Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

There is a misnomer in search marketing and SEO that things change all the time. I think I stopped consuming SEO blogs and news sites on a daily basis about 2 or 3 years ago when I decided enter full time consultancy with no one else’s safety net. There was no extra time for anything accept a low information consumption diet. I had to develop unflinching confidence in the work I was doing to execute on various strategies based on my understanding of how search engines have historically worked, and the assumption that they will continue to function in basically the same manner for some time to come.

This is from a conclusion that there have only been a handful of changes that affected how I conducted my business. I learned from both blackhats and search engineers both to come up with a strategy that fit my ethical code while indulging my competitive nature and hunger for success. I am convinced that the cat/mouse dynamic between blackhats and engineers has helped to form the current state of information retrieval based on strong needs to stay relevant in certain areas that were exploited solely for capitalistic monetary gain.

I’ve found some great posts and articles about search history and how search engines have evolved over time, but not many mentions of how search optimizers have changed their strategies over time. There are a few good resources listed below, but none quite summed up the changes that affected what I like to refer to as the “SEO mentality”. I’m hoping to create a fairly comprehensive document for Market Motive Internet Marketing Training (where I’ll be discussing this shortly with legendary SEO’s Greg Boser and Marshall Simmonds, to help add to the increasingly comprehensive body of SEO training we’ve developed over the past two years (Over 40 Videos now!).

I learned what SEO was in about 2002 - shortly after offpage factors started to strongly determine relevance. I spent several years and thousands of hours on forums reading, learning, an interacting and teaching to figure out how search engines worked. When I made the choice to work for myself at home after another great year of learning and consulting at We Build Pages (with Jim Boykin - one of the sharpest SEO’s I’ve ever known), I decided it was time to start doing. I built sites, and strategies for myself, using consulting money to fund development of website projects, and parlaying to thinks like being able to even afford the insane cost of living in the SF Bay area. It was based on the unwritten understanding of the changes that are mentioned below, and not listening to a lot of the SEO garbage that is spewed all over on the interwebs.

When I started doing - I realized that not much changes with SEO in terms of strategic execution. It is a pretty logical art and science of determining risk to reward ratios, and implementing strategies in a sequential fashion following certain established rules based on intended outcome. I’ve developed a playbook and these SEO rulesets by understanding the HISTORICAL GAMECHANGERS in SEO. Feel free to add some on twitter with #seogamechangers

I’ve been taking a mental inventory of these game changes for a few months, and here is what I have them broke down to:

1. Onpage factors (1995 – 1999)
2. Offpage factors (2000)
3. Florida update (2003)
4. Fresh Crawl/ Everflux (2004)
5. Sandbox effect (2005)
6. Duplicate content filtering (2006)
7. Human editorial (2006)
8. Onebox/ Universal Search (2007)
9. Paid linking handling (2007)
10. No follow (2008)
11. User data validation and segmentation (2009)
12. Brand Mentions (update Vince - 2009)

Some of my dates may be a bit off, but for the most part these are the major factors that affect my actionable SEO Strategies. These are the major changes that contribute to the hurdles, filters, and challenges of ranking a site on a search engine.

I’d love to hear from other folks on the things that you think should be included in the list. There are MANY minor things that full under these categories, but after revisiting most and asking twitter, I think this is pretty comprehensive, as things like local search 10 pack, personalization, geotargetting all fall under one of these other areas (even if the dates aren’t exact). Please let me know if you can think of anything I missed. I’ll try to watch the comments on the post closely for once:) Please post any great resources, or suggestions for adding/updating to the list.

Resources

• Brett Tabke
• Danny Sullivan
• Aaron Wall’s extensive writing on SE history
• Jim Boykin
• James Svoboda
• Rand Fishkin
• Mark Knowles
• Funny from Pat

Most people are taught that the first rule of SEO club is that you don’t talk about SEO club (some learn this rule harder than others.) This is an important question as far as most people in the SEO community are concerned. Based on the system that information is knowledge, power, and ultimately money, you can see how people often have a vested interest in outing other peoples techniques, or keeping them secret. You also learn very quickly that who you can trust is extremely important. Everyone has their own code. Mine personally is started with - ""their are no hats, only goals". With the essence of that being that only illegal techniques are truly crossing the line, but everyone has to determine their ultimate level of risk and reward (similar to investing or anything else). Hats are bullshit. Techniques and code should be determined by one’s career choice and goals.

