I'm curious about two things at this point:
1) Why are you so fired up by my original post in this thread? I have never once personally attacked you in this thread (or really anywhere as far as I can recall) and yet you've gone on a tirade attacking me at the very least on a professional level. What gives? You could have just easily ignored this thread, or my advice, or said something to the extent of "I'm gonna have to disagree with Darrin's point #1" and given your own advice, but instead you flipped out like I just spit in your face or something equally as offensive.
Why are you so angry?
I wasn't angry to begin with. I think I was rather professional with my first post here:
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-...seo-please-will-pay-tits-ass.html#post2116131
I didn't attack you from what I can tell and I even offered up why it was the wrong analysis. Maybe I hoped you would see why it was wrong too and maybe take into consideration what I was trying to tell you and OP.
I think the part in the above URL specifically where I said noobs and you took offense to it as in me saying you only code tools for noobs ( which is not what I mean ) is where it took the wrong turn.
Then, to be so closed minded as to say "By definition, the sites ranking highest for a keyword are doing good SEO" showed me you had no reason to think outside the box about other variables like authority sites and spam link machines that even I can crank out and rank within a couple days time into consideration as those would be "good seo" too by your definition. You can't see the issue with that, so that showed me a side of you that was rather unknowledgeable. Still I wasn't angry at that point yet.
Even in my second post, I was rather professional and offered up another example.
When you posted this:
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-...seo-please-will-pay-tits-ass.html#post2116364
I again see how little you know of SEO. There are universally good SEO tactics and there are SEO tactics that worked 3-6 years ago that still work today. You just do not know them so you made this generalization based on the limited experience you have. Again, I was not angry yet but I do think I was irritated. I knew what I was dealing with already with you though seeing how you were closed minded to just your method and limited understanding. Plus I have been saying for years each SERP is different anyways, but there are still universals you can follow. I do agree you need to know what your competition is doing, to a degree and that some of the universal good SEO strategies have a limit to them, but some do not.
It was at this point here:
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-...seo-please-will-pay-tits-ass.html#post2116372
I wanted to explain why it was wrong and even that 1 of your former partners who does SEO day in and day out even said it would not help long term. Wasn't angry, but a bit irritated. I was actually about to leave the thread anyways at this point.
At your post here:
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-...seo-please-will-pay-tits-ass.html#post2116378
I realized what is actually going on is, your trying to throw around your weight as the creator of SerpIQ into your benefit for being a SEO professional. I don't discredit using automated tools for metrics, but I got a whiff of "hey Im Darrin and i created SerpIQ therefor since other seo guys use my tool and I made it, Im qualified to give seo advice". It was at this point I was pretty disgusted with it. I dont have a problem with your tools, trust me I dont. I have a problem with you thinking you can give advice because you created them, especially when that advice is flawed or the metrics your taking in dont consider other important factors and when also other people more senior then you in a subject try to tell you and show you the flaws, you insist your data is right instead.
At this point it became a pissing match with you of "hey im darrin, creator of SerpIQ which entitles me to giving SEO advice" and me "hey its Jason, ive actually been working in this space for over 13 years, had a spam ranking service that ranked elusive niches like Payday loans and I even outted it, and also made some good money to live off for years in this space as well" with you thinking you actually had better advice to give to OP just because I didn't give any. I base that off this post here from you:
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-...seo-please-will-pay-tits-ass.html#post2116428
At that point, I just didn't care anymore. I am tired of people thinking because they did 1 thing in SEO or co-created a tool people use and pay money for as their validation into being someone that can give credible advice about strategy. Especially when you try to throw that around up against someone that actually does this for a living and ranks sites for clients day in and day out and has done it for a magnitude 4x longer then you. Its even more disgusting when one of your former partners points it out and even some other guys on this board but you dont take the hint. I wasn't angry before this point Darrin, I tried being professional and point out the flaw in the metrics before I pointed out your flaws but you wanted to keep proving your angle even when others pointed it out as wrong.
It reminds me a lot of Rand Fishkin. Guy is smart about business, but that is it. But the guy is treated like SEO Royalty and is invited and asked to speak on all kinds of marketing related topics, but the guy is about a dumb as a bag of rocks when it comes to what actually is working in digital. Point in case, you have pointed out several times yourself about how they are unprofitable and cant scale with their servers and coding they have on their backend, but I bet you he has probably been picked as a speaker to give advice to other start up and SaaS guys about how to scale and reach the top even when he was broke as fuck with SEOMoz. He is not an expert just because he made a tool.
It was childish of me to nit pick and call you out, I admit. Therefor I bow out even though I know the extent of the damage done already to me and you both because of it. However, I cant sit by and let OP take that 1 piece of advice from you and be fine with it when I know it was wrong and pointed out why it was wrong before we started in on each other.
2) I gave 4 distinct points of advice based on a brief look at the SERPs for OP's site after he messaged me and asked me to. I spent maybe 15 minutes on the whole thing, looking at one keyword, a few pages of results.
You've managed to write a short thesis at this point about how wrong I was for 1 of my points without even going so far to acknowledge the other points I made.
Again, why such a visceral reaction to a single point of advice in a public facing thread asking for some SEO advice? Who cares?
I didnt look at the others, I admit. I didnt need to though in my mind based on what I put above.
But like you said above, Who cares? I could have said the same to you when you kept pressing on with the reasons why your were right in your analysis when I was trying to just point out why it was wrong in my first couple of posts. Who cares works both ways.
So now I ask you, why did you feel so inclined multiple times to prove your analysis right over and over again to lead to this point in the thread even though several people who do this for a living told you it wouldnt fly?