SEO not Important in 2010? Robert Scoble’s Ironic Video Advertorial Confuses the Masses
Robert Scoble by Alex de Carvalho
In the attention economy the attention rich win over those who get less attention. As controversy and ignorance creates more attention than common sense and boring expertise we have to deal with the phenomenon of SEO bashing every now and then. People pointing fingers saying “look at that, how stupid they are bashing SEO again” create even more buzz.
Web 2.0 celebrities can use this attention gap in order to push their own interests. Failed entrepreneurs like Jason Calacanis have done that in the past repeatedly to ride the wave of negative hype. So this time I was a little bit astounded to hear it from Robert Scoble the web pundit everybody seems to listen to.
I seldom listen to Mr. Scoble as I’m too busy to listen to my trustworthy friends and my own echoes on the Web: I’ve just been nominated as one of the 100 most influential online marketers of 2009. Not sure I am but if others say so, I maybe am. So let’s use a little of my perceived influence.
The real search and SEO experts already have explained once again, like they always do, that SEO is still alive and kicking so what the hell is this post about?
It’s about how Robert Scoble’s ironic video advertorial confused the masses and the search marketing industry. Yes, you heard right. It’s ironic and it’s an advertorial.
It’s ironic and an advertorial because these guys Scoble talks to are from an SEO company themselves.
In fact they even compete with us, SEOptimise, in the search engines. So I just did a little checking with some tools everybody can use to take a look at any website to find out why they deserve such attention. The guys in the video advertorial represent a company called roiworks.com
Keep in mind that the guys from roiworks.com present their site as a “Search Engine Marketing Firm”. Search engine marketing of course entails SEO, PPC and other online marketing tactics SEOptimise offers as well. Indeed we even have similar keywords in our HTML title: UK Search Engine Marketing Agency.
So let’s compare our rankings for search engine marketing firm:
- roiworks.com is nowhere to be found. Neither in the US/Canada nor the UK.
- We’re at 13 for search engine marketing firm in the Google UK results in spite of not having the actual word “firm” in the title at all.
OK, OK, we know search engine rankings don’t mean much, I’ve said it myself more than once. Let’s take a look at the backlink numbers via Yahoo Site Explorer then:
Yahoo backlink numbers don’t show much as well some people will argue. So let’s take a look at web analytics. roiworks.com exists at least since 2001 according to Archive.org but Google Trends or Google Ad Planner can’t find any data on them. So let’s try Compete.com! roiworks.com is an US company and Compete measures US traffic quite well so let’s take a look at the numbers for visits in November:
In case you wonder why we lost so many visitors over the recent months: I’ve been quite lazy lately. Aside of this there must be something wrong with these numbers, after all, they get featured by Robert Scoble and we don’t. Did they actually sleep with him? Or maybe they’re just friends.
The video setup by itself is also quite funny. You have those two awkward guys talking like for ages. The one, more the Woody Allen type is keen on stressing that black hat SEO is very, very bad while the other dressed in black and wearing a black hat like in a mafia movie might be his bodyguard.
They talk about SEO, search and search marketing all the time telling us how important it really is. For instance they argue that local search is crucial etc.
Update: Make sure to read the statement by George, CEO of roiworks.com
So Robert Scoble’s post asking whether SEO will not be important anymore in 2010 is just a rhetorical question. It’s as if you’d ask: will the sky still be blue in 2010? Will the sky be blue in 2010? Yes, it will. I recommend a post by SEOMoz which, among other predictions, shows a statistic according to which 78% of questioned marketers assign more importance to SEO in 2010.
Btw. Robert Scoble admitted the baiting of the SEO industry later on. Mr. Scoble is not stupid, but the reaction of the SEO industry is too predictable by now. Thus I don’t link to such SEO bashing posts and advise you to refrain from doing it as well. The company Mr. Scoble is featuring really needs attention and all those links. They barely got any. Unlike more “traditional agencies”.
December 19th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Dear Tad –
Your impression of both our firm and what happened is incorrect. Here’s a first-hand account:
I met Robert for the first time at a Tech Crunch event about a month ago. No sleeping together, sorry. I told him we were an SEM/SEO agency getting close to launching our own product (MyNextCustomer, a software/service for SMBs and agencies) and he asked me to come and do an interview.
We did the interview at his house. I woke up the next day (with my wife, not Robert) to find that he took about a half hour of unedited footage and published it in a blog post which had absolutely nothing to do with our interview, our product, or our views on the state of SMB marketing.
