Hi faithful readers of 01100111011001010110010101101011 (I totally didn’t just press CTRL+C CTRL+V, I really do know the name of the site) – my name is Emma and I “do that SEO thing” and really like Pokemon and drawing stupid comics and ranting.

Here is a rant about SEO in comic form featuring Pokemon. just in case I haven’t stuffed those keywords enough: SEO Pokemon comic rant.

The recent Angry SEO posts (Angry SEO #1 and Angry SEO #2) have gone down really well and today we have issue #3 to deal with. Like the title? Sex sellsss.

In today’s issue our secret SEO appears to be a bit upset with a certain section of the industry. As normal if you’d wish to vent about a client, company, co-worker, the SEO industry, this blog etc get in touch! 

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You Know What Really Rips My Knitting?

Small time cliquey SEOs with big egos and attitudes.

Here’s the deal. I work as an SEO in what could be considered a “big” agency. I’ve worked for many years on clients that certain cockstar SEOs could only dream of. I’m conscientious, I work hard, I know my stuff inside out and I have achieved some great results and amazing campaigns over the years. I’ve even won a few major industry awards along the way. But you’ve never heard of me, and that’s good.

I work with some incredibly talented and knowledgeable people. Indeed, some of the best in the industry. Most of them you’ve never heard of. In fairness I work with some of the worst too but that’s just big agency life. The shit ones usually get found out and move on to somewhere  in-house pretty quickly. But that’s a different rant

But here’s what gets me. I’ve met various big name SEOs over the years and often they are very nice, very decent people. Oops, sorry, no those are not the ones who get me. The ones who seriously get on my goat are egotist wankers who might have known what SEO was 10 years ago but spend their days now promoting themselves at conferences while their provincial companies fill the web with spam.

I was introduced to one once and within minutes he informed me that my company doesn’t do very “sophisticated” SEO. Like he would know what the fuck we do. The week previously I had uncovered a quite frankly pathetic blog network trail that had his company’s grubby fingerprints all over it. I decided not to mention it and sent the details to Google next morning. Dick.

He also forgot that his barely literate blog posts are both public and popular. I therefore knew the weaknesses in one of the previous blog posts he had written and proceeded to school him on it. Arse. Didn’t get a single drink from his group either, after buying them all one. Says it all really.

SEO awards bring out the worst in certain smaller SEO companies. I’m glad to say my agency tends to conduct itself in a friendly and decent way. I’m sure that’s not the case 100% of the time, especially with drink involved but you know what I’m saying. Put it this way, we would not boo the winners of an award in an award ceremony. No matter which competitor won. To this day we don’t know what we did wrong. Maybe we’re not part of the clique, maybe we stole someone’s client, maybe we shagged their wife. We’ll never know but to that company / those people I say – Get over it and try not to be dicks all your life.

In summing up, I’d say don’t judge an SEO by their company unless they started or own the company. In which case you should feel free, the arseholes.

So last week’s post by Angry SEO #1 appeared to have struck a chord with you guys. I think it’s nice to be able to anonymously vent about a client, company or co-worker so if you would like to do likewise get in touch!

In today’s issue SEO Anonymouse appears to have a few issues with a co-worker… This post not only made me laugh but appears to have had a positive effect on our Angry SEO “It’s been cathartic and I feel better for it, exorcised.”

Great news! Have a excellent week kids

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Dear Useless Bastard,

Yes you, the person who thinks they know this shit but doesn’t.

The person who’s been fucking things up for as long as there’s been a website.

Yes you, that person who has talked bollocks to everyone who knew no better and lead them down a path of misinterpretation.

This is for you, because you are everywhere, you keep popping up like a bad penny and you waste everyone’s time money and energy, and if it were allowed I’d put you in a cage and squirt you with a water pistol, hourly.

You see, in that meeting we all had, I couldn’t really sit there and tell you to STFU. I couldn’t, and to be frank would rather not waste my time and energy with you because you are like some house of cards, some matchstick house out in a hurricane, I’ve seen more substance on the knee of a sparrow but pfft.

I had to smile and disagree gently, I had to spend ages telling you politely that you were misinformed and that your understanding of things digital was a little out of kilter. I had to use 10,000 words of nice and spend ages painting pictures and telling you stories. I did tell you this was pro bono right?I can’t help that my gentle metaphors were lost on you, I can’t help that you mentioned that you had a myspace page. That was your doing. I wanted to tell you that it’s actually 2012 but thought that the big calendar on the wall was clue enough.

Maybe I’m a big baby but look, the moment when you smiled at me with those squinty little piggy eyes of yours and tried to diminish what it is I do was your first and biggest mistake. Why did you do that!? Do you think I’m some kind of weak mother fucker!? Does my 6 foot 200lb frame of confidence tell you nothing? Do I really look like I’d just sit there and take your nonsense!?You dismissed PPC out of hand. Ok, it can be a tricky one. It needs work (like most things) and tbh was never a big focus for me, but it’s still worthy of consideration and with a bit of honing can be very useful but I digress. The point is you dismissed it and sneered at it, having never even entertained it in your 4 years of tenure. Why? because some nameless ‘professional’ as you called them, told you it didn’t work! Right.

