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Why the SEO Gurus and Social Media Monkeys Can Suck Rocks
I was reading Amanda Chapel’s recent post today at Strumpette: Social Media Guru Calls for Most PRs to Leave the Profession. (Go for it… it’s definitely worth a read.) I don’t want to get too much into the Strumpette post, but in the end it brought up a really touchy subject with me, especially as something I see pretty regularly when working with online businesses and webmasters. It seems sometimes like every Internet marketer, SEO, or person jumping brainlessly onto the social media bandwagon thinks they’re suddenly a PR expert; and they have the advice to “prove” it.
The worst part is the fact that clients honestly don’t know any better. If enough SEO people tell them that a press release is meant to do this, then they’re nothing short of lost when a PR person comes in and tells them that, no, a press release is meant to do that. It happens in a lot of areas of online PR.
Frankly, SEOs are the new spin doctors. We’ve got PR people trying to get back to the basics of honesty and transparency, and we’ve got SEOs (although certainly not all) out there trying to find any way to make the end run around the rules and systems. When new promotional tools come about, Internet marketers find every way possible to use and abuse them until they become completely worthless, because they’re loaded with so much bullshit and spam (can someone say “press release distribution sites”?) that there’s no legitimate PR value for companies looking for real exposure. Then they move on to the next big thing.
But do you know what? This post isn’t about Internet marketers and SEOs and the social media whores abusing the system any chance they get (and we have to admit plenty of less-than-ethical PR people would have done the same if they’d have kept up on changing technologies and thought of it first). It’s about the fact that these groups are becoming notorious for thinking that they’re the new PR gods in town, without an ounce of PR expertise to their name. If I want a piece of hyped up linkbait, I’ll go to an SEO. If I want a viral video, I’ll go to a social media fiend. But if I want real news disseminated to help build a strong identity and awareness of my business, SEOs and Internet marketers can’t do that. I’d go to the PR pro. I’d like to see more business owners out there actually knowing the difference before they decide who to go to for advice. In the end, that’s really all there is to it.
And for the record (on the note of press releases), their purpose is NOT to get “tons of backlinks” and “lots of instant traffic.” Their purpose is to disseminate a news message to a target audience, build and maintain an image or reputation, build exposure, build goodwill, etc. Traffic and backlinks are great side effects of a release done well (and unlike the SEO’d-to-death, crap, non-newsworthy releases often encouraged by SEOs and Internet marketers, the backlinks and traffic you’ll get as a side effect of doing it the “right way” will be far better than the PR site, scraper site, unheard-of-blog kind of links you get from the “instant gratification” crowd).
The end.
I see you gave up on the Digital Pointless style of thinking. Even though I agree with almost everything you wrote … especially about press releases ( you would think calling them that would make it clear? ) … I have to disagree with something you wrote in particular:
“Internet marketers find every way possible to use and abuse them until they become completely worthless, because they’re loaded with so much bullshit and spam (can someone say “press release distribution sites”?) that there’s no legitimate PR value for companies looking for real exposure.”
I don’t think brick and mortars have any more inherent right to the public’s attention than anyone else. While 90 % of the junk on DP should never see the light of day, a lot of established companies have put out their share of crap ( or worse ) into the market place.
It seems the only fair way to settle things would be for all products and services to compete on merit … the one thing that won’t happen. That would mean the online and offline marketers would both need to find a new industry.
Example: The iPhone didn’t do any SEO work, but it’s as over hyped as it is over priced. Chris Rock once said “People don’t sell drugs; drugs sell themselves.” Even without the blitzkrieg of commercials, the iPhone would still have plenty of word of mouth buzz.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. When I say “internet marketers” I don’t only refer to webmasters and online businesses. Many offline, brick and mortar, businesses now market themselves on the Web, using the services of Internet marketing professionals.
Many offline marketers are pushing more into online tactics, but you’ll notice something different in a lot of these cases… those starting “offline” often have a better understanding of marketing fundamentals. They know how to target a market, conduct appropriate market research, and they understand that it’s not always about the immediate result.
Those who strictly classify themselves as “Internet marketers” usually come from a different group. I know dozens of them personally, and even have several as clients to do PR work for their own firms. Out of them, I can count on a single hand how many have any actual marketing education of experience. Those without that kind of training tend to care about three things:
1. Traffic (often without regard for the quality of that traffic; hence why they abuse most online tools for worthless visitors that they can’t convert).
