![]() That seems to be a problem with all people-driven search projects-they don’t scale. Q: I’ve found Squidoo to be helpful, but have also searched for some things where nobody has yet built a “lens” (focused topic page) on the subject. We’re a cross between the two, but we add in 65,000 people building the lenses… so you can find the people who you trust, the judgment that you rely on, and getting something more focused and up to date than. has a few hundred voices, and only page on a topic. How does Squidoo differ from other community-built sites, like, Wikipedia or others? Q: You describe Squidoo as “1) thousands of people creating a handbuilt catalog of the best stuff online 2) a free and fun way to make your own page and get traffic 3) a place to find what you’re looking for, fast. Of course, search is always going to be a bit broken (though it keeps getting better) and the more human person to person recommending that gets included (including ), the better it’s going to work. Well, if search worked, then you wouldn’t need a strategy! People would find you when you needed to be found, and find someone else the rest of the time. At SES New York you said that people were attending the conference because “search is broken.” Can you elaborate on that? Spending money on ads or commodity-focused SEO is the last gasp of someone who is short on innovation, imagination and great stuff! ![]() If I ran a travel site, I’d engage my best customers to build blogs and Squidoo lenses and to use Digg to point to reviews and insights and things that would make people WANT to seek me out. My point is that a tough business is not an excuse to cheat or to rely on tactics that don’t last. And if you treat it like a commodity, you’ll get treated like a commodity in return. Sure, travel is a brutally competitive area. You just aren’t going to rank.” After all, there are black hats out there-shouldn’t you be realistic and compete with the same techniques they’re using? Q: What about companies that are operating in ruthlessly competitive areas, like travel, gambling, jewelry, etc? One of Yahoo’s chief spam cops, Tim Mayer, once said “If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. I do agree that common sense white hat SEO is a smart tool-if you’ve done everything else-and your organization has appropriate scale. ![]() When it becomes a crutch, when you use SEO as a replacement for something else, you fail. I think it’s important for everyone to act as if it doesn’t work. Since then, your stance seems to have softened somewhat, with your acknowledging the work of some pros like Andrew Goodman and Aaron Wall. A few years ago, you wrote that you thought most search engine optimization wasn’t worth the money. Read on for his fascinating views and opinions on what search marketers are currently doing wrong and what they can do to improve their campaigns and create a more effective dialogue with searchers. I asked Godin to elaborate on his issues with search marketing and to talk a bit about his goals and aspirations with Squidoo. One of his current efforts is a human-powered search service (though he wouldn’t call it that): Squidoo. But Godin is no stranger to search: Yoyodyne, an interactive direct marketing company he company he founded and ran was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. He’s tweaked the noses of other well-known pundits, and in recent years has also blasted search marketers, accusing them of a variety of sins. Seth Godin is widely known as one of the foremost advocates of “permission marketing,” promotional campaigns that don’t rely on interrupting the attention of your customers, but rather engage them and even turn them into enthusiastic advocates that volunteer time and effort to help you promote your products or services.
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