My buddy Brent got a little bit of flack last night for this post, about digg selling links. I’ve also had more than a few conversations defending my friend Rand’s choices for outing sites on more than one occasion (as well as arguing with him about where I disagree with his choices). I figure I’d open it up for a bit of public debate, as well as state for the record where I stand with it, since I helped Brent in this case rather than mentioning it was a bad idea. This of course, got me riled up on a pretty good topic of discussion anyhow, so I figured it was a good time to put it on paper quick and bust out a blog post.

I’m not gonna point out names, but you know who you are, and where you stand.

When is it okay to out a site’s SEO techniques? Here’s the spectrum of types of people I would categorize people into. "Outing" a site includes doing a spam report or blogging about it, which are essentially different methods to do the same thing.

Old School Affiliate SEO/ Competitive Webmaster

It’s never okay to out a site. EVER. EVER. EVER. Google Japan buying links MAY qualify as an exception, but probably not. They’ll definitely talk about spammy techniques in the bar (and you’ll learn a helluva lot), and swear you to secrecy, or have you know that secrecy in these matters is always implied. I respect this code the most, and only disagree with it in a very few rare instances.

I think Rae sums it up nicely, “back in the days when we used to have Omerta and anyone with a name earned it - kinda like television before reality TV”

Basically - the rule is “keep your mouth shut unless you have been granted permission to speak about it” on anything outside of a conference presentation (especially if you heard it in a smokey pub at 1 am).

SEO Consultant/ Blogger (aka me)

It’s okay to out ultra large sites on very rare occasions with proper justification and research, knowing that they are large enough that there will be no penalization instituted because of the hypocrisy of search engines. Outing these sites is mainly to piss them off a bit (get their attention), or demonstrate the hypocrisy of search engines. I didn’t get this, until I saw some of my favorite OG SEO folks discussing Colgate, BMW, and other large brands that ultimately got a tiny slap that amounted to nearly nothing more than probably a link monkey getting a scolding from their boss. In cases of big brands being the new black hat

Personally, I still wouldn’t out these, but I can at least find a rational reason why a journalist/practioner (see below) might when they discover and seo company or consultant that totally sucks at what they do and does it for a giant dumb corporation. Again - not my thing (and I would never do it since I respect the OG affiliate competitive webmaster code far too much), but I can at least understand their logic, unlike some of the other following types of people.

This being said, on at least one occasion, I’ve ACCIDENTLY outed things that I didn’t mean to (and still feel bad about it JS:) Tough lessons to learn, so I always try to err on the side of STFU

"I’m curious who the genius is that told Experian buying a straight link on Digg was a good idea. Pretty fuckin clueless." - Greg Boser on Twitter

Oh - one other time it’s probably okay to do a spam report - if you’re searching for blues clues and get beastiality pr0n

Weak (and cowardly) SEO

People who do spam reports and outings because they’re not competitive enough to play the game. I probably have the least amount of respect for these people than anyone. They hope that by reporting others, their rankings will improve. I learn from my competitors, and it pisses me off when someone acheives higher rankings than I with a bogus OLD technique. It still NEVER justifies reporting them in my opinion/code.

Journalist

For people whose business model is based on news, hype, ratings, and traffic - they’re going to out as much stuff as they can to get the traffic. Just the same as traditional media, they are not active practicioners of SEO. The trouble becomes when you are an active practicioner of SEO and don’t respect your craft enough to have a solid code.

Pointy White Hat "Ethical" SEO.

These folks have spam report bookmarklets in their tool bar, and pride themselves on making the web a better place (by ruining other people’s livelihoods) because they think google will make a rather benovelent dictatorship. Kind of the equivalent of the religious right, and often get outed themselves with something equally as morally ambiguous like Jimmy Swaggert or Larry Craig.

Search Engine Engineer

Always okay. It’s they’re job, and at least their consistent in what they do. Even google japan deserves a penalty for buying links. I respect consistency.

It’s very difficult to be respected by both sides of the fence, but in order to do it you have to have a level of respect for both sides of those playing the SEO game.

So the question becomes - when is it okay to "out" a site, and where do you see yourself on the spectrum? Anything I missed?

Found this post in the archives, and thought it was worth tossing up since I’ve been MIA quite a while. BMW was out of the index for less than a week. Colgate has pushed the envelope hard. Wordpress made a boatload of cash on MFA’s and was back in the index in days while the inspiring party, Hot Nacho, is still as Greg Boser, the artist formerly known as WebGrilllllla put it, “buried somewhere in the Nevada desert“. Most large brands MAY suffer up to 40 days through the new index cycle. Why wouldn’t they push the envelope further than the little guys? I have to say it really upsets me when search engines make decisions and claim it is to “help the little mom and pops” when they are discussing things like paid links. We live in an idea economy. The value of a link to search engine rankings is knowledge, and idea. The debate has been made dozens of time, so I won’t add much to that here. I will say, however, that taking that advantage away, is taking away power from the little guys that learned it - not assisting them. Paid links help the little guy OUTSMART the big guys…it does not help big guys who just whip out their wallets and buy every link in site (that’s what ppc is for).

