Getting fed up with SEO

Just gonna rant, need to get it out curious if anyone else feels the same. I built a white hat site for a SEO company I started, I got it to PR4 with lots of quality and average links with tons of anchor variety + tons of blog posts and work put into the site. I moved up to like 1-3 for all my keywords and was stable for months. I commented on a seo blog a month ago, and the link went on the side bar for recent comments. Needless to say, that website got hacked and THOUSANDS of links were created with urls like site/buy-viagra. Since my comment was on the side bar I got like 5k links wiht viagra terms pointed at the site. Emailed owner, no response. Within about 3 weeks my site was slapped. Many of my clients sites got massive penalties as well for no apparent reason. Like I said, WHITE HAT seo.

Even if I got the links removed I'd probably have to bust my ass to get it back up there. SEO is really jacked up these days, negative SEO is very real, and Google is more fickle than a hooker. Every update can penalize your site, good seo or bad seo. Feels bad guys. Really considering quitting SEO and going into different online marketing ventures like paid advertising etc.

Gonna be fun telling a new client just as I started SEO on his site (he had a BH provider before) it dropped 80 positions, cool.

EDIT: Now I realize I was probably update penalized.. but whatever same shit.

yes i hate google now for updates they are cleaning bad searches and good searches too.......

Then quit. I'm sick of hearing people complain. This industry is all about change; following the updates and adjusting. If you can't get that through your head then quit.

If you are sick of these threads why would you click on one called "Getting fed up with SEO, read it, then write a reply - I assume to be a dick. Even Big Buddy said ranting on BHW makes sense since none of our friends / family know wtf SEO is. Lots of people are feeling this way right now bro, feels good to vent.

ja1myn said:

Then quit. I'm sick of hearing people complain. This industry is all about change; following the updates and adjusting. If you can't get that through your head then quit.

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That's well said.. There is always going to be updates with search engines and if you can't deal with change then your better off not doing SEO. However I do sympathise for you that It is frustrating at times.

This is why I don't adopt an all my eggs in one basket strategy when it comes to Google. I have a couple of authority sites that I put a lot of work into but mostly its a wide spread of affilaite sites.

If you can't take the heat you get out of the kitchen.

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/careers.html

This is why I don't adopt an all my eggs in one basket strategy when it comes to Google. I have a couple of authority sites that I put a lot of work into but mostly its a wide spread of affilaite sites.

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This is what I have been thinking. Been really interested in paid or social media traffic. Google updates are so frequent now, it's really hard to treat it as a long term investment vs say making a product to sell etc. SEO on it's own doesn't seem like a good business investment for the long term.

Yeah Its frustrating to see hard work go to waste for many people - but Google is a business after all so they are going to do what is best for them and not best for us -- so the more people they get into PPC stuff the better for them.

Overall you have to diversify : Seo Clients / Seo Individual Services / Social Media Services / Affiliate Sites and even some CPA

so you screw something up then you have a fall back plan.

Danny1111 said:

Yeah Its frustrating to see hard work go to waste for many people - but Google is a business after all so they are going to do what is best for them and not best for us -- so the more people they get into PPC stuff the better for them.

Overall you have to diversify : Seo Clients / Seo Individual Services / Social Media Services / Affiliate Sites and even some CPA

so you screw something up then you have a fall back plan.

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Yeah I agree with you. It seems like the hardest, but smartest thing to do is create something that users will go directly to without using search engines. Examples would be social media sites, stores, or blogs with a nice following. Those are the hardest to create but at least don't rely on search engines.

I can understand your frustration. Possibly you need a 'temporary' break from the SEO.

DamageX said:

If you can't take the heat you get out of the kitchen.

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/careers.html

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That's kind of harsh huh? The guy said he was an indirect target of negative seo. I could see if he said "i buy 5 fiverr gig with 20k link blast why my site die!?". Wasn't his method, just had the wrong link at the wrong time. Is there a way to combat that?

Nauthiz666 said:

If you are sick of these threads why would you click on one called "Getting fed up with SEO, read it, then write a reply - I assume to be a dick. Even Big Buddy said ranting on BHW makes sense since none of our friends / family know wtf SEO is. Lots of people are feeling this way right now bro, feels good to vent.

Click to expand...

Nope sorry. I'm not being a dick. You can check further down in this thread and you'll see that other members agree with me. Complaining doesn't help anything. If SEO isn't working out for you and you're getting this fed up with it, then try something else.

ja1myn said:

Then quit. I'm sick of hearing people complain. This industry is all about change; following the updates and adjusting. If you can't get that through your head then quit.

Click to expand...

Hell, most SEOers have quit that used to be any good... more room for those that stick it out

Real, intelligent, SEO still works (the downside is, it's difficult work)...

SEO is fully changed now you have no gurantee of stading forst. suddenly you wake up and you site is moved from #1 to #100

To survive you have to adapt. I spent 17+years in the corporate engineering world, if i did not innovate and update my technology skills I would not have lasted that long.
Change is a fact of life, I have been hit this more than any other time in 5+ years I have done SEO but what saved my ass was not having all my eggs in one basket.
For my lead gen sites I have several sites for each niche, some go hits harder than others and some not at all.

You know really have to treat SEO as a business and build contingency plans, maybe not rely on all your traffic from Google.
One of my sites that got a hard slap is still doing really well in Bing and Yahoo. Don't forget about those they have 30% of the
search volume and in some niches they convert way better than Google Traffic.

Bottom Line -> Adapt or Die.

Yeah. That's why I want to get away from just SEO or SEO entirely, I just think SEO isn't the best investment anymore compared to other traffic sources. Ranking continually gets more experience / time extensive therefore to make cash back or make up for time you really have to rank for some legit keywords.

It sucks that you can be using white hat SEO, doing everything right and featuring high in the rankings and then one little change downranks it all without warning. Regardless of what caused the downrank (and OK, it seems to be an update this time but it could as easily have happened another time due to hacking), the wrong people are getting penalised. It takes immense patience to live with SEO at times like this, so I'd agree with the advice to diversify and maybe give less time to SEO - at least until the stability of the updates becomes a little more user-friendly.

I do feel for you guys, but we've had 5 or 6 threads like this over the past 6 months, and they all go the same way. I've had sites slapped, but like others here I have several on the go and treat them all differently. Different platforms, niches, SEO work, monetization.

Still not 100% safe of course, but SEO works or I wouldn't be eating

Sorry for your pain buddy. Hope you get through it.

Scritty

It's good to vent. We're your peers so go right ahead man. We've all had those days, lately it seems like weeks, or months, but we'll figure it out and adapt as the others have said.

It's a bit of a lonely profession IRL. So it's nice to have some fellow IM peers to vent your frustrations with.