Everyone Does SEO...Everyone

I feel so justified!

About a year ago, I wrote this piece on why tech people hate SEO, when really it's part and parcel with what everyone does to get noticed online. Then just this morning, Lee Odden over at TopRankMarketing.com retweeted this link to an article examining the black hat SEO-like practices of Mahalo.

I won't rehash this post, because it is thorough and authoritative and I couldn't add anything substantive to it even if I tried. But I do feel I need to add just a bit of perspective to the situation.

As the post points out, Jason Calacanis, the president of Mahalo, was quite vocal in his anti-SEO sentiments when this "human-powered search engine" was getting started. Really, I wouldn't have expected any different from him, being known as a tech person. However, the case-study of what actually happened is a perfect example of how money wins out in the end, and how any site will eventually fall into black-hat SEO practices without good guidance. The drive for rankings and site traffic is just to strong to resist.

Clearly the article is one of the best case-studies in black hat SEO practices I've read, but it shows how thin that line is between legitimate SEO practices and thoroughly gaming the system.