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UK CEO Warns "never allowing your programmers to try any kind of SEO at all"

posted on July 6, 2007


I’m not sure which is worse…

  1. The CEO of  AudioBooksForFree.com stating, “”I would say that the most important policy regarding search optimisation is never allowing your programmers to try any kind of SEO at all.?
  2. SiliconRepublic.com allowing this kind of junk to be published.
  3. Us for giving it undeserved attention.

When will the spread of misinformation on SEO end? Just because one company happens to rank well for keywords that are part of it’s company name – and likely used a lot in the anchor text of backlinks – doesn’t mean everyone else should just suck it up.

Still you have to give them credit. The company is either truly ignorant about SEO, or is brazen enough to duplicate its main page in a more “search engine friendly” text-only format. (btw, nofollow added to that link, as I would hate to keep the CEO up at night worrying!) ;-)


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  • Jordan McCollum

    Wow. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen more lies about SEO per paragraph (other than in Digg comments). “New,” “untested,” not “provable” no “tangible benefit”? Does he not get any benefit from ranking for those terms?

    Do we need to assemble a Gigantic List of Anyone We’ve Ever Worked With (with contributions from every SEO firm we can find) to show him that not only are these techniques proven and the benefits tangible, but that you can actually rank for words that aren’t your domain name?

    Or should we just let this show his intelligence: that he’s proud of the fact that he didn’t pay Google to get on top of the natural listings. Anything that ignorant of how search engines work should be taken with a whole shaker of salt.

  • http://www.brianchappell.com Brian Chappell

    “Federovsky warned there was a danger that by using SEO you could eventually run foul of Google and be blacklisted.”

    This quote made me laugh. Is this guy related to europeforvisitors over at WMW?

  • http://blogstorm.co.uk Patrick Altoft

    The funny thing is at the end when he says “just e-market yourself well”. If only he knew that SEO was just marketing but on the web.

  • http://www.redflymarketing.com/ Dave Davis

    It’s articles like this that are being published by SiliconRepublic that effect me personally AND locally.

    Silicon Republic also offer no feedback, no comment system and much of the content there gets published in our national Sunday newspaper.

    The first thing I did when I read that article this morning was check out the audiobook site. Unique title and meta tags and they fail to mention that they have been online for quite some time.

    It makes SR look stupid and damages the industry as a whole.

  • http://www.jaankanellis.com Jaan Kanellis

    Is this the same Niall Byrne that authored that garbage?

    http://www.scienceinpublic.com/about_niall.htm

    You would think these authors would research a little more before publishing these “stories”.

  • http://www.seorefugee.com/seoblog SEO Refugee Blog

    SEO’ing for clients is enough of a challenge without this kind of crap. Whatever happened to responsible journalism?

  • http://www.redflymarketing.com/ Dave Davis

    Exactly. And just because ONE person says something, it’s published as fact? That’s should be an entry in a blog, not a published journalistic article.

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    @Dave – I agree, doesn’t appear to be any attempt to get a counter point.

  • http://www.terryhoward.net/ Terry Howard

    I have to think, the real boneheadedness in this CEO’s comments comes in where he lays out exactly what terms he ranks for “without SEO”, essentially giving every SEO heavyweight a fun little project for the weekend. This guy very well may find 30 affiliate sites for audio books shoving him into the abyss before long, giving him a hard learned lesson in exactly what SEO is good for. On the bright side, maybe he’ll then rank for amish furniture!

  • http://www.digeratimarketing.co.uk Mark

    I don’t think it’s worth getting hot under the collar about. The guy quite obviously knows nothing about the Internet, branding, marketing, programming or usability – let alone SEO! Just look at his site, it’s terrible!

    The article is wrong anyway, he holds 3rd position for “audio book” searches. Let him keep his texty website and see where he is in 5 years time. Or perhaps in 5 weeks time, if he’s annoyed enough SEOs?

    Any company worth their salt as a client would have the sense not the listen to that peon!

  • http://horisly.blogspot.com horisly

    many people misunderstand the concept of seo.
    but i truly think seo do great for your e-marketing.

  • http://www.eyefall.co.uk/blog Ciaran

    Andy,

    I noticed this last week on an online PR service and decided that it was an obvious attempt at SEO by slagging SEO & not worth posting on: what the guy is warning about (in his Roman Abramovich style) is the dangers of black-hat – he obviously just feels that good SEO comes under the heading of web design (which in some ways it should).

    I hadn’t heard of Silicon Republic before I saw this but don’t think that them publishing this is worth worrying about; no serious paper is going to publish a piece with comments like . The guy sounds like a cross between a bad Nigerian email, Borat & Fawlty Tower’s Manuel: “many top blue-chip executives hardly realise what kind of deadly dangers they allow” – err, what?

    What he’s really after here is a bit of attention, which, and that’s why I think we should just starve these guys of the oxygen of publicity (and possibly apply no-follows to the idiots at SR as well)

    Cheers,

    Ciarán

  • Pingback: How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Ignore SEO Snake Oil | Eyefall Search Marketing Blog

  • http://bushidoblog.com.ar Bushido

    What does Google have to say about this?
    http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35 291

    They say that if you do choose to hire an SEO firm, make sure it’s not black hat.

  • http://www.corporatesearchoptimization.com James Dolan

    Even though he says he’s doing well without SEO, a properly implemented SEO campaign would drive much more targeted traffic to his site than he’s getting now. His loss… He should contact us: http://www.corporatesearchoptimization.com (can you say blatant plug?)

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