This has proven to be cheaper than having 10 link builders going for a month. One article from a National Newspaper with a link back got a page 1 result in 10 days (on a new website). Now we are working on dozens of others.

I think us nerds need to come out of the idea that real people don’t exist anymore. You would be amazed what one call to an online magazine editor can do for you. If you do it with enough energy.

Let’s see how we do after the next Penguin Update/Refresh – gulp!

Your first illustration (Mr Angel) could

This is the test i use….

Let’s say you email a VERY authoritative and relevant blog in your clients niche pitching a guest post. If the blog replies that they charge a smallish review fee on all guest posts. Do you…
a) Say “no way, I only want links that are completely free”.
b) Look at the clients budget and pull the trigger if you think its worth it.

If your answer is “b” (and, in my opinion it should be) then your on some section of the grey spectrum. I don’t pretend to know where the line is or where it should be. I expect that it is different for each person. I do know that if you stray too far in either direction, your bound for an ass kicking of some type.

Don’t cost Google money while you’re making money off Google (for example waste their resources crawling and indexing webspam that’s of no use to searchers) – parasites get eradicated. If you do, don’t cry when you get stepped on and point to the other guy who got away with it. You don’t know his secret sauce either, which leads me to my greater point…

Stop thinking like *you* have all the answers, or need to! The whole Black Hat vs White Hat SEO thingy is kind of embarrassing and industry people waste *hours* playing Philosoraptor around the subject, then when they’re finally certain they have it ALL figured out (lol) Google releases an update, they get trounced and bleat about it.

This is why the Agile cycle is so attractive to me, it’s not about grand schemes (because the world might change a hell of a lot before those big plans come to fruition) it’s about short-term increments that over time add up to that grand scheme – based in, and backed by, data every step of the way. You don’t need to plot out everything first. All you need is where you want to wind up and what to do next. It really eliminates a lot of the “but I thought I was supposed to ____” complaints.

So don’t worry about what SEO is, or isn’t, or etc. Look at your data and figure out which number needs to go up. Then look at more data and figure out how to do it

PS last thing, don’t forget that a lot of SEO thought leaders make their money by being thought leaders. They’re not selling SEO services to clients so much as they’re selling the SEO industry to junior industry members. Their registers ring through making people buy into their methodologies. Some are straight up scamsters and some seek to provide genuine value. But all of them have skin in the game of defining what SEO “is” and pretty well all of the time that definition is one that leads you towards their product, service, or system.

Great post man!