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Even though this article is blasting whoever iAcquire is, it's still increasing their exposure and audience by being covered on Shoe's popular blog. Marketing is marketing is marketing no matter how you spin it.
Are we really voting for this? Is this the news that's actually going to make a difference in anyone's lives? Honestly, is this what you want to see more of on Inbound.org?
So sorry. How about you tell us what we should vote for. That should make for a great forum.
The point of inbound.org is to surface value-adding material, not SEO industry gossip. We see enough of that on other forums (Twitter, etc), so it seems that Inbound.org should be a place that shows the value that our industry can produce.
Agree, but there's certainly cause to be careful here. There's an industry news category. How many posts at SEL/SEW etc have very little new "news" in them? As soon as inbound shows a clear "don't say bad stuff about people we're friends with" bias.... it's the Digg bury-brigade all over again. And we all remember what happened to Digg.
I have to reply to myself because I can't to Ian. I do agree that we need to be careful of a bias, Ian, but also know that there are multiple admins who are not all necessarily friends (I know who like 3 others are). So it's not a good-old-boys club. In regards to this specific story, it's not a story. It's not news. It's a point of view. This SEL post is news and reporting - http://searchengineland.com/google-lifts-ban-on-iacquire-company-blogs-of-being-reformed-128821. The Shoemoney post is someone hiding behind an avatar giving their opinion of what Mike King might have been thinking.
Weird reply thread. Anyway. I'm with ya - but I think we can definitely agree that the minute something gets pulled down that talks negatively about someone who's friendly with Rand... well. We know what the reaction is gonna be, and how it'll look - regardless of if that's *true* or not. Reality isn't needed to drive away users - just perception.
It's been said before, but I think this is one of the reasons why we need a downvote button.
For a good long while the news about iAcquire being taken down was everywhere. People were defending Mike King, and in the end what matters is that they got caught doing what SEOmoz teaches us we don't have to do. I'm actually really disappointed Rand that you'd suggest this doesn't have a place on Inbound. This is an example of SEOs behaving badly. Mike King's behavior is more newsworthy than their being re-included on Google was. Being re-indexed is never a good thing because that means you had to get DE-INDEXED in the first place. Should we throw a party the next time a blue collar criminal is released from prison too? The whole concept of a socially influenced board like this is that the users decide what is worthy of an upvote and this article got FORTY EIGHT upvotes so far (49 being mine). I'm really disappointed, in general, to hear that something with 48 upvotes isn't of interest to this group because it directly criticizes someone that Rand calls a friend. What's the point of a socially influenced tool otherwise?
I see Inbound as a way to learn something new and get better every day. To share info with my marketing team so they can get better. To share content with clients to educate them. This thread has been on the homepage for 4 days, receiving 48 upvotes, not because it meets any of the criteria above, but because it's satisfying your need for drama. If we all start calling each other out for our shortcomings and flaws here publicly, it's going to further tarnish the misconceptions SEOs and marketers so easily fall victim to. Mike is self-centered? So what, at least he's being genuine about it. He's proven he can back up his talk with substance and real work. He has reason to be confident. If his overconfidence is pissing you off, take it up with him directly. Lastly, we can't use the upvote count as a measure of 'great content'. I could care less about people's personal issues and imperfections. We all have them. This isn't the place for them. If shares like this post were scaled and every home page listing was as dramatic as this one, I don't care if they each had 20+ upvotes, would you all think it's for the better or worse? You're all free to question Rand's motives too but maybe, just maybe, he's not coming to Mike's defense just because they're friends. Rand also happens to be, you know, one of the founders of Inbound. As founder, he has a responsibility to all the users for what gets shared here. If you were in his position, would you quietly sit and allow content that goes against your site's core values to be celebrated? Or would you remind people of why they're using the site in the first place? That's all Rand did, some of you just assumed his motives and ran with it.
That's classic Shoemoney style "seo bait". Too long; didn't read. @Rand: Where is the downvote button? ;)
Agreed. I think a downvote button would solve this.
That would be why I unsubscribed from Shoemoney's blog years ago. Ragging on someone for arrogance? Pot, meet kettle.
No, it's not but a downvote button or moderation isn't the answer either. We just need to find ways to encourage the right kind of content to reach the top. Honest, positive, helpful stuff. That's your challenge Rand, find a way to keep things positive and helpful without too speech restriction and enforcement. It's not easy.
Yawn.
Sigh, this industry. Some days....it makes me write posts like this: http://inbound.org/seo/2012/07/do-real-industry-stuff-john-doherty/#respond
Even though the whole thing is playing on drama, I think the article is a good example as to why you should be careful what you tweet.
