2 days ago I wrote a post on why I dislike 95% of “expert” SEOs. Many “expert” SEOs naturally disagreed and a small shit storm erupted. I understand people feel passionate about their profession and I am welcoming you to a open debate this Tuesday on my webmaster radio show. The show will be live and unedited. This Tuesday 5PM Central. If you are an expert SEO that I offended please feel free to use the contact form and send your phone number so webmasterradio can get you on the line.
For those who do not remember I debated Rand Fishkin on disclosure and I think he would say I a fair debater.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 65 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome! I cant wait to hear these arguments.
*crickets*
Where are all the SEO people now. I wonder if they will actually defend what they said. I am guessing not
way to parlay this into listeners for the radio show. sweet!
Lol this should be interesting.
Is there a link we can use for the radio show? Separate website?
John
Hehe – I am looking forward to this!
About freakin time there’s a new radio show. What happened to your regular schedule?
it goes in seasons
This will be the start of season 3
Still yet to hear from any seo’s
I consider my self an expert and do it as a profession. Yet I agree with everything. You didn’t say 100% right?
I never guarntee and always explain any risk which may be involved.
great idea. i m going to tell all my SEO buddies to sign up for the challenge.
w00t! the radio show is back!
This going to be a good one… if any SEO’s step up and take the challenge
I didn’t notice much controversy Jeremy. I agree with Anthony, most SEO’s give the industry a bad name and although I would class myself an Expert I’m not sure anyone is going to deny that point.
Some SEOs certainly will.
I just hope it’s the right one, and not some idiot.
My worst nightmare is having the SEO version of Calacanis up there spewing crap.
this will be great show..so what is SEO professional?
Must be running out of good topics to talk about…
This is going to be one hell of a great radio talk show. I am definitely looking forward to this. Go Jeremy!
Hey Shoe… I think you’ve crafted a great piece of linkbait – topical, targets an broad (yet passionate group of online users) and the thing that brings it all home is that there is some truth to what you’re saying.
I wouldn’t use a figure as high as 95% … but still, there are a lot of snake oil salesman in our craft.
As a professional group, we’re always going to face an up-hill battle and be branded as the ‘used car salesmen of the online world’. Last year an article was published in an Australian newspaper (btw I’m an Aussie) saying that all Australian SEO firms were spammers – http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/most-search-ranking-firms-unethical-ceo/2007/05/14/1178995074688.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
If I cared about all these accusations, I’d cry myself to sleep every night. The reality of it is that as a professional SEO, I’m too busy making money from my happy clients and many side projects to be bothered.
So I’ll have to politely decline the offer to appear on the show – although I’m almost certain it would make for an interesting listen.
All the best – Pete (aka SiteMost)
SEO tip #5 cause chaos among your blogging niche and that’ll produce quite some backlinks. I look forward to the show.
Let them whine. SEO is a roll of the dice. It can take a year to build up and can be wiped out in a second. I work for a large site where we were recently talking about SEO and how it could gain us an extra couple million hits a day. But then I asked how you find, interview, and accurately measure a candidate to do this and we were stumped.
Ahhh, the real reason why he posted that blog.
I for one was not offended, I’ve interviewed way too many people that say they know SEO, to konw that there are a shit load of people out there giving SEO a bad name. Shoe’s not affecting my income.
I will definitely be in on this, see you all tuesday.
I don’t see what’s there to defend.
I consider myself an expert SEO, I even rank #1 on Belgium’s google.be for the search term webdesign. Yet I don’t make any promises to a client about the position he’ll require in the SERP’s.
I have a feeling the seo expert attending is gonna get embarrassed on the show.
Amen. The terms “linkbait” and “flamebait” come to mind.
It’s entertaining to hear someone from the “Make money online” niche knocking SEOs.
i feel this was planned the whole time.
Well no shit. It’s a pretty obvious setup. It’s HIS damn show.
If I ask him to come onto a radio show to debate how 95% “Make Money Online” bloggers were simply opportunists who preyed on the hopes of newbies, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do it
they were well defended in the posts. they don’t need to give shoe more by being on the radio show.
It sounds like it will be an interesting show Shoe. I think I left your blog when the argument got heated. I felt a bit guilty for calling that SEO guy a dick – then he blamed someone else instead of me.
I agree, though I think it went better than planned. I am waiting for shoe to put a website on Spears t-shirt for the next court date…
It will be nice to hear you on WMR dot fm. It’s been awhile since you’ve done a show and this should be a good one.
Lmao, nice move Shoe.
Dumb Question , Where and how do we tune into the radio show? Sort a stumbled onto your site here ,great info Jeremy .Just starting to get in to IM Tons to learn and do
I am glad the radio show is back. Maybe you could debate Gray Wolf and Sugar Rae.
Would you have the nerve to debate SearchEnginesWeb
Do you think you could withstand what would turn out to be the most daring challenge of your life
His podcast is hosted on webmasterradio dot fm
Actually, I’m sure that most people who deserve to be labeled as SEO experts would agree that 95% (if not more) of the companies offering SEO services don’t know what they’re doing.
