

Googlers Expose Sketchy SEO Company - rooshdi
http://www.seroundtable.com/sketchy-seo-company-google-12786.html

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jasonkester
This is how I want to go out.

In a giant long-winded incoherent unwinnable flame war against the best minds
in my industry, hiding behind a flimsy mask of anonymity and dragging my
business empire down further with every post until there's nothing left.
Perfect. Beautiful.

I'm just biding my time until the right person calls me out...

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dholowiski
I'm sure this gets said by thousands of geeks every day, but Matt Cutts is a
cool guy. That was hilarious.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
The funny (sad?) part is that I had a lot more material I could have used. The
point was clear though, so no need to be mean.

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michael_dorfman
My favorite line from the exchange:

 _I also was not able to find Matt Cutts in the Google employee directory._

Clearly the words of a true expert in Search...

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haberman
bruben25's posts are remarkable in how they string together phrases that seem
coherent in isolation, but when taken together are long, rambly, and
impossible to follow. Skimming them, I have absolutely no idea what he's
talking about half the time.

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josefresco
I would guess that maybe English is not their primary language? I would also
imagine that they wrote each reply with their heart racing/eyes twitching as
they realized the ship was going down at the hands of Google reps.

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coderdude
I think the real take-away from this is to just stay legit. Don't try to do
anything shady because it will most likely come back to bite you in the ass.
The guy is actually pretty dumb for not realizing they could figure out who he
was while using a handle that contains his real name.

~~~
daemin
I would hope that apart from staying legit, another take away from this be to
know the market that you are in, know of some of the key people at those
companies, or perhaps being able to find said information?

From the article it seems that the bruben25 SEO guy didn't do any research as
to who Matt was, where as Matt quickly found out quite a bit of (public)
information on who the SEO guy was.

Now who's the better Search expert?

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coderdude
Indeed, everyone should learn who the key people are in their industry. It's
almost unfathomable that bruben25 didn't know who Matt Cutts is, though. B
Ruben seems to be on another plane of obliviousness. Everyone knows who Matt
Cutts is. I think this speaks more to the fact that the guy really didn't do
any legitimate SEO. People who are legitimate in SEO generally keep up with
the trade publications, talk to people, and make connections.

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joshu
Did you manage to read through the whole wall of text? Distinct impression of
crazypants...

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coderdude
If you're asking if I read the entire article, yes I did. I don't know if the
guy (bruben25) is actually crazy, but he certainly doesn't come off as the
sharpest knife in the drawer.

Edit: I see what you're pointing to now (bruben25's wall of text in the Google
Webmaster Central thread). I didn't actually read that but I'm checking it out
now.

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daemin
I looked at that original thread, and oh boy is that a lot of text. Obviously
someone really wanted to defend their position and thought a lot of text would
help make their point.

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jacquesm
For a second there I thought that google decided to sink Demand Media before
the IPO.

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lenni
Why does this side load assets from twitter for _every_ page scroll I do?

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lwat
Googler's Exposé Of Sketchy SEO Company

or

Googlers Expose Sketchy SEO Company

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rooshdi
Oops, just noticed that typo. Too late to edit that title now though, but
either of those two work.

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leon_
Which "SEO companies" aren't sketchy?

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phpnode
I don't know if this is a snarky, rhetorical question, but there are many
legitimate SEO companies out there. SEOMoz is a good example. A general rule
is, if they guarantee certain rankings, avoid them, if they offer "directory
submission" services, avoid them.

~~~
leon_
As soon as they start talking about "link building" my spam sense tingles. The
same for "social media optimization".

So what is left? Glorified mod_rewrite hackery?

/edit: That's not a flame. I'm just interested what non shady SEOs do. The
last time I looked into SEO it was all about rearranging your HTML so the
spider would get to the content fast. And to put nofollows on your links to
get the juice flowing the way you wanted.

But this wasn't that complex that it justified hiring an expensive SEO
company. Sure, they all did that link building stuff too - but as noted above
to me that's shady (it was mostly about spamming digg-like sites with top 10/5
articles).

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klbarry
Link building has all to do with making content that people find interesting
enough to link to/talk about on social networks, and designing it to get links
from certain types of sites with certain types of anchor text. As far as I
know, Google is quite happy with that particular part of the SEO process, and
it's firmly white hat.

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leon_
> Link building has all to do with making content that people find interesting
> enough to link to/talk about on social networks

Shouldn't that be the aim of any website? Being interesting so people like the
site and talk about it?

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to
most boring read in a long time. i think the last jersey shore was more
interesting.

