Genius.

Fernando, thanks for taking the time out to comment.

1 – When you put it like that I totally agree. There is a difference between admitting a few small wrongs and creating a link network…

2 – I think that the industry will change their tune in terms of outing as SEO’s become more used to seeing people outed and do so themselves. I think (eventually) outing poor quality SEO will become the norm.

Outers , hmm if they are big arsed “SEO Agencies” hang em high and whip there corpses, small one band or small teams 9 out of 10 times are just working for clients that have a small budget that unless they run what works wont rank and therefore go out of business. For these arse hole A list SEO Gurus to preach outing lil guys as they work for big brands, I would like to cut off your feet and hands , SEO THAT mother f*8ker.

Oh I look back in fondness and wonder if I had just stayed in SEO I would probably still be alive today. But alas I became a doctor and got involved in some real blackhat shit with an arsehole called Tony Blair and now I am dead as someone decided I wanted to commit suicide.

Please dont forget me I was forced to lie about Saddam he was really a nice guy.

PS the my cat does seo while I play xbox 🙂 I taught my 7 year old so I can play BF3 50 p ROI Motherf@#kers

You raise a valid point about my post, Fernando. In my haste to publish it I failed to communicate what I really wanted to say – it was all about intent. The intent behind those ‘crappy marketing tactics’ was all wrong so that’s why I qualified them as crappy, not just because they bombed.

So, getting 6,000+ people to spam 1,700,000+ people on Facebook, for example, had all the wrong intent. I knew what I was doing was wrong because I was forcing it and it wasn’t adding any real value.

Last summer I built a lead gen landing page, launched it, and sent 5,000 unique viewers to it in a week. Sounds OK but because the intent was all wrong, I really got burned on that. 85% bounce rate and 0 conversions. It didn’t fail because those 5K people knew my intent was wrong, they just felt something was wrong.

As a marketer, I want to provide value and the intent to be about building trust and long-term viability and sustainability. Hopefully this makes a little more sense.

Now I’ve practiced some shady tactics in the past in experimentation and youthful ignorance as a way to get ahead and no SEO’s are completely clean, but I just think there’s a major difference between iAcquire and David’s post.

Also, it throws me off how much some SEO’s hate outing when overall it should make us better and question our tactics more. It’s basically the same as investigative journalism and we’re coming across as shady corporate bastards if we are calling these people twats.

The most annoying thing about the industry is the politics

Yup, the blatant lying in the pursuit for more business and money is understandable but fucking irritating.

In terms of being an SEO, I like how Aaron Wall put it in a recent post:

Just about any independent SEO worth their weight who publishes a number of websites has at least once hit a snag & been filtered or penalized. A person can say “not me” but how do they operate optimally in both the short term and long term if they never operate near limits or thresholds?

The thing that annoys me most about outing is the grassing/snitch side of it, what is the point? Well done on making yourself 100% untrustworthy! There is however a part of me that enjoys seeing a website outed (try and deny that!) especially if it is a large site 🙂 I do however feel sorry for Mike. I mean he’s been at Iacquire 5 mins and it’s put at his door?!

Anyways im not for Outings im a firm believer in these things coming around and biting them in the ass in the long run. A vital skill that any SEO needs to learn if how to beat competitors no matter what tactics they use.

You can learn from seeing both successful black hat and white hat tactics in operation.

There’s no room for racism on this site. I think you better leave.

He’s a ‘Black Cat’. See what I did there? (I’ll get my coat).

I see what you did there with that first one… 😉

Everyone’s an expert! Stupid things can also be fun 🙂