Diorex

David Pasternak and Did-It have been catching a lot of heat lately for his scathing comments about SEO not being rocket science. I will be among the first to admit I know absolutely nothing about SEO or David Pasternak for that matter. I have a really good in-house SEO who just does what he does. I have a policy of “Dont ask, Dont Tell” when it comes to SEO.

I wrote about how stupid I thought this was awhile back. I still feel that way. Why would you not want traffic from both sources?
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Just found out to my major disgust that Google has eliminated bulk sheets, even for very large advertisers.

My account rep just said that we could do everything in the Adwords editor that could be done with bulksheets.

I proceeded to ask her how to do 3 different things, that were extraordinarily simple with a bulksheet, none of which she could figure out using the editor.

In my opinion, I have never seen a single good reason to use the editor. Anything it can do, I can do as quick in the main account. I guess if I wanted to make a lot of changes while flying on an airplane then the editor might be useful. The few times I have tried to use it for something it was absolutely sluggish and changes took forever to go live.

The one and only reason I can even imagine why this was done is that, we would make tons of changes in Google and then just download the bulksheet and send it to Yahoo. Maybe Google got tired of helping Yahoo drive more traffic. At the same time, they stopped helping me drive more traffic through them.

I must say that this bugs the heck out of me. I hate to see the flags at half staff and not know why. I also think it cheapens the honor of the flag at half-staff when it is that way for days at a time.

I looked it up and we are at Half Staff due to the death of Gerald Ford. WHAT!!! The guy died the day after Christmas and was buried more than 2 weeks ago!

I understand he was a president and they dont die every day. Heck only something like 38 have ever died in 220+ years. But why do we need to “mourn” for a whole month? Is anyone even still in mourning for this guy?

here is the wiki Rules on Half Staff.

* For thirty days after the death of a current or former President.
* For ten days after the death the current Vice-President, Chief Justice, or Speaker of the House of Representatives.
* From the day of death until interment of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Secretary of an executive or military department, a former Vice President, or the Governor of a State, territory, or possession
* On the day of death and the following day for a Member of Congress- i.e. a Senator, a Representative, a Delegate, or the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico.
* On Memorial Day until noon
* Upon presidential proclamation, which have included: the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks, the death of Pope John Paul II, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the death of Coretta Scott King

Come on 30 days was almost as long as this guy was in office, he was never elected, I know 2 things about him, he played Football for Michigan and he pardoned Richard Nixon. If he had died while he was speaker of the house he would have gotten 10 days. I like the rule for congressmen in general, 1 day and then raise em back up. I can live with the existing Governors, Justices ex-VP rules of the day you die until the day you are buried. I can even buy a little longer for icons like Ronald Reagan (whatever your politics no one was indifferent about him…Gerald Ford on the other hand…) or for tragedies like an assassination or terrorist attack.

For me I am proud of the country and I think it is a fitting tribute to lower the flag in respect. I just think 30 days for a president who did not do much when he was president and has not done much since is way too long. I think 30 days for the best president ever is way too long. I understand the politics of making it variable, dont die when a member of the other party is president, but can we impose some sane limits that allow for honoring those who should be honored without cheapening the honor by overdoing it?

I hate articles like this one at MSNBC.

The answer to me is obvious.

It is the same country that created the next Sam Walton, the next Howard Hughes, the next JP Morgan, the next Henry Ford, the next John D. Rockefeller, then next Thomas Edison, the next Leland Stanford……

For the last 150+ years, America has reinvented itself for the betterment of Americans and in almost every case the trickle down effect for the rest of the world has been positive as well.

This country is a unique combination of opportunity, access to capital, business friendly laws and open innovation such that anyone and everyone has the opportunity to make a life for themselves. You do not have to be born into wealth here to have opportunity. If you have an idea, talent and a work ethic you can succeed in this country.

The other thing that the above people share other than being fabulously wealthy is that they created industries and companies that offered many thousands of others the opportunity to be extremely rich alongside themselves.

How many millionaires has Google created that never worked for or invested in Google? What about E-bay? Does cheap airfare enable you to do business you otherwise would not have been able to? Does access to a dynamic banking environment allow you to buy a home or finance a business on credit cards that would be impossible just about anywhere else in the world, where banks and credit are only for the very privileged? Is it any surprise that the first country in the world to offer cheap personal transportation for the masses or electricity for even the poorest families produces an environment where there are tens of millions of people who can change the world. In India or China the ratio is more like 1 in 100,000 with even the remote opportunity to affect change.

