Viral Growth Pisses Me Off

I would never 'pay with a tweet', unless I made it completely clear that I was being forced to do it, and didn't actually agree with anything I was saying. I suspect that wouldn't make the person paying happy.

Incredibly annoyed. In such cases, I use an alternate account no one follows and my perception of the company takes a big hit.

Hey Clarky, it wasn't necessarily about the PWAT integration, it was the lack of an alternative. I'd give them my email address instead of giving them a tweet, for example.

Except I'm obviously not THAT kind of SEO consultant who is trying to cram stuff you don't like down your throat. If you read my other stuff on there, you'd realize that I'm all about cool things and providing as much value as possible. That was exactly my issue with these examples I gave - they provided nothing, so why should I give them anything?

Same with marketing. If I don't provide you value, I don't deserve your attention or your links or whatever.

Lumping the sheisters with the legit ones is unfair. I could just as easily say that developers are the scum of the Internet because some write programs that hack sites and steal credit card information. But then I'd be lumping all developers into the same category of scum, making the same logical fallacy you're making.

Just my two cents.

@PlanetGuy, You would be surprised how much SEO best practices you need to successfully launch a project nowdays. I see so many startups with great concepts, clean code and user excitement, but if you fail to be returned in the search engines for queries your potential user base is looking for, your growth might be limited to the viral word of mouth.

That's where the so called "viral" strategies come in, leveraging the social integrations and viral sharing described in the article. Quick hacks to gain the user growth you need to become a viable business.

A great launch plan does incorporate good SEO and search visibility. Denying SEO is adding value for your projects/startup or company because there are scumbags out there, is IMHO putting you at a disadvantage vs your competition who are looking and taking advice from people like John!

There have been plenty of insightful discussions here at HN about the need for SEO. Rather than spilling negativity and dismissing a valuable service, you might want to try to listen and learn something.

c'mon man, if you want others to take you seriously, how can you make such a general statement.. it's all marketing - aligning present services/products with consumer needs.. There are some marketers who understand it's about people, which doesn't involve questionable practices.

so you're agreeing with him, but hating on his job title? just wanting to clarify here

@PlanetGuy Yeah, way worse than those child pornographers and identity thieves.

You may want to research Distilled, the company this SEO Consultant works for. They're as above board as it gets and you'd be thrilled if they took you as a client. If you don't understand SEO, ask questions and you may learn something. Or, just keep making lazy & superficial observations.

Just wanted to comment on the replies you were getting. Wow, I have rarely seen a comment jumped on with so many negative replies as this one!

I agree with you, I have very negative opinions on the term 'SEO', and those who use it. Sure, there might be 'good' SEOs, but I believe the experience of the majority of people, even geeks, of SEO is finding websites high up Google rankings which clearly have no place being there.

I am a hater of bad seo probably more than most. However, Distilled is one of the best leading companies out there for seo. I thought I knew a lot about seo but I've had the fortune to know someone who works there, and after a while chatting to him it's immediately obvious they know what they are talking about and what they do, and their knowledge is far wider and deeper than I realised was possible for this sort of thing.

Grouping companies/people as knowledgable as this in with the bad fruits is unfair because the gap between them is so vast.

I'd agree with you if you replaced seo with adware/popup ads. Even google has an seo guide, you shouldn't lump best practices in with spammers and hackers

Thanks for the comments in response to this everyone. To the parent comment, I think you'd change your tune if you met John. He's as legit as they come.

[Disclaimer, I'm one of the founders of Distilled - the company John works for. Brand issues very much acknowledged btw - we are thinking hard about it - trust me!]