I’d call a SEO professional a person who does this kind of thing for a living and has a proven track record of achieving great results with his projects in the past.
Not necessarily, I’m sure that if the SEO experts who will make their appearance actually know what they’re doing and can back up their claims, the show has the potential of turning out to be quite a productive debate.
What Say Me ????? – I say you’re BUSTED Jeremy!!!
I checked wikipedia for the term “Shoemoney” and it has you listed bro. First line reads that you are a search engine optimization EXPERT! Are you saying wikipedia is wrong Jeremy?
Doh. go figure, TechCrunch went and spammed their link on your wikipedia page too. irony.
What a great way to engage your market, a link bait piece if I ever saw one. I will blow out trumpet here and say so far touch wood our clients are 100% satisfied and in most cases amazed at our SEO solutions. Just a byproduct of being a professional SEO consultant. I agree with allot of what you said but would say most of your target audience are far from professional SEO people.
this totally makes my point… people see me as a expert and i dunno shit
Jeremy – I’d LOVE to do this show with you (although I may have worn out my Shoemoney appearances)
I initially defended your post as being an exaggeration and stylistic – used to illustrate a point, but not be taken literally. If you’re serious that you think 95% of the “experts” (people like myself, Aaron Wall, Todd Malicoat, Danny Sullivan, Dave Naylor, Greg Boser, Rae Hoffman, Jessie Stricchiola, Marshall Simmonds, Laura Lippay, etc.) are really full of it, I’d be happy to have that debate. Plus, we haven’t talked in a while, so it would be nice to re-connect.
My number at the office is 206-632-3171 and you’ve got my email!
Just FYI – I have a board meeting at 1pm on Tuesday that will probably run two hours, so I should be out by 3-3:30pm Pacific time. Does that work? If not, and you don’t have takers, maybe we could do it via email/chat?
LOL! That’d be all we need…
Bring it
Thems fighting words randy
If I was at my home computer right now i’d whip up a little preview video, and it would end a little something like this.
“Spartans, whats YOUR proffesion? SHOE! SHOE! SHOE!”
Happy to be on the show, Shoe. I’ll drop you an email Monday.
I’ll be tuning in but I’m also wondering if this piece of linkbait is harming your reputation in the long term?
I am with you shady. We don’t need to defend our craft for someone else’s ratings. I would be happy to help you put together that post by the way.
So you say your a “fair debater”, but would you consider yourself a master debater?
I don’t know why they were so offended?
After all, I agree with you, it’s not that difficult to be a so called ‘SEO expert’.
All you need is some knowledge of what crawlers like and what they don’t, and to stay up to date with anything new that appears in this area.
Maybe I should become one too, it pays good
@Start Blogging:
Congratulations. That’s like saying all you need to know about chemistry is what happens when you mix chemicals to be called a “Chemistry Expert”
Let’s hear it. Link Velocity? The effects of temporary links(not as simple as you think)? Anchor text blending? Viral linking patterns? How about emulating them? Initial site size/time releasing pages?
Don’t know it?
Way to miss the point Rand. All the people you listed are the 5%.
wow, danny, rand, nick, who else is gonna pop up? I’m looking forward to it.
So have you decided who the “SEO” expert will be? Please let us know, or even better how about a poll with the finalists so we, the readers, can choose so that we don’t feel like its a rigged event by picking an SEO expert that will totally flop…
It’s generating exposure for his blog and by the looks of things, it will have a great podcast as a result, which, with guests such as Rand Fishkin and Danny Sullivan, will most likely prove to be a productive debate. It will not hurt his reputation and it will bring the podcast back in the spotlight.
I am afraid that what you have just listed there only represents the tip of the iceberg. You have a lot of learning and trial&error ahead of you before even thinking about calling yourself an expert as far as SEO is concerned.
I’m with Allan, thats all you have to do, to cover about 5% of whats involved. The net is alive, what works in one place won’t in another. Site to site, page to page, even link to link… all different. You’ll figure that out when you get through the first 5% though and wonder WTH at your results
Ditto, we’ve already learned that mentioning SEO and stepping on peacock feathers is great marketing (of which Jeremy IS an expert on).
What the hell is this? A WWE stunt? Good god this is stupid. Get a life and stop being Shoe’s puppet. He’s got everyone on a marionette. (Including me, because I bothered to post this.)
What time is that in Lisbon time? Err… What’s yourtime zone?
Sure, we could say that the knowledge he has mentioned represents a part of your foundation as a future SEO expert (again, only a small part, people have a lot of learning ahead of them before establishing a solid foundation), but your ability to build upon it makes or breaks you as a SEO.
Interesting! I am looking forward to your open debate! I bet some seo “experts” from DP are gonna call up as well
I would agree that about 95% are full of it. Sure, there are good ones that were already mentioned and others but keep in mind all the crappy ones out there on the internet. Look at all the sites and forum members. Must be a 1000 or more. So that allows for 50 good ones. Sounds about right. Just look at the amount of spam mail that some of us received. That is all crap. How about all the ones that send us the client link exchanges. Those aren’t exactly the smartest in the room.
lol it amazes me how this can go on all the time
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