2. Placement in the SERPs
3. Getting those two things extremely quickly to satisfy this instant gratification need inherent to the Web.
You mentioned DP. You can find countless examples there of exactly what I’m talking about, where you’ll have Internet marketing people discussing how to get these things by “gaming” every tool on the Web, as opposed to what really matters to anyone with long-term business and marketing sense:
1. Finding a genuine need.
2. Filling that need.
3. Building a solid reputation to keep demand alive over time.
4. Evaluating full campaign results based on effectiveness and ROI, to improve future marketing efforts.
Most Internet marketing people really know very little about marketing. Because their attention is in the “now,” and not on long-term efforts as much, they have no issue with corrupting new tools. Squidoo is a recent example. It was an excellent tool to spread the word about a company, product, or niche topic. The rankings began as honest, and it wasn’t long before it came down to rating trades and such and publishing completely spam lenses just for backlinks or affiliate sales with no real information. Here’s just a short list of once-useful marketing tools that the IM crowd have destroyed or weakened drastically:
1. Digg - through digg exchanges and paid diggs
2. Blog comments - through paid blog comments
3. Del.icio.us - through bookmark exchanges
4. Squidoo - as mentioned previously
5. Technorati - through favorite exchanges and purchases
6. Myspace - through overwhelming spam, fake profiles, and friend adder bots
I think you get the idea. These tools aren’t only used for marketing efforts by the IM groups… they’re used in more traditional marketing these days as well. There’s just a major problem with the ethics scale between the two. It doesn’t matter if the products are online only or from an offline business. This is all about how it’s marketed and who does the marketing.
Interesting read. Being on the other side of the fence, I’ve seen advertising and PR people telling clients they’re SEO specialists as well. I think what it boils down to is that people are willing to tell a prospective client they can meet their needs.
I agree about what you said about press releases - they’re not for getting links and traffic and as you admitted, they can be good for that. But I think if you looked around a little bit, you’d see that there’s a minority of search marketers and SEO-types that actually encourage the garbage PR.
I also think if you talked with more reputable search marketers and their ilk, you’d find they also believe in long-term branding and image management. After all, what good have you done a client if you’ve made them look foolish or that they’re using trickery to gain rankings and traffic?
I’d be interested in hearing about this “ethics scale” you speak of . . . .
Good post!
Well, I can’t speak for advertising consultants, because I’m not one. ;) But with PR people, if they know what they’re doing, they should in fact know quite a bit about SEO. SEO by its very nature is a PR function, albeit a highly specialized one, because it’s primary goal is to gain exposure and the benefits that come from that exposure through a specific medium. I’m the first to admit however that most PR people really don’t know much about SEO, and actually commented on that in a more recent post. :) On the other side, I’ve never met an SEO specialist (who does only that), who has a solid understanding of PR. Yet I’ve seen many who try to market their services in that field, as though press releases are SEO tools (which they’re really not).
I tend to only associate with those that I’d consider to be reputable (I don’t keep company with the black hat types once I find out that’s their method). What really gets to me is when I see some of these more reputable SEO types misusing tools based on misconceptions of what they can and should do. I think the underlying problem is within the education side of things (formal or not), where people get so caught up in doing the “new thing” that they completely forget to first focus on the fundamentals.
As for what the majority or minority do in SEO, I really can’t say. All I can comment on is what I see first-hand, and that’s what I’ve posted regarding. For instance, SEO companies working with major corporations probably wouldn’t dare to suggest something like that, and if they did, the company’s PR consultants would set them straight in a heartbeat (I’d hope). But my work focuses entirely on smaller online entrepreneurs and independent professionals (from authors to musicians to other consultants), and what gets marketed to them is a different story. They get hammered with information from SEOs and Internet marketers on using press releases for links. They get the same from the press release distribution companies that they’re familiar with. It’s less about the “garbage releases” and more about motive with me in the end. If you write them for the wrong reason, you’ll never get the process completely right (even if the news is great and the release is great, the distribution tends to be all wrong), meaning the client never really gets what they should out of the deal. The garbage releases floating around the Web definitely annoy the hell out of me though (not to mention that they’re a part of that education problem - when that’s what the SEOs and such see, that’s how they think it’s supposed to be done).
