserves it?
Please Michael, tell us some more about “good SEOs” and “bad SEOs”. For Example, which one are you?
Is it ok for an SEO to rudimentarily take a disliking to someone online and take vengeance by publishing nasty things about them and getting those accusations to rank well in the search engines?
And to people who work in the industry, do you regard this as acceptable behaviour?
If it is fair enough to you as an industry, do you really not see why other non-SEO people might lose respect for your industry?
Now I am sure there have been far worse abuses than this example, but when a high-profile representative of an industry starts heading down the slippery slope of arbitrary online persecutions that have a very real effect on other people’s on and offline lives, isn’t it time for that industry to stand up and say enough is enough?
