Making information work

Another amusing twist in the Swedish SEO industry which again proves (to me, at least) that it is so young and immature that it is basically not yet born.

A (by me, until today) respected member of the SEO community is offering organic search and only charging for deals closed by natural search traffic. Read all about it here.

I can think of tens of flaws. The biggest perhaps circulating around the motivation of the buyer and seller of the product: an organic SEO campaign should, in my humble opinion, be a focused transfer of knowledge from a consultant to technicians and editors. With a sound technical architecture and good content, the natural search presence will appear - we all know this. So why is that service so difficult to sell?

My easy (and somewhat mean) answer: because cowboys armed with knowledge and a slick sales pitch promise short term, ethically suspicious solutions as this (or worse - see the link scheme offered by another Swedish SEO firm described by me earlier)  and thereby set the whole industry back years.

Only today I had a great meeting with arguably one of the largest e-commerce websites in the Nordics, and I can not blame their business development manager for having the general attitude of “being suspicious of all SEO companies”. He had simply been burned too many times. It would be a good idea for some of the leading minds of the industry to create an organization which looked after the “good guys”, and who became a spokesperson for the people who do it right. I was in a discussion with one of the sharpest minds in Swedish SEO about such an organization once - but, as could be expected, she is too busy optimizing Sweden …

David SEO

A modified quote from The Usual Suspects in the heading can only mean that a great post is on its way, right?

Maybe: I just deleted my Facebook account. And I feel great.

It all started with too many people around me simply being dumb, backwards, and naive. They expect stuff, dont supply stuff.  They like to look at pictures, as long as they arent in them. Classic, right?

As a previous self appointed happiness officer in a large organization, I would have to deal with these people. Now, as a sole proprietor, I don’t. And I wont.

It is strange that deleting that account was difficult. It shouldn’t have to be. It is clearly not a particularly vital tool, as I think I survived without it before. The repercussions will be interesting to take note of: I know Kevin will be pissed, as I tricked him into the whole Facebook-scene. Other than that, I think my removal will go quite unnoticed.

Or, as Bad Religion eloquently put it:

” You’ve got to quit your little charade and join the freak parade
Now that your road has been paved from conception to your grave.
Enormous things to do, others’ practices to eschew,
To be better than you is impossible to do,
But the world won’t stop without you.”

David

I am not saying that I just unlocked another iPhone, or indeed that I have unlocked an iPhone at all even once. But, if I had done it once and then twice, this would be the experience:

The first phone was a pain. 6 hours of pure frustration.

The second phone was a breeze. 15 minutes of non-stop joy.

The world of phone hacking develops quickly - it was but 6 weeks between the two dates that this guy (not me) hacked these two phones, and there was a world of difference in method and instruction clarity.

David