For the last 30 years, Asia/Japan has been the next America. Before that it was Germany. The next America is America! the America after the next America is going to be America. Rinse and Repeat.

That’s it I have had it. I hate Fry’s Electronics. All I can do is complain and implore you to not buy from them.

The service is awful.

A huge percentage of merchandise is refurbished, often without clearly stating that fact.

Advertised specials are often out of stock or just not available - even at 9AM the day of the ad. They did not sell out, they just did not have it to begin with. How can you be the first one in the store, walk directly to the section, and the product is sold out?

The company has no means to contact them nationally - they are hiding from customers. They have a dummy website run by outpost.com.

They do not answer the publicly listed main number for their own store. This is not an isolated occurrence this is a pattern.

The return policy is lenient with thousands of exceptions. Better bring the receipt, the original packaging, the original bag, the cellophane and the packaging put together exactly as before or expect a restocking charge or even a refusal to do a return. Charge back against our credit card is usually easier.

Speaking of which, they do not accept American Express.

The employees are non-attentive and not very knowledgeable with a few exceptions. Management is awful.

The pricing outside advertised specials is worse than most comparable stores.

I could go on. Suffice it to say that after years of miserable experiences with this chain, I am never going to set foot in another store again. Thats the only (and best) way for me to vote against them.

It all started when David Pasternak started talking about how he thought SEO was becoming less relevant due to what he called SEO Spam, along with some of his predictions that the large search engines would start allocating a larger percentage of the page to paid search.

Then SEO Rockstar, Greg Boser responded with his rebuttal and a pretty nasty attack on Kevin Lee’s company Did-it.

Danny Sullivan, who i really respect and who is usually the voice of reason, jumped in (now I cannot find the link easily from the home page, Danny - you need a search bar!) with his own comments about the value of SEO. Unfortunately Danny used a really silly example for the search term “Danny”. Which is neither commercial or anything anyone would probably strive to rank for….

My thoughts are this -

SEO is neither easy or quick, especially if you are new at the game, do not have a name brand, and don’t have a large budget, SEO is probably not going to help you make money quick.

SEM is a fast,easy way to drive traffic that offers a measurable result with fantastic metrics and tracking.

In both cases, professionals should drive better results than amateurs.

SEO in my experience has always been sold with a hard sell, without offering any guarantee of results, and often with vague promises that are unlikley to be fulfilled.

SEM is also sold with a lot of BS. Some of the SEM firms I have worked with massaged numbers, tried to grab conversions that did not belong to them and practiced otherwise shady techniques.

Both industries have a long way to go before they should be pointing fingers at each other for ethics violations.

SEO is better suited for sites with lots of content and for sites with the ability to attract authoritative back links and that can generate fresh content on a regular basis.

SEM can be used on any site, but it is the best way I know of to drive specific traffic to a specific page that is designed for a specific purpose, provided you have a budget to do so.

These are not mutually exclusive, if you have a site, you can focus on one or the other or both. Depending on the site, the goals of the pages, the time sensitivity, and dozens of other factors affect which makes more sense.

At my company, we have more SEM’s than SEO’s, but the SEO’s we do have work every day to drive free traffic, where the ROI is substantially higher, even if the overall profit is not. The SEM’s drive more traffic, but it is all paid. It requires far more time and effort to manage these programs due to the constant fluctuations.

As a super affiliate, we have made an effort to focus on SEM for one reason “A change in the algorithm’s is unlikely to put us out of business in a single day”. That said, once you have a great site built, SEO’s can further monetize that in a substantial and very profitable way. A better site with bad SEO is probably preferable than a bad site with great SEO. But I much prefer a great site with great SEO. Don’t You?

For example: On a recent day in one of our verticals, Google SEM drove 337 sign-ups for one of our products. That resulted in about a 60% ROI. On the same day, SEO drove 63 sign-ups, but it drove about 50% as much profit as 5 times the paid search traffic, since it was essentially free. I don’t want one or the other, I want both!

This is not an us vs them environment. We are fighting the same war together. The war for traffic and conversions. Ideally if there are 10 ads on the page and 10 natural results on the page, aren’t I better off if I control more of those possible links? if you could have all 20, would anyone not take that?