I’m appreciative of firms like yours and SEO practitioners who approach business ethically and honestly. As stated before, I’m well aware not all SEOs are bad guys/gals as my post may insinuate. Most are actually ones I’d love doing business with. But I think we all are in agreement with Martinez that some form of standards and practices, as well as industry checkpoints, might be in order now that the SEO discipline has started to come of age.

Thanks again for your post. I would encourage anyone with a website to check out HubSpot’s Website Grader. It’s very informative.

Interesting post. I agree with a number of your points, and that in general the SEO industry is trying to make things more complicated than they have to be, and that some SEO folks do this to continue to charge a lot of money for not much value.

My company is actually trying to bring more science and accountability to the industry. Check out our Website Grader SEO tool (www.WebsiteGrader.com) – it gives an honest look at the majors stats behind your website, and free advice to improve.

If you dive deeper into our methodology (which our paying customers have access to) I think you will find that we have an honest and clear answer to the “what makes your website rank” question, and we share most all of our “secrets”. We’re trying to make money not by making SEO complicated and “black magic”, but providing upfront methods and tools to actually track results (traffic, leads and SALES) not rank.

I’d be happy to show you what I’m talking about if you want to chat.

You’re welcome for the link. Very good article I’m glad to recommend for folks.

Soniac — Great question. I think what could happen certainly leans that way, but I also have a firm belief that in social media, community does indeed rule. Therefore, the gobs of positive press piles will be there, but the street cred of those companies will void that all out since the community will know they engineered their way there. Thanks for the question. I hope others react to it as well.

Thanks as well for referencing our post on search marketing during a recession – glad that you found it of value!

Ryan — You’re right, my tendencies are to apply generalities. I know not all, in fact few, search marketer types are bad folks. I know several very good ones who are as white hat as they come. But I think search marketers have a suspect reputation in some circles for a reason. It’s all about gaming the system which most people view as unscrupulous.

And posting something like this always brings out the right people. Thanks for being one.

By your own “cretins” among us in PR admission, you’ve hit on something key: in any profession there are unscrupulous types who turn a blind eye to the larger picture. As a SEM, I can’t claim to always operate for the greater good of the searching populace, but generally speaking I think there is an overwhelming majority of us who operate within the guidelines handed down. Those guidelines tend to reward websites and webmasters who improve the user experience.

It’s not all cloaked pages and link-spam.

“Getting a straight answer out of most search marketers is like getting a bone from a rabid dog.”

You’ve been working with the wrong people.

Just sayin’…