OMG. RAND IS ATTACKED! (in a blog post)
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Thanks Jesse,
Your photo is so alpha that I unfortunately can't make a single negative comment about it. Nice to see where your priorities lie when it comes to discussing SEO information though (did a dude or a chick write it? what do they look like?)
I never missed that at all. It has been a nice message everyone preaches for years. If you think it's as relevant as it used to be for search results then I urge you to use Google more often.
I have never said that building a brand is bad and I still highly advocate writing good content (I even mentioned it in my latest post and in the comments after someone wrote "Fuck Rand and Moz"). They work great and I try to follow this as much as I can, but it's not really helping my marketing right now when it comes to search traffic.
Anyway
Silliness
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I hardly think that I tore down anyone else.
I tried reading your comment but it seems like you just went off on your own tangent that doesn't really seem to have anything to do with me or the post. I have writers too - I'm not relying on them to get me top rankings with their amazing link baiting skills.
If you think I'm going to rank for 'Rand' (who would even search for that?) then I have some handsome pills to sell you.
I shouldn't be surprised that the argument is very one-sided here. No matter what I reply it will be nit-picked apart in defense of Rand. After all, this is his website. The same thing would happen if you were to comment on mine; you would be nit-picked and 'proven' to have no idea what you're talking about.
It's a shame you read the first 10% of an article and went on this mini-rant. However, I have to thank you for allowing me to have my few seconds. It was nice to have readers for the first time in my life
P.S. Just to make you dislike me even more I'll be the bearer of bad news; Your website is down.
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Wow, that's quite the headline! I'm not going to dive into that post itself, but I would like to make the point that people counter what Rand says all the time. It's nothing to get too shocked or worried about, it's quite commonplace.
Believe me this post is quite soft on Rand. -
I'd like to comment here that while I have no idea if Robert read the entire post or not, I can say that that does happen often on our blog. I can't tell you how often someone comments on the blog and they clearly haven't actually read the post. Drives me batty.
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Hey Jesse, let's keep appearance out of the conversation. That shouldn't have anything to do with anything.
Thanks!
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"If you answer a query in the meta description and then you give the person who clicked on it exactly what they wanted, you are going to do just fine with ranking at some point and probably some point soon."
Plus one and thumbs up!
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Dont put me on the same line with this guy cause I mentioned I have seen examples. You can find my blog by googling my name and find posts proving bad techniques that rank on page one (with screenshots etc) for more than a month, its not that hard. Also I did not say that I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS of examples of successful business rankings. I said in pure copy paste " But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank". I also say And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday, so again your "long-haul" claim (which you claim, i didnt) does not put me to a different direction to what I truly believe or what most people say in this post. Thanks
In regards to branding, ofcourse black hat will never work. To me black hat is a popular practised to micro niche small web sites that makes revenue from adsense and amazon for keywords that are low competitive and the owner is lucky enough to own an EMD or do good SEO because he actually cares. But even in this case in the long-haul as you say I am pretty sure they will be beaten.
Hope you find these clarifications useful.
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Hi Jen,
I've not been receiving any email updates for responses submitted. Was that feature turned off for this post or is something amiss in my settings?
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At the bottom of this post there's a button that says Email Updates. If there's no check in that button, you won't get any updates about your thread.
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As the poster, I should be getting emails (yes there is a check).
This is the first time I've not gotten emails on a post I generated and since the staff edited the title for clarity, I was wondering if anything else was tweaked.
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First off, thank you members for your input. Since the dust appears to be settling I want to share my thoughts since I solicited yours.
1. Why the post: Because I believe it matters. We should always be improving our filters to see through the smoke and fog. Consider the audience. People are developing their knowledge and sharpening their skills at something that is difficult to learn and lends itself to shortcuts and gaming. Here's an example this morning of a member trying to tune the quality of his filter.
2. Why the headline: To get eyes on post (see above). In my opinion Rand's credibility was attacked as well as the principles he promotes. Add Edit - it is the first time I've ever seen Rand countered, called out of touch an considered irrelevant. I thought he was a Unicorn.
3. My allegiances: I have none. I don't know VC and I don't know Rand. Aside from his freshness post, I've never read VC's work. My only brush with Rand was a Moz forum smack-down for being unkind to jennita regarding the use of H1's.
