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An SEO Loser amongst SEO Rockstars
I have to give John Andrews the “hat tip” (hate that stupid phrase) for posting about The SEO Loser, also a couple other of you have seen it already. You really have to read this guys post about what it was like being among aloof SEO Rockstars at Pubcon because it is
not only funny but sooo true. I kind of hit upon it when I posted about Yahoo’s lame private party at Pubcon and even though I did not go to Pubcon I could feel The SEO Loser’s and other non SEO Rockstars pain from many miles away. The SEO rockstar club is surely a very tight group, if you think you are going to come online with a blog and win their trust and become one of them in a few months, you are fooling yourself. You might even know more or have had more success in SEO but you are still not a “rockstar”.
I am not sure who this SEO Loser is or if he is doing an ingenious linkbait (or just writing from a subconscious level) but ALL he said is true.
Read How I learned I am an SEO Loser.
Read his next couple posts in his blog and you will see and interesting trend, he gives thanks to Matt Cutts from Google for keeping it real. In short, SEO’s were nasty to webmasters in the site review meeting at Pubcon but Matt Cutts was not.
Interview questions for The SEO Loser:
Who are you? Was this an extremely good linkbait, truth or a little of both?
What forums do you visit and who are you friends with? Do you have any friends with blogs? Give us a few links.
You seem to be most fond of Shoemoney; did you also make lots of money in ‘04 spamming Google?
If you could have a real life conversation with 3 SEO Rockstars who would they be and why?
(I couldn’t find any email address for this fellah so I am putting the questions in here, I will add them to this post if he responds)
Note for SEO Rockstars: Most of you were nerds in high school and college if you made it that far, remember what it was like and try to be a bit more inclusive, thank you. ;o)
Response from The SEO Loser:
I actually came up with the SEO Loser idea at the MSN “after-party” in the GhostBar. I had been experiencing the Rockstar phenomenon for a few days already, but it didn’t fully sink in until I sat at that small table with a friend of mine from home, Dixon Jones, Tim Mayer, Danny Sullivan, Oilman, Lawrence and Jeff Coyle. I had never met or spoken with any of them prior to the PubCon, but I did “kind of” know Lawrence from the Yahoo party the night before (we both live in San Francisco so we’d talked about that). This was the epitomy of SEO-Rockstardom—the table was covered with handles of vodka and mixers (courtesy of MSN), we were in Las Vegas and the SEOs were partying hard with girls all over the place. It was really amusing to me, probably just because I never would have expected an “SEO party” to be that way. I wouldn’t say anyone was blatantly rude, insulting, mean, or anything like that—in fact I felt welcome there (to be fair, Dixon Jones was really friendly and funny)—it’s just that many of them were just very dismissive when I’d try to talk to them. It probably wasn’t intentional, but the vibe I was getting was comparable to the way you’d feel approaching a girl at a bar and getting completely shut down, but in a polite way. I probably just felt like a loser being the unknown in the group, who wasn’t a part of the clique, and I thought to myself “Wow, I’m an SEO Loser.” I thought that was pretty funny and also thought others might get a kick out of the whole story. When I got home from the parties that night I drunkenly registered SEOLoser.com and, when I was back home, wrote a post about the way I’d felt at the conference. I was completely honest, but I will admit I thought the idea had a lot of link bait potential. The funny thing is, though, I had naively expected the people I blogged about to be the ones that would link to the post. So far, that hasn’t happened. Matt Cutts was the first one to mention it on a blog, I think, and then word just sort of spread.
I knew that my follow up post about TrustRank and Matt Cutts was probably going to label me a brown-noser, but I think most of the “no-namers” in the PubCon sessions would agree that he was the only guy trying to defend the people who were getting slammed by experienced SEOs (I thought this was particularly cool because, at least in my opinion, Matt Cutts is more of an SEO Rockstar figure than anybody else at the conference).
Okay, “Who are you?”
