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Reviews of Bruce Clay SEO - If Mr. Clay is Taylor Swift, I want to be Lady Gaga

Bruce Clay is one of the most reviewed SEO experts and trainers, worldwide. What's more, he is independent of Google, and therefore a more objective voice about search engine optimization. I was reviewing one of the recent posts on the Bruce Clay blog, and it hit me. Bruce Clay is like Taylor Swift, and I really want to be like Lady Gaga. Bruce Clay dominates the old world way of marketing - trade shows, face-to-face, clubby, good ole' boy network of back-slapping geeks. Sentimental. Country. Endearing. I want to be digital. I don't really want to speak at the official shows, certainly do not want to back-slap with my fellow Geeks, and I want to reach a radical, different, new audience: the average small business person who has never heard of SES, Matt Cutts, or even been to Silicon Valley. Here's my Bruce Clay SEO review: Clay vs. Gaga.

By Jason McDonald Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group. Posted: June 3, 2011

Contents:

Bruce Clay (Reviews) and Taylor Swift
Lady Gaga (Reviews) and Jason McDonald
Digital or Analog: You Decide

Bruce Clay (Reviews) and Taylor Swift

I love Taylor Swift, and I love Lady Gaga. As I work on student questions for SEO, I often play pop music on Rhapsody. Pop music is easy to work to: it's light, easy on the brain, litle thinking involved. Both artists are among my pop favorites, for very different reasons.

So tonight, as I was working, I happened to land on a blog post at BruceClay.com, Why the Search Marketing Industry Is Like an Exclusive Country Club (and How to Break In). It's a funny, witty post by Jessice Lee, and it made me realize something: I don't like exclusive clubs! I don't want to break in.

• I want to break out!

I took a look at the agenda of the SES show coming up in August in San Francisco... I feel guilty - it's a major show for the Search Engine Optimization industry, but I find the sessions salesy and expensive (Bruce Clay's sessions cost more than $900 to learn SEO; ours is at $295). More important, I think it's rather absurd that an industry built on the proposition that the world is going Internet, going Google, going Social Media Marketing still seems to be built on a real-world event, that costs several thousand dollars to attend in any meaningful way.

That got me thinking.... Bruce Clay and his staff are a lot like Taylor Swift: they're winning the race, the race to be the most visible SEO teaching company out there. Just like Taylor Swift has won the race to be most popular album in 2008 and 2009 (3,216,000 copies of her "Fearless" CD, 2009, for instance.)

I adore Taylor, don't get me wrong. And I respect Mr. Clay and review his blog, pretty frequently and admire his books on SEO (though Peter Kent's are better).

• But he's winning the wrong race!

And moreover, I took at look at Jessica Lee's blog post, and I realized they're blogging with no real SEO strategy - no real keyword definition.

An SEO training company, it seems to me, should strive to be digital. It should strive to be on page 1 of the relevant searches (for SEO Training Bruce Clay makes it on page one; we're on page one for SEO Class, and SEO Classes)... Our relevant searches, by the way, or not the short tail but the long tail of SEO Class - SEO Class Houston, SEO Class Dallas, SEO Training Online and on and on and on...

And beyond being high on the list for relevant SEO searches, it seems like a really good SEO company should have a great YouTube channel (we're trying), an awesome blog that speaks to student needs (we're trying), a Facebook that isn't the country club SEO boys talking to other country club SEO boys (we're trying) and more.

The whole SEO industry, it seems to me should give up on real-world training and real-world trade shows, and go digital: be online, live online, teach online, breath online. Which brings me to Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga (Reviews) and Jason McDonald SEO

I love Taylor Swift's music. But I never bought her album. I have listened to it exclusively on the Rhapsody music service. I adore her simplicity, I adore her heart-felt teenage angst. I adore her videos on YouTube. She's great. But she's not over the top innovative.

Lady Gaga, in contrast, is insane. Often offensive, always provocative. Many people hate her and her music, find her revolting. Be that as it may, she is a digital sensation. No. 1 on Twitter with 10659818 followers, vs. 6626718 for Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is a power house - no doubt. But look at the relationship -

Jackson was 2009's top-selling artist by a mile. He sold more than 8.2 million albums, doubling his nearest competitor, Swift, who sold 4.6 million. Some group called the Beatles landed at #3, selling more than 3.2 million albums, followed by Boyle (3.1 million) and Gaga (2.8 million).

Gaga was named the top-selling digital artist of the year — a category based on total digital track sales — as fans downloaded more than 15 million of her songs. The Black Eyed Peas were next, selling nearly 13 million digital tracks. Jackson stood at #3 (12.35 million), Swift came in at #4 (12.3 million) with Beyoncé at #5.
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1629178/taylor-swift-michael-jackson-lady-gaga-top-soundscans-yearend-charts.jhtml, emphasis added.

So the thought is: is Lady Gaga peering fearlessly into the future, winning the future race? While Taylor Swift is still one foot in the past? The recent fracas at Amazon.com over Gaga's digital download at .99 cents also seems to indicate that Gaga knows digital, and she certainly knows how to create a sensation!

• I want Gaga on my personal PR team!

Gaga is insane. I admit it. But she's the one who's really something, she's fearless (pun intended). The one who breaks new ground in digital music, digital publicity. If Bruce Clay is king of the trade show world around SEO - let him have it - I thought to myself. I want to be Gaga..

Digital or Analog: You Decide

So it's digital or analog. Do you review your SEO training company based on who dominates the real-world trade shows? Or who dominates the world of online training? Do you review your SEO training company on who has published more books printed on real paper, or who dominates the phrases SEO Training, SEO Course, and SEO Class across all cities in North America with populations greater than 300,000?

Another pet project of mine - coming up soon - will be to teach people how to review their SEO consultants and companies based on whether those same companies not only show up well in target searches that matter to them (example: SEO Consultant San Jose), but whether they 'get it' as the world moves digital in all its forms.

You can be Taylor Swift - beautiful, loving, sincere, and country. Or you can be Lady Gaga - harsh, crazy, absurd... but still loving (see her song, Born That Way). But what you shouldn't be is unaware - the world - your world, your marketing world - is changing, rapidly. Are books, trade shows, and the culture club of old boy geeks, really the future? Or is the future truly digital?

• You decide.