SEO Survey: Behind the Scenes Stories/Fun

Published on November 16, 2015

The iMarketing Cafe has come out with an SEO survey for the third year in a row with an objective to take the pulse of the SEO community. You can read the Survey report here. As usual we conducted the survey on Twitter and some of the respected SEO experts’ responses were off the mark (intentionally) as they didn’t want to respond to the question asked but to give us sarcasm-laced “feedback” ( so, they couldn’t be included in the survey post – we chose to include only the relevant responses). We, at The iMarketing Cafe, took their reactions in a positive way and decided to create a post featuring those tweets and respond to them in the same way they did – in a funny/non-serious manner. Our intention here is not to give tit for tat replies or to disrespect or offend anyone but to present our views/responses in a humourous manner with an objective to entertain our readers. We have high respect for all these professionals.

Recommended Reading: 21 Interesting Social Media Questions Answered by Top Social media Experts

They are some of the most sought after social media thought leaders in the world. They are widely-recognized and are greatly influential on social media. We thought it would be fun to test their intelligence 😉 and ofcourse, we knew that the views and insights shared by these experts would be useful to our readers.

So, on a lighter note… 🙂

Michael Gray sarcastically opines:

. @iMarketingCafe that people will realize expert SEO survey questions is tactic that is not as effective as it once was

— Michael Gray (@graywolf) October 19, 2015

We didn’t see this post as a tactic to gain traffic but to genuinely bring some worthy content for our readers. We usually come up with topics and concepts based on our interests and many times ideas come out of the blue and we decide to give them a try. Passion for trying out different content ideas we generate is what drives our content creation process – and we mean it! In other words, at the conceptualization stage we don’t think about traffic but focus on creating quality content.. but thanks for your opinion sir 🙂

After this tweet, we sent a follow up tweet saying:

@graywolf not a tactic, opinions will be collected, compiled and published 🙂

— The iMarketing Cafe (@iMarketingCafe) October 19, 2015

and this time his response was even more sarcastic:

oh ok got it @iMarketingCafe KWD density between 11 -13%, once in bold, once in italics, and once in bold and italics #sorrynotsorry

— Michael Gray (@graywolf) October 19, 2015

ha ha ha…. but we thought that one was really funny. Good one! 😀

Alan Bleiwess writes:

@iMarketingCafe More people will come out with surveys asking experts about the future.

— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) October 28, 2015

Sorry Alan, a very boring response because many people have given the same or similar responses in the past. Please feel free to make a sarcastic comment next time too but let it be a better one 😉

Here is another one from Andrew Shotland:

@iMarketingCafe 55% increase in SEO expert surveys.

— Andrew Shotland (@localseoguide) October 27, 2015

But interestingly, he mentioned a figure. Hey Andrew, how did you work out that figure? Would love to have a look at the calculations you made 😀

But thanks to both of you for the responses, atleast you did respond – many didn’t.

Here is how Joe Hall blasted us:

@iMarketingCafe Avoiding unsolicited request for "expert" surveys on Twitter.

— Joe Hall (@joehall) October 28, 2015

We love you too 😀 . Unsolicited? Joe, should we expect people to request us to do a Survey? Will that ever happen? :O

…and here is how Steve Plunkett pulled Joe’s leg:

@iMarketingCafe That @joehall will show up in less "Top #SEOs" posts next year? (should have followed him first,) pic.twitter.com/eJIMg2gm3m

— steveplunkett (@steveplunkett) October 28, 2015

Ha ha ha … Steve, we won’t give up. We will approach him next time too 😉

Judith Lewis writes:

@iMarketingCafe increasingly jaded experts will stop giving quotes, making ego-bait ineffective

— Judith Lewis (@JudithLewis) October 26, 2015

Judith, we beg to differ. People will continue to. The formats may change, but experts will continue to share their opinions. Thanks for your response Judith 🙂

Gaz Copeland tweets:

@iMarketingCafe That building relationships before asking people to contribute to ego bait posts will prove more effective

— Gaz Copeland (@StokedSEO) October 28, 2015

Hey Gaz, that’s what we were trying to do. You need some reason to contact people and you need to get in touch with people to start building relationships. We just initiated the process and we were stopped at the entry point 🙂

We have done 3 SEO surveys so far, people have always responded with utmost enthusiasm and interest – and we enjoy doing what we do. You have a different point of view, we respect that.

@iMarketingCafe That spamming the same tweet to hundreds of people will prove annoying

— Gaz Copeland (@StokedSEO) October 28, 2015

We thought that sending one tweet per person and maintaining a gap of 15-30 minutes per tweet would not result in annoying people and people have rarely ever blamed us for spamming. We use Twitter for conducting surveys because the process becomes quicker and easier.

Any activity done on the Internet with right intentions and doing it without annoying people doesn’t amount to spamming – this is our humble opinion.

Thanks for the response Gaz 🙂

All the following people suggested that roundup posts will go away in the future and that Google will also penalize roundup posts.

@iMarketingCafe Google will roll out the Honey Badger update on sites with multiple authors on a single page

— Chris Dyson (@ChrisLDyson) October 22, 2015

@iMarketingCafe Every site that does SEO roundups will get slammed with negative SEO.

— Ian Howells (@ianhowells) October 20, 2015

@iMarketingCafe roundups will become a negative ranking signal

— nick eubanks (@nick_eubanks) October 22, 2015

@iMarketingCafe Expert roundup posts will be penalized by Google. ;-P

— Andy Beal (@AndyBeal) October 23, 2015

That expert roundups go away. RT @iMarketingCafe What is the one big change that you expect in the SEO landscape in 2016? #SEOExpertSurvey

— Jon Cooper (@PointBlankSEO) October 21, 2015

An honest admission. We are really clueless about this one. Folks, were you serious or these were sarcastic responses too? or just a wild guess work? We couldn’t find any official announcement or statement from Google specifically saying that they might penalize round up posts. Where did that come from? If yes, please do share the relevant links in the comment section below. We are really scared now :O :O 😀

Okay, on a serious note, we don’t see any reason for Google to penalize any content/post that may be useful and informative for the users. The current format may have become boring and the formats/themes may change but we don’t think publishing expert opinions on any subject/topic will be seen negatively ( in other words, poor content ) by either the users or Google.

Experts are the influencers in any industry. Expert opinions help us to understand the pulse of the industry and they also help us to understand how things work in a niche/segment/process or industry. They also tell us, roughly if not accurately, about the possible future idevelopments in the industry. We need expert opinions in order to fine-tune our strategy for the present and the future and also to make sure that we are doing things the way they should be done and if not course corrections can be promptly made.

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