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Oceans 11 but for organic search traffic

Sorry, I have to talk about the SEO heist guy because I think he sucks but in a way that we should all probably care about.

December 01, 2023

SEO Heist  

Last week, we got a new Twitter Main Character (and thankfully, now you can just use Threads to follow this phenomenon), the SEO Heist Guy. The TL;DR is one of those weird growth hack hustle culture dudes who logged onto Twitter, sorry X, and shared a long thread about how he’d used AI and a competitor's site maps to generate a bunch of pages and steal their search traffic. The whole thing reads like a Bond villain monologue set at a MarTech conference. 

Two Tweets, sorry posts on X from user @jakezward that read, “We pulled off an SEO heist using AI. 1. Exported a competitor’s sitemap 2. Turned their list of URLs into article titles 3. Created 1,800 articles from those titles at scale using AI 18 months later, we have stolen: - 3.6M total traffic - 490K monthly traffic” and “How we did it? 18 months ago, this was a totally manual process. Today, there are tools to help automate 90% of the process. Here’s how:”

This dude clearly sucks. One, he’s still posting on Twitter, sorry X. Two, his posts are dull as hell. Three, he doesn’t seem to care that he’s added nothing of value for his supposed customers and has likely made things worse. 

If you’ve felt like search engine results aren’t as good lately, you aren’t alone. For example, when I went looking for one of the many articles I’ve read about the decline in search engine quality this past year by Googling “why Google sucks now,” I got this trash article on an SEO blog instead of this piece in The Verge about the culture of SEO professionals (which I found in my browsing history). 

The arms race between search engines and search engine optimization pros isn’t anything new. Many SEO folks use their dark arts to ensure high-quality information gets properly indexed by feed crawlers to reach relevant searchers. Many others use this same skill to get low-quality spammy sites to rank higher than helpful information. We’ve always had scammy people online; what worries me now is the scale of useless garbage SEO jerks like our friend Jake Ward can now pump out with generative AI. 

The best marketers I’ve known in my career actually care about their customers, a lot. They believe in their products. They want to help people find good information about how these products can actually help you solve a problem or bring you a little joy. Gleefully “stealing” traffic from a competitor by flooding the zone with low-quality content isn’t an act of caring for your audience or customer. It just makes the web less useful, your customer more confused, and you look like an asshole. 

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

YouTube

Apple

Amazon

Reddit

Tumblr 

Pinterest (disclaimer: I’m currently working as a contractor at Pinterest) 

Twitter, Sorry X

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Kissinger Memes

If you are having trouble understanding the wave of jokes following the death of Henry Kissinger this week, I’d direct you to this quote from the late great Anthony Bourdain. 

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia — the fruits of his genius for statesmanship — and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milosevic.

So, with that, please enjoy a touching tribute to one of the best meme formats of our time. 

A Bluesky post from user @vortexegg.regretfully.online of a four-panel comic. In the first panel you see the “Is Henry Kissinger even in this thing?” Death at a claw machine meme being greeted by Death. In the second panel, the meme asks, “was I a good meme?” In panel three, Death says, “no.” “I’m told you we’re the best,” Death says in panel four. 

Culture Movers 

Music 

Creator Economy 

Gaming 

AI 

Um… Substack?

So Substack is dropping several new features, mainly video stuff I don’t plan on using. But there’s also this recent piece in The Atlantic about the company's content moderation problems or lack of interest in content moderation. This approach has allowed multiple newsletters with overt symbols and messages to exist, and it seems unlikely Substack will remove them. 

I’ve been uneasy about Substack since before I started this newsletter. I knew they actively courted transphobic creators, and I knew their leadership didn’t view content moderation as a priority. I also saw several creators I respected using the platform and seeing good results. None of the websites we use every day are perfect, but my unease with Substack only continues to grow. So, I plan on exploring other options for distributing this newsletter. My goal is to find an alternative distribution tool that gives you all the same reading experience and requires no work on your end to transfer your subscriptions. 

Stay tuned for updates on that change, and feel free to hit me up if you have ideas on other tools I should explore.

PS