Semantic differences based on brand size:

1. Small Brand – Cloaking

Big Brand – IP Delivery, Geo-targeting, User Experience Optimization, etc.

2. Small Brand – Cross Linking

Big Brand – Cross Promoting

3. Small Brand – Link BUYING

Big Brand – Strategic Media Placement

4. Small Brand – Doorway Pages

Big Brand – Landing Pages

5. Small Brand – Reciprocal Linking

Big Brand – Co-Branding

6. Small Brand – Social Media Marketing

Big Brand – Social Media Optimization

7. Small Brand – Scraping/ Made for Adsense

VC Money - Mahalo

When is Black Really White?
When your brand is big enough to handle the outing fallout unscathed.

What are your favorite examples of double standards for big guys vs. little guys in the online world or off?

Thanks to Rhea Drysdale for the cool image above.

The “SEO being bad” debate is almost as tired as the blackhat/whitehat debate now. I’m not real excited about defending the virtues of SEO - I know how fantastic it can be, and to explain it properly, it would require a proper understanding of the history of search, and mainly unwritten history of the dynamics between optimizers and engineers. I told a friend today that I will now forever be marketing consultant from the SEO school of thought. I consider practicing SEO an honor, and while I’m sure there is probably better terminology, I’d rather be working than addressing folks that don’t “get it”. So for those that do - here’s some ideas of things to watch, and poke at if you’re not already. I’d call it SEO 2.0 - but that would defeat the concept of staying ahead of the curve on things.

1. 1. Onebox optimization
   There is a lot of opportunity for folks to jump to the top of the SERPS in local, product search, and other niche areas. I have really been lackadaisical on this myself, but there is plenty of opportunities to poke at the onebox. See Brian Mark’s site for inspiration.
2. 2. Social media marketing
   SMM is NOT social media manipulation - it is learning what social communities online are looking for and giving it to them… (…so hard that they BLEED) - quoting DaveN
3. 3. Video promotion
   There’s this little site called youtube that 90% of corporate drones waste 50% of their 40 hours per week on. There not ALL watching drunken litesaber fight videos - okay, well maybe they ARE - but if that’s what they want - GIVE IT TO THEM - just put your URL in as a watermark.
4. 4. Community participation
   Everybody is looking for answers on the web. Find where you’re the expert, and become more so. Credibility is not a commodity, and there is a LOT of value to it.
5. 5. Reputation management
   The new public relations - Google is the new http://, and everyone’s got MINIMUM 5 spots to defend. Those that are proactive will not be sorry. Knuckleheads that buck the trend probably will be (best free advice ever given).
6. 6. Media piggybacking
   Not seeing urls on superbowl ads makes me cry. Search traffic may still only be a small percentage of overall exposure - what old school marketers still don’t get is that it’s the GOOD percentage of the exposure (the BEST customers that are interested and take action) - Someone with lots of patience has gotta continue to explain this.
7. 7. Ideas and execution
   As Aaron says - ideas are the currency in our economy, and executing on them is the next best thing to creating them. There is a lot to be said for being the first to market. Okay, you caught me, this one isn’t really an opportunity, it’s more of a philosophy and a reminder to pick something and run with an idea that you have confidence in, and see it through to fruition. Don’t pick an idea that sucks.

Each one of these areas has a ruleset to play by. The SEO school of thought teaches us to learn the rules, and cater our content, site, or product for the most optimal results within the given ruleset. SEO’s are the folks that push the limits, and force the rules to evolve (think of athletes like Shaq that dominated so much the rules had to change). SEO is more than a process. It is understanding what OPTIMAL really means to the point of perfection, and knowing when striving further towards that perfection has hit a point of diminishing returns.

There’s probably a lot of better more cool names I could label myself - but I will forever consider “being an SEO” an honor, despite the beating it often takes from those that sully it’s good name. Below are the principles and qualities I would consider for qualification as a “good SEO”. I’m sure there are plenty that I missed - and hopefully there will be some debate of what can be added or removed, but these are the areas I personally feel are unique to “being an SEO” - and common traits and ideals that I see in those that I would consider top SEO’s. Why do you need a flashy title if you can sum up what you do in a three letter acroynym?

1. SEO is a marketing school of thought…not a process.
There are plenty of people that understand the process, and don’t “get” SEO. Here’s the process - SEObook, SEO glossary, and Ranking factors. There’s still only ten spots that matter.

