A couple of days ago Jon Norris who is a Brighton-based freelance writer and a “social guy” at Crunch posted an article on The Kernal (http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/opinion/2793/google-is-a-writers-best-friend/) where he made some generalizing statements about SEOs and the SEO industry.
Here are some quotes from his article:
- “this is an industry built on deception”
- “Google’s quiet war against a fly-by-night, unregulated and dishonest industry”
And apparently, SEO industry is full of “adult babies”:
@Nero Sure – just need to find another industry full of adult babies I can write about.
— Jon Norris (@Jn_Norris) July 12, 2012
To some extent I agree with some of Jon’s views and I am confident there are 1000s of other SEOs who would agree with him on some of his points too. However, Jon makes generalizing statements, basically stating that the entire industry is “dishonest” and based on deception.
I have a few questions for Jon:
- There are 100s of accountants out there who exploit loopholes to help their clients “evade” tax, should we stereotype all accountants because of what some of them do?
- There are a lot of journalists who invade people’s privacy, hack their phones and what not, to get a decent headline, should we make generalizing statements about all journalists?
- If we SEOs are so bad, we are adult babies and we are all dishonest, why does your employer http://www.crunch.co.uk/use our work to enhance their site? Doesn’t Crunch use @yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin?
If you really stand by your views then please request your employer to stop using our work and get rid of Yoast‘s SEO Plugin, if they can’t do that because it is a “commercial imperative” then go work for someone else who doesn’t rely on the work/IP of “dishonest adult babies”.
When confronted by the third question, Jon said his employer uses Yoast’s SEO plugin because it is a commercial imperative. Okay, so at least now he admits that a “dishonest adult baby’s” work is commercially imperative. A few moment later he tweets “Should point out I’m obviously aware there are good SEOs, some are even my friends. Doesn’t mean I can’t dislike the industry though”.
Woah, hold on a second Jon, in your article you said “this is an industry built on deception”, doesn’t that include everyone who is in the industry? If that is not what you meant then perhaps you should have made a clear distinction between those who are dishonest and those who aren’t!
If you are aware of good SEOs as you have stated in your Tweet then please go and edit your article on The Kernel and make clear distinction between bad/good SEOs.
It’s just linkbait
Hi Rob,
It is a link bait and a good one. My only reservation is that even with linkbaits it is better to state facts. I am sure Jon is a nice a guy but it is always nice to shed light and expose the bad things and give credit to people who do good.
Most of what he has highlighted is indeed true, they are not new. What troubled me was the generalization. There are many good SEOs and good SEO agencies out there who transform businesses on daily basis that is why there is a n “industry”. If SEOs in general didn’t make a difference to people’s bottom line then it just simply wouldn’t exist.
Can we have him as this years magician at Brighton SEO? http://wizardwonky.co.uk/
Funny.
Yousaf – why feed the troll?
He is not a troll, comes across as a decent guy, he just didn’t do the right thing and I wanted to highlight that fact and I am hoping that he will edit his article with a balanced view.
Decent or not he doesn’t have idea about the subject his article is covering (SEO industry) – it’s either bad journalism or trolling and judging from his responses, in FB comments below the article it’s the latter. Of course I may be wrong, but that’s how I see it.
You are probably right, I just wanted to give him benefit of the doubt and get my point across at the same time.
I think we have to face it, theres shit people in every industry. Builders have them, lawyers have them even bloody churches have them
That isn’t to say that the rest of the industry should be tarnished with the same brush.
I agree 100%.
Ah yes, I was part of the exchange with Jon Morris and his editor, Milo Yiannopoulos. There were so many inaccuracies in that article, I couldn’t *not* say something.
Among them, Jon Norris wrote that Google’s Penguin update this year killed content farms (that was actually Panda, last year). He also put it out there that Google sent millions of bad link notices because of Penguin, when the barest minimum of research would show Google themselves said the majority had nothing to do with Penguin. He used *one* link takedown request letter from *one* e-commerce company blaming their SEO company for the bad links to somehow *prove* that SEO is just a terrible, corrupt industry from the ground up.
I expected that when shown these inaccuracies, they might print a retraction. Instead, I was called a c*** by the writer’s wife.
The editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, said I’m illiterate and that they should send someone over with a ball gag to shut me up. Later, his response to my questioning whether or not they would print a retraction or correct their article was, “SEO BITCHES BE CRAZY.”
Clearly, it’s crazy to think you could have a rational conversation with irrational people. Norris failed to do the least bit of research and threw around a bunch of “facts” he made up, and the Kernel Rag editor not only let them stand, but thought disturbing sexist cracks so the boys could all have a hearty chuckle was an appropriate way of dealing with it. I’m not apt to forget that particular comment and I don’t care if he’s Tech’s Bad Boy, it’s not right.
