OMG. RAND IS ATTACKED! (in a blog post)

[EGOL]

I didn't get any updates until a few minutes ago.

[AWCthreads]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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.

[AWCthreads]

Okay. I thought maybe it was a system refresh.

My inbox is filling up with posts from this and other threads right now.

[KeriMorgret]

Only the title was tweaked, making it apparent that there was no physical attack.

[AWCthreads]

And that was a good call. Implemented well too.

[RobertFisher]

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

[jesse-landry]

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!

[jesse-landry]

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!

[jesse-landry]

I did! Thank you!

I wasn't intending to lump you in which is why I kept saying things like "he" and "his post." Sorry for the confusion there.

I felt like branding and content had a lot to do with the conversation. I see we agree on this point and I thought we did from the get-go. I don't think the blogger in this case was trying to talk about the micro niche sites that you reference. At least that wasn't the vibe I gathered. He talked about branding and content building and those two things don't seem to match. I agree that what you say blackhat works for is a great example of where it "belongs" or "works" in the short-term.

Anyway thanks.