“I’ll be back.” - Terminator

I heard Jason Calacanis speak at SES New York in 2008 and I honestly didn’t know who he was, so I listened to his presentation without bias or preconceived notions. By the end of his speech I had seen several people get up and leave and the crowd was full of rumblings. I was perplexed as to why he was speaking at a conference for people who were interested in SEO, when he was obviously not a big fan. It did become clear when he started pushing Mahalo.

Jason did his best to explain that he thought SEO was fine when done correctly, but he certainly was more vocal about what he didn’t like about the SEO community. Most of his presentation was about Mahalo, which I had also never heard of at the time. While listening to him talk about Mahalo it sounded like he was using a lot of SEO tactics to get Mahalo ranked. Of course he has the budget to do all the “right” things that will acquire links through passive methods (load and loads of content, although not sure of the quality) whereas the little guy needs to be more aggressive with his link building efforts. So I felt a lot of his speech came from a very high tower made of ivory.

Mr. Calacanis has since become well-known to me and many other SEO companies and his constant declarations that SEO will not be long for this world are also famous. He said,

“SEO is a wasted industry. You’re wasting your time fighting off ranking problems instead of creating great content. You’re just spinning your wheels hoping the Google gods won’t kick you out. It’s a bad way to live your life. Using a human service is a better way to go about it.” From BruceClay.com

SEO will certainly change as it has over the last few years, but I believe it will be around as long as there are search engines. I think Jason Calacanis is a very good marketer, and he says things he knows will help his company’s profile. What better community to get riled up than the SEO community? The best online marketers in the world are constantly talking about you - brilliant! Look, we even did a comic about him. I will give Jason credit for his honest answers though. He didn’t shy away from any questions and gave answers he knew would be unpopular with the crowd. So while I don’t believe in his “SEO is B.S.” mantra, I can respect the way he doesn’t pull punches.

Here’s to a long and healthy life for Jason Calacanis and SEO. To tell you the truth, it’s Yahoo I’m really worried about.