The worst part though, was when you dismissed my whole objective and had the cheek to refer to what I do as that ‘SEO’ thing; when you tell me that you’ve done ‘social media’ and have a background in ‘twitter’ then my instant reaction as I grapple to hide my drop jaw face expression is that really, you know shit worth knowing and need to just shut up. When you confuse a fucking email newsletter as digital marketing, when you fail to…

OH FFS.

What’s the use.

The point is that going forward, you need to either just fuck off out of it or STFU.

I don’t really mind which. If you’re extra nice then you even carry with that email marketing thing, for now.

I think it’s fair to say that I don’t like you.

You my friend, are my proverbial fart in a sleeping blanket, stifling and sickly and not very nice. And yet, in that meeting we had I had to be all nice and tippy toey. It’s a new relationship after all and I don’t want to go and alienate everybody as for some crazy reason most of the people in the room have overtime, bought in to your skewed idea of how this shit works. God knows what you’ve told them as their traffic dwindled or never really got off the 22nd page of Google.

I’m a believer in karmic outcomes so I’m going to speak to your boss and tell them indirectly that someone needs to communicate that I’m not here to nick your job or show you up for the knob that you are, I’m far more tactful than that. I get that your insecure and that’s fine, we’ve all had those times at one point or another. In fact if you were smart you’d see this for the big opportunity that it is. A chance for you to check back, relax, learn and if you’re really smart take credit for the upsurge when I’m gone.

The thing is that I have a job to do.

I’ve been asked by your boss to give my opinion on his product, that opinion will look at the whole product. It’ll look at everything it is that touches that website. It’ll look at all the opportunities, it’ll look at processes, keywords, traffic, conversions. It’ll look at who’s doing what where when and how often. It’ll give views on your competitors, what they do, why they are winning, why they are doing better than you. It’ll try and inform and educate and move forward. It won’t take no for an answer and will do its utmost to drive this piece to where it needs to go. To do that, it needs buy in and flow. It needs people to be 100% on board with the strategy and tactics presented. If we want to play Beethovens 9th then we need more than a glockenspiel and a metal triangle!! We need everything to be played in harmony, all of the pieces need to fit in with all of the others, in the right way, at the right tempo, otherwise it just ain’t fuckin beethovens 9th!

So I guess you could say that this is a little warning. I won’t involve you in much of anything going forward as I have all the access I need, FTP, uid’s, psswds, root access, WMT etc etc blah. I’ll get your boss to buy in completely and he’ll be directing all of the stakeholders to where it is they need to get to. We will be playing Beethovens 9th, eventually. You can ding the triangle.

PS. CEO’s, bosses, owners who know jack.

You might have one of these people in your organisation fucking things up and bullshitting you daily.

Train their arses or GET RID.
1. If your sales are poor, then ask them why.
2. If your rankings and traffic are crap ask them why.
3. And if you don’t really know or fail to understand what it is they tell you then seek a second opinion.
It’s your business, the jobs of 100’s may be at stake, don’t let it die a death just because some knob jockey told you it was ok.

POSTSCRIPT if you are anything like this person then please, just stop it.

Go see a shrink, get counselling, have a wank more often but whatever you do, just stop it. Thanks.

tl;dr “Give your SEO a chance, stop, listen, absorb. Don’t be rude, don’t be a know all idiot”

I’ll stop adding guest posts when people stop sending me stuff. Today we have a  heart felt plea from SEOBastard, a fine young fellow who just wants to be understood.

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Dear client,

It may not have occurred to you at the time you hired me to do your SEO for you, so I’d like to spell it out for you:

I am an SEO expert, not a fucking magician. For clarity: I do not violently jerk rabbits out of hats, juggle fireballs or perform for children’s birthday parties. I don’t have a comely assistant and the only things I can make disappear are tin cans of microwavable chili. I’m not David fucking Blaine over here.

I am, in fact, responsible for dealing with the structure and content of your website and leveraging those to best satisfy the merciless dream crushing machine known as Google.

It’s okay though, I know the two are awfully easy to confuse.

I’m more like a chef. If you give me the right ingredients, I’ll whip you up a goddamn chicken cordon bleu meal so good your eyes will roll back until you can see your frontal lobe. But if you supply me with an ongoing pile of horseshit and dick-all, don’t be surprised if turd sandwiches are the only thing on the menu.

In other words, I need you to reply to my recommendations and actually do some shit on your end. I know you’re busy running a business and you’d probably rather not be responsible for writing a bunch of poppycock or tweaking your code. Good news: you don’t need to. There are people for that.

But contrary to popular opinion, I do not keep top rankings stuffed up my ass for easy retrieval.  I’m out there wrangling hot opportunities like some sort of perverted cowboy. All I’m asking you to do is step in and take advantage. There isn’t some secret garden of links I can just go merrily traipsing through like a school girl on morphine. We’ve gotta create that shit. Get people talking. Make people care you exist. This is high school prom all over again, and right now you’re the acne-laden chess co-club captain wearing sweatpants and khaki shorts. I’m trying to help you sort it out.

All I need is for you to give slightly more than no shits about your online presence. We’re trying to do some marketing here. You want more online leads? Sales? Market share? Give me MORE to work with. This is basic-ass math.

With love,

Your SEO