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

By: James Dolan

James Dolan — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:27:30 +0000

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?)

By: Bushido

Bushido — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:55:00 +0000

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.

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

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:27:55 +0000

[...] Andy Beal over at the excellent Marketing Pilgrim blog wrote on Friday about the CEO of an online audio books from who has stated that no business should invest in SEO because of the deadly dangers they allow their online businesses to be subjected to by search optimisation techniques [...]

By: Ciaran

Ciaran — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:54:37 +0000

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

By: horisly

horisly — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:53:34 +0000

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

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 10:37:42 +0000

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!

By: Terry Howard

Terry Howard — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 02:40:09 +0000

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!

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:42:36 +0000

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

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:59:04 +0000

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.

By: SEO Refugee Blog

SEO Refugee Blog — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:50:30 +0000

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

By: Jaan Kanellis

Jaan Kanellis — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:15:14 +0000

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”.

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:07:03 +0000

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.

By: Patrick Altoft

Patrick Altoft — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:00:13 +0000

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.

By: Brian Chappell

Brian Chappell — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:35:06 +0000

“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?

By: Jordan McCollum

Jordan McCollum — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:20:19 +0000

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.