Miranda, that’s truly despicable. I’m sorry that you had to endure that.
Hi Miranda,
I did see a few tweets about what you have stated above, but wasn’t sure what was going on.
If one dissects the entire article then there are many inaccuracies but what I found slightly disturbing was a lack of balance.
Agreed, Yousaf. It would have been simple enough for them to make a few changes and be done with it. Not sure why they’ve chosen this route, other than they mistakenly think women are an easy target and their juvenile humour will somehow win people over.
I wonder what Crunch thinks of someone representing them acting this way.
Hi Miranda,
I think this is a classic case of “linkbait” gone wrong. Kernel hasn’t really commented on my opinion so I don’t know what their position is. As far as Crunch is concerned, looking at their website it is very clear that they are doing SEO so I am not sure how they feel about hiring “dishonest adult baby SEOs”. I am confident Crunch’s management don’t agree with Jon’s opinion, if they do then they are made for each other and we should wish them best of luck in their commercial endeavours, I guess.
Thank you, Yousaf, for this fair and honest rebuttal – even if you do give his gross misrepresentations the benefit of the doubt a little too much.
Tony,
He went back on his own words on Twitter, that is more than enough for me. As far giving people benefit of the doubt, I do that with most people because in most cases it is only fair to do so.
Miranda and Yousaf just to clarify the “editor” is not an editor.
Miro or @Nero clarified with me he founded Kernel, so the behavior on the comments is not only the actions of the writer, his wife and the perceived editor BUT the founder of the magazine and therefore fully sanctioned by him.
I experienced similar, though not as harsh, reactions as Miranda from their people as well. Then they moved it to Twitter where I asked them to please go away. They continued so I stopped responding.
Yousaf – Just to note. The article was full of inaccuracies and they gave similar responses to everyone who tried to academically point out the issues with the factuality. First they were derisive then they just got nasty.
However, thank you Yousaf for your rebuttal. It is much appreciated.
Hi Kristine,
I only came across Kernel when Miro wrote a story about Peerindex’s CEO. I don’t really know Miro, his credentials and I can’t really comment on his work simply because I don’t know much about him. That said, I do understand that he needs to get visitors/traffic to his site so he might from time to time post controversial stuff but if I were him I would at check articles before they get posted just in case.
I am sure there is something to learn in this for all of us.
1 & 2. We do stereotype accountants and journalists according to their largest flaws. It’s something that both industries have to combat daily to establish trust with their client base.
Why should SEO be any different?
And then there’s this continued belief that Jon’s generalisation extend to every single member of the SEO community, it doesn’t, it clearly and irrefutably doesn’t. As in the article he cites a “relatively trustworthy” SEO and then comments on Twitter that he’s friends with a few ‘good’ SEOs.
This article seems to blindly ignore those statements whilst mentioning them. I don’t understand that. You can’t accuse him of calling every SEO bad, and call him out on using a single SEO tool when he so clearly states that he actually likes some SEOs.
His article is an attack on the cancerous corrupt side of SEO that needs accepting and dealing with. It doesn’t need denying and its existence refuting. If you’re going to be responsible for your industry you need to reflect upon its weaknesses and do what you can to ensure you don’t use bad practices and that your clientele know that.
The comments were an absolute mess after that article, and Miranda who comments here is partly responsible. Instead of being an adult, she was a baby. And I still can’t understand why she can’t look at the situation objectively, sure the article was pitched very aggressively, but it has an extremely valid point. And she had no reason to be so offended, as she (according to her) is NOT a bad SEO. She is not the subject of an attack, and yet she throws all her toys out of the pram, insults the writers wife, who is more than allowed to defend her husband’s piece. She single-handedly reduced the comments to a mire.
I would have expected a much different approach from her and the rest of the SEO community. Yousaf, I don’t think you should be afraid to back me up here when I ask that the SEO community to step up to the reputation it has earned and declare that it’s not all like that. This isn’t internal PR, you all know about the ethics of your industry, this external PR on the Kernel, educating the masses. Use that opportunity.
If you could go back to that article and direct those comments before they were made, would you let it go the way it did?
Hi Tim,
Thanks for your comment.
1. I don’t really want to comment on Miranda’s commentary, purely because I don’t know the full facts, I am sure you appreciate my stance on this front.
2. Jon’s article focused on the corrupt side of the SEO industry alone, “relatively trustworthy” doesn’t cut it for a lot of honest SEOs who help businesses in these times of economic turmoil.
3. SEO industry does have its issues, just like like journalism, banking, media etc. As a writer, Jon should have presented both sides of the argument with a fair and balanced analysis. Instead, he chose to take his link bait to new heights and I had to post a response agreeing to parts of his argument and refuting others.