4. Regarding VC's post: It lacked focus (it tore down without building up), wreaked of anti-establishment sentiment, smacked of an-axe-to-grind and winked at gaming the system.
5. Regarding best practices: I try to use and promote them and will always lean-in to those who do the same.
Thanks again.
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I didn't get any updates until a few minutes ago.
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I got one a few minutes ago from a different thread.
We'll see if I get your post.
One of the staffers must have logged me out because after I logged back in is when I received the email from the other thread.
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We didn't log anyone out. There has been a delay in email notifications systemwide, not just in this thread. We're investigating that right now.
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Okay. I thought maybe it was a system refresh.
My inbox is filling up with posts from this and other threads right now.
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Only the title was tweaked, making it apparent that there was no physical attack.
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And that was a good call. Implemented well too.
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Well, I reckon I missed the party this time. Sorry, but I just got a ton of responses to this and am in a bit of a compromised position here as far as being able to respond, etc. (In the hospital but they think I will make it. No, it is not a face lift - but I would be interested in your pills.)
ViperChill, First, I made a mistake in the way I went about this. I would try to give you context, but it would sound like an excuse. I went after you, "this guy" when I should have gone solely after the issue I disagreed with; I broke my own rule and you do have my apology because I was wrong.
My point about the copywriters was exactly as it reads: given that I employ them I must be on the side of the debate that says content really matters. It had nothing other than that attached to it.
I did not think you were trying to 'rank for Rand' but I am open to the pills still
I saw it as Rand's name is so unusual alleviating the surname would have little effect given the semantic context. I did read the article before I wrote. I did not evaluate it line by line. I felt you were minimally being the provocateur with statements like you made as I addressed. Yes, I do see it as tearing someone down when you make statements after pointing to their post such as - "what this person is saying is no longer relevant," and "you can't take this type of person seriously for making these types of statements in 2013." If I said you were lacking relevance in what you said, or that you were not to be taken seriously, I do believe you would take it as me tearing you down. (And, I would be, and it would be wrong IMO).To me it is no different (better or worse) than what I did with the blanket "you are using it all to sell something." (I hate it when others assign motive to my actions and I did that to you. I just had an experience where someone did this with me and that really makes me feel stupid for having done it here to you within a week or two of that experience. Again, I was wrong for that.)
Now, you state I dislike you. No, really I don't but I can certainly say if that is what you believe it would be on me. As to my site being down... I have a few but we are up according to our various monitoring services; the main marketing one is up and has been so not sure which you might be referring to. If you have a url please let me know.
Again, I was wrong for making it personal about you. I hope you can accept that and we can move on. I have zero ill will toward you. In fact, kind of enjoyed taking a look at all of this when I had nothing to do but ... wait. Aaarrgghh. Sometimes it is good to realize how wrong one can be.
Best to you, Best to all,
Robert
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Oh my. I think I might cry. I just wrote the longest most thoughtful post in response to this thread addressing everything in an awesome manner, edited it carefully, went to Post it and BOOM! "YOU Don't have Access!" I had been logged out and my post was gone. HOLY COW! This is terrible. I'm going to try and re-hash it but honestly I'm not sure I can get it across the same. Here goes:
Sheesh. I almost liked it better when I wasn't getting email updates to this thread!
First off, my original post I feel may have been misunderstood by you, VIPER. What I was trying to say is that this thread itself was a bit of silly sensationalism. I didn't feel that it was an attack at all which is why I started it off by saying exactly that. When I finished the post with "Silliness" I was more responding to the thread and it's title. I did see some silliness in your blog post as well but when I say "Anyway, silliness" I meant to refer back to my first point which was "hey this isn't an attack at all it's far too soft for that it's simply a counterpoint." Perhaps I should have said that. I thought this thread would go away faster... silly me!
As for the comments on your appearance, I did and do continue to apologize. But I'd like to talk a bit about profiling for a second. We are all guilty of doing it and have all been on the receiving end of it as well. You can try saying you don't ever profile people but the fact is we all do; it's human nature. Whether it be deciding which person to get behind in a grocery-store aisle or deciding that the oldsmobile in the left-lane of the freeway going five-under with their left turn indicator perpetually blinking is most likely a little old lady, we are guilty of it. SO when I see a thread written by a guy named "VIPER" with a picture such as yours and pro-blackhat content I must admit that I found it rather easy to lump you into whatever category. I apologized for this and stand by my apology. Nonetheless, the comments were made in jest and I never saw this thread going as far as it did.
