SEO and the little voice in my head

 Something occurred to me today when I was losing my mind and slowly slipping into the reality that may be my ignorance. The most devious and dastardly little voice crept into my mind’s eye and whispered unto my being. Could it be, maybe just a little, somewhere deep in the recess of the game that is my industry, a sense of hypocrisy exists that isn’t immediately self evident? Is Google really alone in leading the sheep?

Bear with me along this trail for a few moments. Nothing bothers me more than misinformation and the often seemingly chaotic appearance that SEO can have. Once upon a time as a forum hound it would bother me too no end; put out one fire and 3 more pop up in its place. Finally I gave up and decided to write more here instead and hopefully pass sensibility when I can.  But there was that voice today that was looking at the entire mess from a more objective view point and it asked;

Is Google the only one that should stand accused of creating FUD?

And I ain’t talking about Rocket Science peeps….so don’t go there…

I mean really, look around you folks. There is no lack of people screaming about ‘New Ranking changes’ and the fairness of said illusionary instances. Others are talking about a minus this penalty or minus that penalty (how many have we had now?). I passed by freaking DP looking for a quote and found that the natives are so freaked by all the Paid Link and PageRank fiasco that they can’t even tell the difference between ToolBar PageRank and actual PageRank (not sure they ever did grasp that one). And this list could go on and on.

… where in all of this lies our responsibility?

Google may start the ball rolling, but in most cases is quite passive in the pandemonium. More often than not is a self created furor that is then procreated and regurgitated throughout the iMarketing Blog-o-sphere. For a group of people that often throw the FUD acronym around, we sure seemed to have learned the game well, don’t you think?

Stop and look around, how much of the fear and loathing is coming from within the community and how much are actual facts from the search engines that are being expounded upon?

Then that little voice said, “turn the lens on them”….. If this were Google, what would be said? Follow the money trail I would have to think. So let us now look at the purveyors of such madness among us. Do they have any financial gain by propagating such ‘Urban SEO Legends’? I dare say the cynical among us might draw such lines in the sand. Being unable to stand it any longer I dispensed with such thoughts. What a cheeky little voice that was…. I sent him to bed without dinner …..

Now that I am alone, I can’t help but wonder how we would fare as an industry should we turn the looking glass away from Google and unto ourselves…

…. Do you hear little voices?