Profound Works

An SEO Backlash, Reasons for Paranoia and Hypocrisy

A large site was recently outed in a blog post for doing bad stuff, blah, blah. The ‘morality’ for whether people should write about stuff like this is simple for me, I choose to not care either way. To choose not to care about the morals of SEO is the easiest, laziest and most useful outlook to have as it allows you to worry about more important things like bitching about the weather, life hacks and people’s predictable, sycophantic and transparent tweeting habits.

Anyway, Humanoids on Twitter and the SEOsphere didn’t appear to like this post much.

Whenever this happens we get 2 different types of backlash…

  • Furious anger – Don’t tell Google! Why are you helping them?! You snitch/grass/wascally wabbit! The ferocity of the backlash will usually revolve around how popular the brand or the person is working on it. In this case loads of people got behind Martin, to show support because he’s popular within the industry.
  • Slightly miffed – This is similar to the above but is toned down a bit if no-one really knows/cares about the brand or if the person working on it is deemed as unpopular and/or boring.

This recent hoo-hah made me think about how the average SEO could be blatantly fucking themselves over on a daily basis but are too busy SEOing to sit still and think about it properly.

What details/information online could Google use to tell that you’re an SEO (which automatically puts you one step closer to the ban hammer)? How could you leave a footprint for Google to follow?

Who are you? Who you work for and what is your job title? Are they and SEO agency or offer SEO services? Do they have clients listed on site? Do they link out to them?

Connections? On sites like Linkedin, Google+, Twitter etc. What links do you share? Who are you socially associated with? Are you connected with or following fellow SEO’s?

Google products? (change of layout)

  • Use Google Alerts? – Guest post searches? Yoink
  • Gmail – Who do you email? What is included in these emails?
  • Google Docs – Made a link list? Have tabs for specific clients? Thanks!
  • Google Webmaster Tools, Analytics, Adwords & Keyword Tool. What keywords have you searched for? What URL’s have you added?

Don’t worry I’m pretty sure Google doesn’t use any of this data.

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2 comments on “An SEO Backlash, Reasons for Paranoia and Hypocrisy

  1. remember that scene from the ‘cat’s eye,’ when the dude was trying to quit smoking and his sponsor was hiding in the closet?

    in high school, all the stoners liked wearing phish, t-shirts of grateful dead shows they never went to, and red eyes from that morn. i wore eddie bauer flannels (‘flannel will come back one day’ ~ me in 1996) but i was totally tie-dye on the inside.

    also, when Big Al the ‘hugs not drugs’ guy came to school, much like not disavowing links or asking matt cutts questions, i opted to go back to class rather than stay the extra hours with the cool kids who need an ‘extra’ talking to.

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    1. I haven’t been fortunate enough to watch that programme. I’ll be calling Childline ASAP and find out how I can sue my parents.

      We don’t seem to be as worried about drugs in the UK (or maybe we are and we just don’t try and scare kids out of it?) I think you made the right choice, stay in school kids!

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