---- Hang on though: as an aside, don't you worry that your name and your appearance might lose you a potential client or two? I'm asking this man-to-man and am not judging at all. I'm truly curious. I may sound like a Dad here (oh wait I am a Dad now!) but where I come from I was always told to take off my hat and glasses and pull up my pants before I went out looking for a job! Again, I am truly curious on your thoughts/experience here. You have clearly seen great success in the SEO world so I mean no disrespect. ----
But I digress, that is not what I wish to talk about here. Again as I said my original post was deleted and I went into greater detail about the nuts and bolts of this thread. I'm afraid I won't be able to do it as well this time around but I'll keep trying -
What I want to touch on is this whole notion of branding and content vs link-building and ranking. I very much am of the opinion that branding and marketing is everything and that a good campaign in the latter will build your SE ranking. Your blog seemed to go against that even though you claim in this thread that it did not. Allow me to quote you a couple times here:
In your blog you wrote:
_ "While I can understand that preaching “build good content, focus on growing your brand’ sounds great and it’s what people want to hear, for a HUGE percentage of search phrases, this is just no longer relevant."_
In this thread you wrote:
"I have never said that building a brand is bad and I still highly advocate writing good content"
See my confusion? This seems incredibly contradictory to me. So in my opinion yes, your blog was in fact saying that building a brand was not helpful. In this I agree with Rand, but I do not fancy myself a Rand-fanboy.
I do agree with his concepts often. That all said I think you are trying a bit hard to be a victim here saying things like "the argument is very one-sided here. No matter what I reply it will be nit-picked apart in defense of Rand." There are multiple posts on here defending your concepts and I think it is unfair to claim that this site is biased. If this site was truly biased you wouldn't see so many people come on here and say "USE MAJESTIC (and sometimes OSE)" in response to threads titled "How do I check backlinks?"
I do understand that blackhat SEO tactics still work. If you looked through my many posts on these forums you would see tons of them complaining about being outranked by blackhats and how they succeed and beat sites that don't use that tactic all the time. It drives me bonkers! But what I don't ever find is these blackhat sites outranking well-established brands with excellent content. I keep seeing claims of this happening thousands of times but don't see examples.
I hate to use it as an example but I can't think of a more apt one: Moz happens to rank number 3 for "SEO" and they have done exactly this...(built a brand with awesome content) Meanwhile there are thousands of blackhat SEOs out there trying to rank for the same term, are there not? Seems like a great example to me...
But I digress. I have to wind down now. I had more things to say and they were all along the lines of "dude I think you're a good guy and I respect your opinions and even agree with some of them! Let's chill!" The thing is I thought the topic title itself was sensationalism and then your blog post carried that same trend. I think you were going for that and I think you succeeded! I know you claim you weren't but if you truly were you don't have to admit it. I'd still like to congratulate you. I think you did well and I'm sure this is actually your opinion on top of that making it a fair topic by all means. But in using Rand's name and the Moz brand you are clearly trying to get the attention of their readership... Right? Cause that is what happened. And since we all know how the internet works, we know that the result is not all that uncommon..
It works! This is a great way to gain some traffic and readers. I for one will most likely visit your blog again in the future and read more of what you have to say.
With that said I truly would like to see more of you around these parts. Regardless of where you stand on link-building concepts the fact is blackhat does work. Short term, long term, that's up for debate on what's better but I think your opinions would lend well to discussion on these forums and I wish you had been a part of many threads I've been in to help better my understanding of why tumblr blog spam is outranking my sites!
Please don't take offense to any of this. I respect you and your opinions and I think everyone else here does as well.
I do think this topic title should have been called something different.. But hey it got the ball rolling on a (maybe)healthy conversation!
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I don't think your points were wrong Robert no matter your delivery and I hope this experience doesn't deter you from contributing again in the future. People get sensitive on the internet and there is a line but it's easy to cross as we all have different intentions and different ideas of how others perceive our intentions. You got 6 thumbs up on your original post. Seems like it was well regarded as a good one...
Keep on keepin' on everybody! This has been a pretty healthy conversation as far as forum-arguing goes. I've seen some pretty strong examples of how not to do it and this isn't one of them!
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