My comment on an “ethics scale” is entirely between Internet marketers who focus on online promotion for offline businesses versus Internet marketers who focus on online promotion for online businesses. So just to be clear, that wasn’t an SEO vs. PR comment (PR certainly has its own ethics problems). What I’ve observed is that in many cases, those focusing on online businesses tend to be the ones going the black hat / gray hat route more often. Now that could be for several reasons, but I’d guess the following may play a part:
Offline business owners are used to the fact that marketing efforts take time. On the other hand, online entrepreneurs are more used to the world of instant gratification of the Web. In a lot of cases, they want results immediately. Since it’s rarely realistic with completely ethical tactics (let’s use the example of the client wanting 2000 natural-looking backlinks asap). An ethical marketer would only go after actually natural backlinks (creating quality content to serve as linkbait - not the hyped up style, offering materials to journalists and bloggers to review, etc.). A more unethical one looking for quicker results jumps into things like buying “reviews” that they have a say in (like those who demand they be positive), spamming blog comments without adding quality information or discussion, etc.
There are other factors that I think come to play (very often more differences between the types of clients, what they understand, and what they want), but I’m already rambling, and just got back into town, so I’m exhausted. :( So perhaps I’ll expand on this in a new post sometime this week. :)
Heheheh, your comments are longer than my posts!!!
I think part of the problem with online businesses is they expect a certain level of speed in which they get results (and make money). While search marketers will do their best to meet a client’s expectations, in my experience (and in the experiences of those I’ve met) the sooner you tell them that there is no silver bullet, the better the relationship is. Their expectations become more realistic and if it’s someone who cares about the long-term health of their online business, they usually buy into SEO mindset: this is a long-term process that requires patience and time.
Maybe I’m being naive, but I think the era of the online entrepreneur expecting immediate results and gobs of cash is coming to an end. And if not, they’ll always be the fodder of an opportunistic person who knows how to take advantage of the person. Yeah, it ain’t right. But greed motivates. I imagine the same type of people exist in the world or public relations as well - a client has the expectation of a well-written press release ending the mountains of hate mail and bad press and there is some spinner ready to take their cash, promise unrealistic results, and run. I don’t claim to understand your industry, but as you said, both of ours are pretty deeply intertwined with the addition of this new circle of communication. ;)
IMO, though the job of an SEO is primarily focused on tweaking pages to get the best results, it helps to understand PR, advertising and design. If I were to guess, those who focus only on the latest will quickly be left in the dust for the reason you said - you gotta’ know the basics. Advertising, marketing, PR and design are all part of the basics. So is understanding what elements of a webpage are important, linking and getting spiders to the pages you want them to find.
How ethics play into this is pretty interesting. I think your friend Forrest would disagree with me that when it comes to ethics, the only person you’re beholden to is the client. Is a paid review unethical? IMO it isn’t. However, if you haven’t told the client you’ve paid for a review, then that is. If you want to rank well in a certain search engine, you play by its rules. They owe you nothing and you owe them nothing. But the person giving you money to do whatever it is you do - you owe it to them to be honest about whatever tactics you use. If they disagree with what you recommend you can either do as they wish or fire them (assuming your contract allows you to do so). Google now sees link exchanges as bad. Are they? And because a search engine decrees such, does that mean pursuing link exchanges is unethical? If you haven’t told your client the risks of such, and what those people have randomly decided, then yeah. But if you have full disclosure, your client knows the risks and accepts that level of risk, then it isn’t unethical, is it? (Sorry to go off topic here!)
I appreciate your taking the time to answer my comment after having been out of town and traveling and whatnot. =) I might not agree with everything you say, but I really do appreciate your point of view. Great comments to go with your post!
Wow, this is a great site - I honestly thought there were very few people who actually understood the problem with the web and SEO - and here you all are saying the same things as myself!
The problem as I see it is that SEO people are techies where as Marketing people are people people and both have a different way of thinking.
Techies think the information they are reading is true while the marketing people think its all magic and works like in the movies! Neither understand the psychology of an internet user surfing in their underwear at 11pm. It is going to take a few years at least!