My name’s Kris, I’m 22, live in San Francisco and got into SEO when I was 18 or 19 and still in college (started with drop shipping sites, then got into selling links and other more profitable niches). The post was written because I thought other people would laugh about the scene as I experienced it, and hopefully enjoy it—and, I thought, some would probably link to it. I’d also heard a ton of appealing stuff about blogging at the conference and despite the fact that I’d been working on websites every day for years I had never attempted to enter the blogging community and knew very little about it (didn’t even have a technorati account). To answer your question (“Was this an extremely good linkbait, truth or a little of both?”), it was a lot of both. The post is 100% honest (I probably should have been a little softer in my criticism, though, because it seems I offended a few people) but I was also aware it had link bait potential.
Forums I visit? These days, digital point is the only one I’m really active on (handle is kkibak). Back when v7n.com was internet-marketing-research.com I posted there on a daily basis as well. Answering the second part of this question sort of affirms my SEO Loser status: I can’t think of anyone in the SEO Community that I would actually say I’m close with. I’m sort of a forum/blog lurker—I read Jim Boykin’s blog, Matt Cutts’, Shoemoney’s, Aaron Wall’s and I think that’s it, aside from being addicted to DigitalPoint.
“You seem to be most fond of Shoemoney; did you also make lots of money in ’04 spamming Google?”
I don’t know if I’d call it spamming, but I bought lots of high PR links on LinkAdAge and even from Patrick Gavin when I think his company was called Positioned1.com and ended up with a PR8 and three PR7 sites (this was early-mid 2004) which were pretty valuable assets back then. I’d sell 20 links per site at $150 per month (each) on the PR7s and anywhere between $250 and $450 on the PR8. That was pretty cool for a 19 or 20 year old exchange student living in a foreign country—none of my buddies were getting wire transfers for thousands of dollars–and just 6 months earlier I’d worked at a restaurant in my home town earning something like $6.50 an hour. Because this was such a ridiculous amount of money for me and I was so excited about it I would sell links to the highest bidder pretty much regardless of what the link was (i.e. I had quite a few Viagra, Cialis, etc . links) as long as it wasn’t something completely inappropriate (someone tried to buy ads like “Teenage Masturbation Guide” and that’s where I had to draw the line). Long story short: the four original sites made great money for about a year but were eventually banned from Google and given the gray bar, but by that time I had developed some more reliable / stable projects.
I’m fond of Shoemoney because I think his show is so fun. It’s really cool when someone like that comes along and injects all this energy and inspiration into a community. The first time I listened to his show was, I think, the first time I’d heard someone verbally discuss the exact things I did and loved.
Cool question about the conversations… if they’d be open, comfortable discussions like you’d have with a close friend, I’d go with Shoemoney, Shawn Hogan from DP (talk about a brain) and Aaron Wall (I would have made a fool of myself in front of Aaron at PubCon but he was lucky enough to avoid me). A very close fourth would be Patrick Gavin. I’ll shut up now, this is long enough :) I really can’t stress enough how stoked I am that you enjoyed the blog and found it amusing… that was the goal, and my favorite part about this whole blogging experience has, without any doubt, been reading the comments people leave. The only problem is that now I don’t want to post something that scares them away :D.
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December 1st, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Too funny!
Seriously, though, the deer-in-the-headlights syndrome is the problem, not the “rockstars” themselves. The more attention they get, the more negative that attention becomes. It’s a reputation management problem already among competent SEOs, but if you watch they all target the newbies and deer-in-headlights MMF people.
I’m still waiting for each one to launch his own “MMF” program.
December 1st, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Yeah no kidding eh, hehe.
I was going to warn people to put their coffee down when reading this guys blog, I almost ruined my laptop keyboard, haven’t laughed this hard in weeks. :)
December 1st, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Nice job Aaron on the interview and Kris really good job with the original post - highly entertaining..
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:02 am
Good job Aaron getting this background on Kris since a lot of people are interested in this story. I really enjoyed his post and think he did a great job of saying what others have felt including myself. I have to say you practice what you preach and you also keep it “real”.