I agree with this. Not a big fan of ShoeMoney/SEOBitch, but this can be used as a good reminder to sometimes use email instead of twitter or public comments. If Mike wanted more coverage, he should have sent a nice personalized outreach email to the people he thought should cover it. This is a basic premise of SEO, PR, link building, and something Mike surely knows. A good outreach email gives you a better shot of getting what you want.
Agree 100%
That is why I find value in this post. Mike has a lot of good PR, but you can see his attitude in his tweets. He feels entitled to the publicity, and he's not. If Mike's tweets were taken out of context or spun or whatever, I can see how this might be seen as more drama than it is, but in the end, these are exact copies of his tweets. Regardless of what Shoe Money is saying, Mike's own tweets speak volumes for his opinion of himself.
Almost felt like I was watching a reality show ... the more drama, the higher the ratings ...
I'm struggling to verbalise my indifference, both to this blog and to iAquire's re-inclusion in the Google index. The blog is a bit tabloidy. I expected to reach the end and find a trail for additional content, leading with teasers like "EXPOSED! The top SEO spotted buying links round the back of Walmart!" or "You'll never guess which industry leader has been manipulating more than the SERPs!" Meh.
Suppose we've got to expect this kind of thing - as Iain said, this is the SEO equivalent of the tabloids. In terms of iAcquire's reinclusion to the Google index, I'm happy for them and hope they can push on to restore their reputation. Silly mistake made, lesson learned, time to move onwards and upwards. As for it's "newsworthyness" (is that a word?!), apart from the fact that negative events tend to get more publicity, iAcquire's reinclusion to the index is more company news than industry news. The original de-indexing was big industry news because it's the first time an agency had been de-indexed for activities carried out for clients. How they got re-indexed is a different matter - I'll be interested to read about that. I suspect it was a case of cleaning up their own and their client's link profiles and submitting a reconsideration request. But they got their publicity in the end; unfortunate that it had to happen following toys being thrown out of the pram.
I can understand the negativity and the naysayers, given that you had a company like SEER, who were innocently knocked out of Google's indexed, and the uproar and anger towards Google then, especially as they're a purely white-hat company (or so they say - although I have no reason to argue). I think a lot of people had sympathy for SEER when it happened, especially with the way they handled it. Then the same thing happens to iAcquire, except they were caught doing something not-so-innocent and so were rightfully* removed from the index. Now that they're back, they've leveraged it as a PR opportunity, which seems to be working very well for them as it's they're getting so much publicity for it (on SEL, ShoeMoney, Inbound.org and beyond) - even if the nature of the PR itself has left a bitter taste in some people's mouths, given that they were 'guilty' in the first place. (Although guilty of something that many people here would argue that many others are guilty of, but they were the ones who suffered and others will get away...) * Open to debate - maybe only "rightfully" by Goog's standards? Who knows!
So glad you touched on SEER. Wil handled both the deindexing and reinclusion all far too gracefully.
Absolutely. One might argue that iA's handling of it was less graceful, which could be the reason for the strong backlash...
Correct. Wil Reynolds is a world class guy, Mike could learn a few things from Wil.
WTF really? Shoemoney's calling someone else "immature" and picking on his name? I mean "Shoemoney" doesn't sound immature? I don't want to call Shoemoney out using the same techniques as him though. Just one thing: didn't he say "SEO has no future" back in 2006? As a side note: I consider iAcquire's way of dealing with this crisis excellent. They use it to spread the word about them in a positive context. Respect for the Aikido PR efforts.
Why did @Inboundorg delete the tweet for this post?
I found the article interesting. YES, it’s biased and the writer tries to do her best to make Mike King look bad. I’m sure he’s strong enough to survive this. It’s always going to be haters. Mike is fully aware of that everything he writes on Twitter is publicly visible for anyone to read so this is nothing that he tries to hide. I found this interesting because 1) it’s interesting to view “behind the scenes” (only a fraction, but still) of inbound marketing, of probably the same reasons that people found it interesting to read of iAcquires comeback at Google. 2) It illustrates what we already know, but sometimes forget, to always be aware of what you publish. 3) Mike King is interesting I don’t see anything wrong with Mike’s tweets. I don’t like outing of others, when it’s unjustified, so perhaps I would take back my upvote if it was possible, even though the article was of interest for me. It actually show us one real life example of link building, if you look beyond the trash talk from #SEOBitch
That "behind the scenes" look of Josh Davis' original post on the subject was what I really loved. http://llsocial.com/2012/05/search-secrets-prominent-seo-company-covertly-purchasing-backlinks-for-fortune-1000/ His examples of what these link buyers actually did, what their script was, how he caught them, how he linked it back to their fax # that was shared between businesses, etc. It was a very interesting engaging read.
Dang, was testing to see if clicking the upvote arrow again would take back your vote. :\ John, is that something that can be added?
iAcquire I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but SEER Interactive had one of the greatest agency reinclusions of ALL TIME!
yes you are right don