Jill Whalen just called me a quack. She has published a list called : “10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack”, and I am matching 3 of these signs. Great, I am a quack. If you have not done so already then you better read the whole thing over at her site before reading this blogpost. In this blogpost Jill’s statements are in bold text.

Quackery is the practice of fraudulent medicine, usually in order to make money or for ego gratification and power. Those who practise quackery are called “quacks” and are in the business of selling false hope to ill-informed people who may be genuinely suffering. Most would consider such a practice highly unethical. Source: Wikipedia

1. Your SEO Company talks about Meta tags and Google Page Rank (PR) as if they are the magic bullet to high rankings.
   I agree, but Page Rank used to be a golden ticket. Back in the summer of 2004 it was a magic bullet.
2. Your SEO Company’s site (or those of their clients) has the same Title tags on every page.
   I agree.
3. Your SEO company talks only about optimizing for the “long tail.”
   I talk a lot about the long tail, co-occurrences, and tree structures. I strongly believe that it is a good approach for new sites to bring in targeted search engine traffic. If someone was going to start a new site offering mp3 downloads then I would IMHO be a quack if told then that I would get them a high ranking for “mp3”, the long tail rocks that’s where the money is.
4. Your SEO company tells you it’s ALL about links (or ALL about content)
5. Your SEO company tells you that you need a linking campaign even though you already have tons of links and are a well-established popular site in your niche.
   I grouped these two together, statement 5 partly refutes statement 4. So: blah, blah, blah…
6. Your SEO company is almost surely 99% “quackish” if they tell you that they can rank your brand-new site in Google for keywords that will bring you traffic within a few months.
   Then I am a 99% quack, but then again I focus on the long tail.
7. Your SEO company never mentions that they may very well need to redo your site architecture so that your important pages are prominently featured within your site navigation.
   I agree, changes in site architecture or even recoding the site is often necessary. Some web site owners dislike the fact that they have to make site changes. Two years ago I got contacted by a site owner that wasn’t able to get his site indexed, and it turned out that all the navigational links were made with JavaScript. Those kinds of mistakes are still common among web designers, it do not think it is very funny.
8. Your SEO company can’t provide you with any quality references.
   I don’t provide any references.
9. Your SEO company tells you that you have to have a DMOZ listing or your site will never be able to get high rankings.
   I agree that is a “quacish” thing to say, however DMOZ is still much more than just another link. I would go to great lengths to get a commercial site included in DMOZ.
10. Your SEO company’s site mentions that they’ll get you high rankings in AltaVista, Fast, Inktomi, Lycos, Excite, HotBot and the like. I agree.

I think Jill’s list is far from good, after removing the parts that turns me and many others into quacks and the points 4 and 5 from the list there really isn’t anything left. Jill is encouraging people to spam social bookmarking sites with this story and it just could work, lists of all sorts are very popular. Since I first came across her site back in 2002 (I think) I have learned a lot from reading her articles and the free advice she gives, but this was really disapointing.

[tags]Jill Whalen, SEO quack, ethics[/tags]