Most of our colleagues in the search industry who saw the video quickly understood that Robert interpreted our interview very differently from what we actually said. They all focused on debunking the arguments he makes in his post. You, however, assumed some kind of special relationship between us, and chose to attack him by attacking our credibility (and our looks??).
Let me restate your argument, if I may: “My SEO firm gets more traffic and links, and ranks for many phrases, and we compete with these guys and they get less traffic and don’t rank for the phrases we do – so they’re dumb. And I’m nominated for this award. Oh, yeah, and they’re ugly too.” Did I get that right?
I can’t believe I am taking the time to explain this, but it may help in your future career as “Germany’s most notorious white hat SEO” (your self-description not mine: http://seo2.0.onreact.com/tadeusz-szewczyk):
Tad – you can’t judge a search consulting firm’s success or credibility by the amount of traffic they themselves have. Nor by where they themselves rank. Nor by how many links they have. Nor by what award, voted over the internet, they are nominated for.
Tad – we don’t linkbuild for ourselves at all. We have not been trying to generate traffic, or rank. Think about it.
I feel almost silly for pointing this out – maybe Kevin will help me out here. Tad, you judge a firm’s success by the results they achieve for their clients. Ask your CEO – he’s a pretty smart guy and he’ll probably agree with me.
The truth is, we haven’t even spent the time to optimize our own site properly. And we kind of don’t care. Clients find us through referrals from current, happy customers and agencies. We don’t have the staff to handle a lot of inquiries off the street, and we don’t accept all comers.
Plus, we’ve been working our asses off for 2+ years developing a software product while running a services business.
So you win – go ahead and rank yourselves all you want for “seo firm” or whatever.
Oh, by the way: If you use your argument, I might point out that in your Meet The Team section on your site, you refer to Kevin Gibbons, your CEO, as “highly followed on Twitter.”
Checking out his profile, http://www.twitter.com/kevgibbo I see that he only has 1,758 followers and is only listed 76 times. Again, using your logic, I would compare my follower count on twitter (twitter.com/george_revutsky) and see that I have 12,443 followers, and am listed 115 times.
So using your logic, is Kevin 7 times less influential, and your agency much less credible than ours? Maybe he’s not an “expert” like you site says?
Of course not. Kevin probably does not see Twitter as the most important method of getting new customers for himself. Or maybe he’s busy. Or maybe he prefers blogging to micro-blogging. But I’m not judging your firm based on his follower count. I’d have to be pretty naive, or opportunistic myself, to do that.
Notice how in all of the above, I don’t comment on your looks, and don’t tear Kevin down. I just take apart your logic. You might try this in your next post.
best
George Revutsky
CEO
ROI.works
December 19th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Hey George,
thank you for coming over and clarifying a few things. Before I reply to your comment let me stress one thing: This post above is a little humorous. I don’t really think that Robert Scoble is gay. Moreover the post is written on the premise of finding out why the hell someone like Robert Scoble would use such an outdated and inappropriate linkbait idea. The best explanation I could come up with is that you really need it badly due to lack of rankings, links and traffic.
Of course not everybody, even in the SEO industry, focuses on generating links and traffic for hers or his own site/s.
I’m glad that it weren’t you who created the confusion over SEO being not important anymore but Mr. Scoble himself. I’d like to see something more widely disseminated on that topic from you or your company, like a press release. I’m afraid most people won’t read your comments here. I was commenting on your looks because they seemed like a part of a deliberately funny and ironic video. Who would denounce black hat SEO techniques wearing a black hat all the time? Especially wearing a black hat inside a residential building.
Last but not least I haven’t even questioned what you said, I even confirmed some of your points. You’re welcome to inform me about updates on this story, like the above mentioned press release, so that the confusion doesn’t persist. In this case I might even link out to you as we’re not afraid to link “the competition” on SEOptimise.
Btw. I tend to write funny stuff both here and on my blog so it’s not just this post that sounds a little weird.
Sincerely, Tad
December 20th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Hi Tad – thanks for your response.
Is there any way you could place your “Update: Make sure to read the statement by George, CEO of roiworks.com” at the beginning of your post, so folks don’t have to wait until they get down to the bottom to get the full picture? I’d really appreciate it.
Yes, I got that you weren’t actually calling Robert gay. I was responding humorously, in kind.
RE: a release: I’ve posted clarifications on Robert’s blog, Danny’s SearchEngineLand column, and Outspoken Media’s blog.Meanwhile, Robert has also acknowledged in his twitter feed that we don’t agree with his question/position.
So I think we’re all set there. I may write more of a first-hand account about our experience some time in the near future. When I do, I’ll let you know.
best
George