The process of SEO is fundamental in just the same way that there are formulas for headlines in direct marketing that have MUCH higher likelihood for success - read the playbooks and the process becomes second nature.

2. It’s much easier to plan a website than to retrofit it.
Understanding fundamentals makes it much more valuable when you hire a consultant or agency. 18 questions your CEO forgot to ask.

3. Search increasingly impacts every form of media.
Every media distribution point is doing their best to incorporate search to personalize the conversation rather than just screaming at random people.

4. It’s all about the links (but also about the exposure, rankings, conversation, and conversion) Building link equity is the new brand branding. It’s really all about the conversion - but you gotta love links (and openly admit to it).

5. Any marketing decision impacts search engine rankings - and vice versa
TV, radio, print and other ads can all be used for attracting links. Want to use all flash as the homepage? Pick a different school of thought.

6. Creating a “purple” idea is much easier than begging for links
There is always an extraordinary, remarkable new angle to any industry.
SEO is about understanding the indirect correlation of things to execute on great ideas that no one else has envisioned by having a unique perspective on marketing. Looking for quick fixes and the latest loophole is NOT SEO. Drinkbaiting is SEO - if you can’t figure out why - you’ve never spent a full 40 hour week asking for links.

7. Social media can be optimized
Optimization does not mean manipulation. Optimization is examining the rules of the game and using them to your advantage. Social media increases both exposure - as well as the level of public scrutiny. People appreciate when bias is disclosed, and conversation is HUMAN.

If you are not authentic - you will not last. The higher the value for financial gain of the industry - the more reluctant consumers and agents of distribution become to helping you distribute your message for free.

8. Top rankings won’t fix a shitty product

9. Blackhat is lying to clients, customers, partners, or vendors.
Whitehat is proactively discussing risk tolerance, process, expectations, and contribution to a community instead of just bilking people into teaching you to think.

10. It’s all about the results
Great results can be rankings, sales, or the spread of ideas. There are many great business leaders that don’t realize they are SEO’s. It is more than a process - it is understanding the process and stacking the deck in your favor within the confines of the game - which ultimately changes the game. SEO is the understanding of the dynamic game of business marketing.

Summary, references, and comments

Now I’m starting to understand why many marketing companies hate search - We persist in telling them how wrong they are (their school of thought that is).

This manifesto was inspired by Hugh’s rewrite of the Hughtrain, and his call for manifesto’s as well as, of course, the original cluetrain. (it was tough to play by the rules and get it down to 500 words).

I’m sure there are other founding principles to the SEO school of thought that I am missing - please tell me what I missed, or what sounds way off. Feel free to let me know if you think I’m a wanker or are things or read and agreed with every line.

It’s a beautiful irony that SEO’s have a marketing problem with the “reputation of SEO” so I thought I’d give a few suggestions on other names SEO’s can now use on their business card or website as a selling point.

14. Conversion analyzers
13. Marketing consultants
12. New Media Moguls
11. Webmasters
10. Internet marketing coaches
9. Meta-webmasters
8. Uber net project managers
7. Web strategy tour guides
6. Net marketing imagineers
5. Master link baiters
4. Mayors of web land
3. 2.0 designer developers
2. Dynamic web engineers
1. Web scientists

Man - I spend way too much time on posts like this. Luckily I’m self-employed and no one yells at me - “Bathrober” is another one of my favorite job titles.

Euphemisms are used in many areas of politics. The definition of cloaking to an engineer, and to an SEO is marginally different in terms of semantics. Cloaking has been villafied by search engines when users and bots are served different content. Engineers believe bots are pretty smart (they normally are) - and SEO’s believe bots should be lead around by the nose only to appropriate areas. “Cloaking” often implies intent and extent that conflict with SE terms of service - but there are many very grey areas as far as what is acceptable and what isn’t. By definition - cloaking is NEVER acceptable - so be sure you are using the proper terminology. Of course this is a bit tounge and cheek - but the point is that there are certainly valid reasons for selectively delivering content - and that “cloaking” is mainly defined by intent. I’m pretty glad I’m not the guy at the SE’s that has to determine the intent of redirects.

1. IP delivery
2. Geo-targeting
3. Flash Detection
4. Server speed analysis
5. Duplicate content detection and reduction
6. Member experience discovery
7. User agent detection
8. Browser extension
9. Spider detection
10. User experience maximization.
11. Selective demographic delivery

What are the best reasons for “selective delivery” that you’ve heard? Do you think search engines would frown on that type of delivery if detected?

Thanks to Dan, Marshall, Brad, Neil, and Cameron for their contributions to the conversation that spawned this.