Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

Jason Calacanis has been outspoken against SEO for quite a while. He recently relit the fire at the last SES show in Chicago. His comments and attitude about SEOs has generated a lot of discussion across the blogosphere. Danny Sullivan posted a very lengthy, but good rant explanation of why he's wrong about SEOs. Danny does a very good job of addressing the issues and presenting our side of the argument. I don't have much to add other than I think the real issue appears to Jason's enormous misunderstanding of what SEO really is and the value of the services we provide. That or he's just messing with us again to get a lot of buzz, and links from some of the most active, opinionated bloggers around (uh, yeah, that's us SEOs).

Or maybe he knew all along he could get some free SEO if he made a big enough stink? I'm referring to the "challenge" that Neil Patel made to Jason...that he would essentially optimize his site for the search engines and within 30 days he will see an increase in traffic of at least 10-20%. If traffic does increase, Jason has to post on his blog about how great SEO really is, and if traffic doesn't increase, Neil will post that SEO is over-rated. It's a good concept, although I'm not sure how Jason actually loses in this deal either way. If he wins the bet, he can gloat and say "I told you so." But if he "loses" the bet, he'll have a lot more traffic coming to his site for a long time. On the other hand, if traffic increases, it's good pulicity for Neil, so I guess it's a good thing all around--as long as Neil doesn't lose the bet.