Well, all debates about a-listers aside (and as an aside, do you think anything but an a-lister who has a history of anti-PPP rhetoric could pull ted murphy on to his podcast?), I feel that when you’ve issued, or answered a challenge, or declared a bet, or asserted your position on something — and it turns out that you’ve lost, it seems the right thing to do — the classy thing to do — is clear.
Own up to it.
Either Mr. Calacanis isn’t in the habit of doing this, or, perhaps he’s merely too busy with his other projects to comment in person (although not too busy to answer challenges, declare bets, or make public claims, in the first place, of course).
But some time ago Mr. Calacanis decided to paint the SEO industry in a negative light, in some fairly broad strokes. Something to the effect that (I’m paraphrasing here) most SEOs were charlatans, and that all a blogger (or site owner) needed to do was concentrate on good content, and the rest would take care of itself.
Any six year old, however, can tell you how false that is.
But, Neil Patel of ProNet Advertising decided to issue a challenge of his own some weeks ago, stating in effect that he could increase Mr. Calacanis’s own blog’s traffic with SEO methods *alone* … and without any shady tactics, naturally.
Well, the results are in, and sure enough, Neil’s results speak for themselves. Traffic has indeed risen more than 20% with only 10% of the changes that they intended to make. No funny blackhat chicannery here.
Where’s Mr. Calacanis now?
No comments in the blog post to acknowledge Neil’s work.
Nothing in his own blog in spite of a spate of anti-SEO rants.
Is this surprising?
Not really, because its happened before.
Twice.
1. The Digg “Sushi” Bet: After all, Mr. Calacanis made a public “bet” in the fall of last year claiming that Digg would start paying its top users, just like Netscape did, by the end of the year. Digg hasn’t, and sure enough, Mr. Calacanis didn’t offer any follow up in this regard (in fact it was a Sushi bet for folks living in LA/ NYC — my feeling is that no one has taken him up on the bet).
2. The Alexa Challenge: How about the time Mr. Calacanis wanted to “game” Alexa to show how crappy it was (it still is, but that’s besides the point). He asked his users to install Alexa and cause an artificial spike in traffic. Sure enough, nothing really happened — I went to the trouble of breaking things down, actually — and, sure enough, nothing on Mr. Calacanis’s end either.
I’m not going to chalk this up to a-list anything. That conversation’s long past (and quite frankly was already past when Mr. Calacanis decided to pick it up almost two months after I started it … but that’s neither here nor there) its expiry date.
But, jeez man.
You’re happy to stand on the tallest mountain and beat your chest when you think you’re right.
How about when you’re wrong?
13 Comments
If you remember back to around this time last year when Netscape was hiring top Digg users the fiasco that broke out. Sometimes being hardheaded isn’t the best thing in the world Jason. Just because things do not turn out the way you don’t want them to does not mean you can totally ignore people and shun them away because what they did was beat you at something.
Calacanis is doing one thing right: he’s stirring up interest by being slightly wrong. Hell, most SEO guys *are* snake oil salesmen. But, Jason rounded it up by saying that SEO is worthless, which is, quite obviously, completely wrong. The result? Controversy!
I personally don’t like that way of attracting attention; however, you can’t deny that it’s working quite well.
This said, he should definitely admit he was wrong or at least write a followup on the challenge. Since it was his site that was modified, I think that he is going to do it in the end.
However, sometimes I wish I had a blog focused specifically on exposing things like this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught some “money making online” blogger in a lie (and with proof of it). It would be fun, but I just don’t have the time (;.
It’s interesting to note in Patel’s stats that Calcanis wasn’t getting that much traffic to begin with for a blog media ‘hero’. Also notice that Oscar night queries were high in the period before the SEO so the fact that they increased his traffic even after an event that should have given him a bump (as a ‘celebrity’) is interesting. Look for much higher numbers although I, for one, will not be visiting his blog…
I was on the road and didn’t blog for two days… but I’m back (baby) and just posted about Neil increase in traffic. Bottom line:
a) my position was not that SEO doesn’t work, but that it was not as good as making great content, and that it is short lived crack-type hit
b) we don’t know that neil’s changes made the slight increase in traffic–it could be that all the Fatblogging and PayPerPost links (like 100+ I’m sure) in the past month alone cause the increase.
