Don't you just hate it when someone bashes your industry - and calls you names - based on faulty information, inadequate testing and no education? In other words, John Dvorak just called SEOs snake oil salesmen when he knows absolutely NOTHING about SEO.
Hey John! Shut up. Come back and call us names when you have any idea at all about what you are talking about, ok?
For real! When I read his article I was just laughing heartily – but at the same time, he’s giving people a bad name.
I have never heard someone recommend a “long URL” in my life. Lenth has zero to do with it – but keywords in the URL are proven to work.
Dvorak’s article offered no supporting evidence whatsoever. Talk about an uncontrolled experiment – performed by someone with zero technical expertise, no less. He probably didn’t even 301 the old URLs to the new ones.
Sounds like what this guy just proved was that you shouldn’t try to DIY SEO if you have no idea what you’re doing – maybe he should have hired a consultant to help him out!
Well, I’m not sure what exactly is going on.
Either he has been listening to inexperienced SEO wannabees instead of the real pros, and never spent any time researching their claims before implementing them on his site — in which case it’s his fault for not doing his homework.
Or the people he was listening to actually made some reasonable suggestions, which he totally misinterpreted due to his own lack of technical know-how and implemented in a way a real professional SEO never would have done — in which case it’s still his fault for not doing his homework.
In either case, it’s clear his expectations for what the effect of these changes would be were totally out of whack.
And he has the unmitigated gall to blame the entire SEO industry for what is, bottom line, his own failure?
if that’s the best response an SEO can come up with, I see no reason not to believe him.
“Shut up”, really?
If he’s wrong, point out why.
Unless, of course, he’s not and the only reason you want him to shut up is so word doesn’t get out.
I don’t know… I think we should give the guy some props.
It takes a lot of nerve to write to an audience that large about a topic you know absolutely nothing about, without any fear whatsoever about how much of an ass you sound. Seriously. I know I couldn’t blog that much opinion with that little fact, with complete disregard for my credibility. Takes guts to flaunt your ignorance that blatantly to a tech crowd.
@Michael VanDeMar
Further more, to do so against an industry full of extremely powerful people (in an online authority sense). Yeah, pretty big male parts.
Anywho, I barely even let this stuff get to me anymore. At the end of the day, I know this is one of those buttons blogger/speakers/whoever can push to get some instant traffic and discussion. That or he actually believes this stuff.
Either way, the more people listen to that, the less competition for my clients, and the bigger those checks keep getting.
So, thank you.
@j – it’s really not my responsibility to teach him why he is wrong. He can pay me to do so if he wants, however. That would be like me saying all doctors are quacks because i didn’t understand anything about health or human anatomy and therefore I assumed that taking an aspirin was going to effectively cure cancer. Then you would expect the doctor to teach me everything I need to know in order to understand everything he knows? No. He would have every right to tell me to shut up and not call all doctors quacks because I have no clue what I’m talking about – and he would not be required to teach me his profession simply because I was an idiot.
Guy got some truly misguided advice – adding beef to your URL for beef’s sake makes no sense unless it’s adding actual freaking value. Why in God’s name would he think that just throwing a bunch of digits into his URL would help him out from any kind of logical standpoint?
This whole thing is evidence of why amateurs should not play with fire: Do your homework before you make a huge change like this, or make sure that someone who really knows what they’re doing is giving you help. If they can’t explain to you why you should do something, you’re asking / hiring the wrong person. They may be experts, but logic is logic.
“I think it’s because these long URLs are just crap and stupid.”
lol excellent analysis.
I’ve not seen such an unsubstantiated rant like this, especially not from a professional who I would expect to behave in a more controlled & rational manner.
John’s not accepting any part of the blame, nor apportioning the appropriate amount to his friend/advisor so instead, like a jilted teenager, he’s gone on the rampage.
When you get home, make sure John Dvorak hasn’t boiled your rabbit!
Dvorak made my head explode.
I work with brand new busness owners who almost always have zero pc skills let alone marketing skills. SEO is very much needed and has nothing to so with ‘snake oil.’ If it does I’m selling this ‘snake oil’ WAY too cheap.
LOL. What a goose. “I crashed my car, therefore cars don’t work! (No matter how often I pull the handbrake, it just won’t start!)”
I couldn’t stop myself from firing off a rant of my own after Josh Garner brought this to my attention earlier today – http://www.seoaly.com/real-trouble-with-search-engine-optimization/ ! This guy is a fool, but a smart fool – how’s that for an oxymoron!
I’d like to see the analytics for that page from today. We’ve all been talking about it, ranting about it, posting about it and leaving comments about it all day long. Little did he know, though, that he’s dealing with SEOs who will link to the post using anchor text like “ignorance”. 🙂
Frankly, I can understand his point. Given the number of snake oil seo spam emails we get on a weekly basis, I can see why Dvorak would down the seo industry. Kinda like car salesmen. There are a ton of good ones, but only the bad ones make press.
Large male parts or not, ignorance is not something for which I offer props – nor is common sense for that matter, since it should just be…ya know…common. I’ll throw him props when he learns to use his male parts to back up a legitimate claims. If he thought that perma-links on his blog would get him targeted traffic, then he IS an idiot. As most of us know, actual words in a URL help when coupled with a number of effective SEO strategies, but alone, yes, a long URL is bogus, no matter what it contains.
I almost pissed my pants when he mentioned “typing in the URL”, as if “http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=3100 ” is any easier to remember. Not to mention the fact that SEO aims to imrpove your ranking in results, not help people remember the exact URL for your latest blog post. Perhaps the reason his readers dropped is because he was weighing his creative efforts in on slandering SEOs instead of writing decent content for his blog.
I’m not even going to go into his bit about tags, but considering his idea of SEO, based on this article, is long URL’s and tags, he seriously needs to do more research before he fires off his mouth, or his “male parts”.
That’s funny. Change your entire URL structure based on an IM and then complain about the industry.
I like how his concluding paragraph completely retracts the first ten pages of ranting: “Making your Web site search-engine-friendly is one thing, in other words. But using stupid human tricks such as the long URL and tags to get more attention is folly…” So is he admitting there are in fact some legitimate SEO strategies? If so, why dismiss the whole industry?
Hmm, maybe try redirecting your pages before changing all their URLs…there’s an example of how a real SEO could have demonstrably helped you, Dvorak.
He seems to just be another fed up consumer who might have somehow got misguided by some would-be SEO.
LOL what a joke no only am I more likely to click on something with a descriptive title instead of a ?postid=53, the search engines so love it. Next he’ll tell me the keyword in my URL have no benefit 😛
It’s funny how the SEO community goes like a pack of wolves after somebody who knocks the industry.
Fair enough, Google has algorithms and those who understand how they work can influence results – strange that this plain logic defies some people.
However, I would agree with a few points in his article that, a vast majority of SEOs are snake oil salesmen and have no clue what they are talking about and secondly, a lot of these types of SEO are polluting the web.
I’d like to see a proper response (such as MikeTek make a good start) pointing out about 301’ing old articles – sure he’s going to lose traffic if he doesn’t do that!
I’ve emailed him with some ideas and offered him an a response from my blog if he wishes to do so.
Still though.. Makes my teeth grind 🙂