Social Media Spammer “Video Gary” Responds
Gary actually posted this as a comment in my original post, but I thought it deserved a post of its own:
It was certainly not my intention to try to make a mockery of search engine optimization with my videos.
If that’s how that video comes across, then I apologize.
Here’s where I’m coming from, though. It seems like a lot of people don’t understand what it takes to get traffic or good search engine rankings. To illustrate my point, I was on vacation in Colorado with some friends recently, and the topic of websites came up somehow. When I explained what I did, my friend mentioned how he had some websites a few years ago but got rid of them because he never got much traffic. He didn’t understand that you need LINKS to rank well in the search engines.
I think that for a lot of new people, they’ll spend hours trying to get their meta tags just right or get their keyword density to an optimal level because some free article they read, some outdated forum post, or some friend just as clueless as they are told them to. When instead they should be focusing on two things – quality content AND quality links. Now I know my video says nothing about the importance of quality content, so I can’t really fault you or anyone else for not knowing my stance on the subject. I should have mentioned, probably even emphasized that without quality content you’re site won’t achieve its full potential.
But quality content still needs links. It’s pretty easy to explain to a client that their content needs to be good. They tend to understand and can usually handle that part on their own with little to no help from the SEO guy. The quality links part, however, tends to bewilder most. Part of the reason is that high quality links are hard to get directly. You usually can’t just email the authority in your niche and say, “Hey, I’ve got this cool new site, link to me.”
When I go about getting links, I look at them as the middleman to me getting what I want. I figure that if I put interesting articles in article directories, write press releases, and post sites on social bookmarking sites, I’ll start to get some of those high quality links I wanted in the first place provided my site and the content on it are high quality as well.
Not a bad response. Although he left out any mention of using multiple digg accounts to help accelerate the process….
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2 Responses to “ Social Media Spammer “Video Gary” Responds ”
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Greg, I wrote a post right after reading yours, and then Mike The Internet Guy did the same. Gary replied to both of us as well:
http://www.firstpagefitness.com/blog/2007/02/08/this-guy-gives-seo-a-bad-name/
http://www.miketheinternetguy.com/blog/miscellaneous/this-guy-this-guy/
He wanted us all to know that he doesn’t spam digg. He only spams delicious. Thought I’d clear that up.
Really though, he seems like a nice guy and I almost hate to call him out. But here’s where I stand: You can be the biggest spammer in the world and I’m not going to call you out unless you…
A: Spam ME
B: Call your spam SEO
My hat isn’t the cleanest in the world and I have nothing against doing what it takes to be a competitive webmaster. But I don’t sell my clients on submitting their pages to Delicious anymore than I would charge them to turn on their computer.
Anyway, thanks for letting us know about Gary. I think/hope the poor guy learned his lesson.
Although Everett already mentioned that I don’t participate in “Digg gaming,” I wanted to address it myself.
While having multiple digg accounts seems like a good idea on the surface, in practice its an entirely different matter. It simply doesn’t work. If all you’re submitting is boring or useless crap, it will won’t take off on digg.
To respond to Everett about me learning my lesson. Well, I have indeed learned many lessons - I’ve learned a lot about the the digg community, the blogosphere, video making, and quite a few other things. Another thing I will admit to having learned is that being a bit controversial can be a good thing. While being insulted certainly doesn’t feel good, there has been plenty of good that has come of it as well. I honestly don’t regret making that video.