That being said, I think if we look at my normal search growth and compare it during the time Neil is making changes he will double or triple the growth rate. SEO works short term–but they are short term tricks in most cases I think, and that is not the best way to run a web business. You’re better off spending the money on content.
Also, on the digg paying people things, I’ve heard that there are many discussions going on about a payment system of sorts at digg… like maybe letting people put adsense on their profile pages, etc. Not sure it will happen given the fact that doing it would make them eat crow, but you have seen many other folks start paying people for work–and paying people for work is clearly my concept. :)
About gaming Alexa: I believe digg users did just that some ways back and shot digg way up the rankings for a spell.
Eric — funny you mention that. If you find the URL let me know, because if you look at Alexa’s stats now, it looks like there’s been a huge fall in traffic over 2007. Makes you wonder if in fact the peak in traffic at the beginning of 07 / end of 06 is an aberration, or, that traffic has genuinely fallen.
Something that’s almost worth blogging over ;)
Jason,
Thanks for stopping by. ;)
I don’t have the actual data in front of me re: Neil’s SEO adventures, but I’m hoping that he’ll present everything including what he did and plans to do.
Having said that, your assertion that SEO is like “crack” for traffic is funny, because I would think that particular description is particularly apt for creating “great content”.
That is, “great content” is content that might vary in quality from post to post; as certain posts gain traction, you’ll see a traffic pattern over time that has enormous peaks and valleys (getting “dugg” or “netscaped” aside).
Getting “SEO” done is like structural work — its optimizing tags, making sure that you’re using keywords appropriately and so on *all the time*.
If that’s the case (and I think it is), then SEO is actually much less like crack, and more likely to drive sustainable traffic, all things being equal.
I’m not saying “great content” isn’t important. But its not nearly sufficient enough to create a great blog either.
Cheers
t @ dji
Tony, I couldn’t find the original piece after a quick search, but take a look at Digg’s alexa ranking around April of last year: there’s almost a straight shot up the rankings from 400 to around 100, which is a pretty amazing feat without some “extra help.”
Measuring seo “results” by traffic is just plain wrong anyway. Search engine marketing firms are stupid in this way. Click my name for more.
Jim,
I agree that the ultimate metric is dollars taken home at the end of the month, but I think you’re confusing a few things.
Traffic generation is what Search Engine Marketing firms do — through search. There is a lot of ways to generate traffic, and search is one of them.
Asking clients to deliver on metrics outside of traffic — say, rather, on conversion, is a bit silly. They *could*, but its another independent factor in that ultimate metric. And its one more thing that SEO’s would (and should charge).
I agree that clients should define what they want (and let’s not get into a chat about reality again). But if they want to define SEO/SEM in a way that starts including separate and independent factors that contribute to the bottom line, then they ought to expect to be charged accordingly.
Search traffic brings in the warm bodies — but copy, navigation, and offers will convert them. Two separate things — two separate costs.
If you’re advocating that there ought to be end-to-end solutions as well, that’s fine. As long as they’re will to pay for it, and not expect to pay the same price for a portion of their overall marketing strategy.
cheers
t @ dji
Good conversation. I don’t want to hijack your blog comments here Tony. I posted my response on my blog in the comments on the original post. Id’ be happy to keep it going either there or in a new post, whatever, your choice.
When I’m wrong, I usually pay for learning the lesson. I tried to game Netscape, I did it quite easy (and I liked it, so I did it three days in a row :)), then my blog got banned forever, although some things in there might have been interesting for the readers. It was in my early days of blogging, and I wanted to know how some dull stories go on the first page of social networking sites. I found out that if you have a bunch of friends available, the rest will follow.
Note: I believe that a two weeks warning would have been enough.
Calacanis performed a good service. He woke a lot of people up to the fact that there is more to SEM than SEO. Cast yourself into the role of a SEM newbie, searching the web for good information. It’s frustating, having to wade through all the SEO B.S.
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[...] Tony continues to smash Calacanis. He even brings up two other “bets” or “challenges” that Jason issued earlier (before I really started following blogs) and never revisited after he lost. And if you missed my other post yesterday, I wrote my opinion on the whole situation. [...]
[...] In a post saved “The final… final word on the A/B list” with no content save the following video, Jason Calacanis makes a statement in the debate over what it means to be an “A List” blogger (and if it even exists). Most of the action has been a-stirring on Tony Hung’s Deep Jive Interests (see the latest round here). [...]
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