This past week has been a particularly frustrating one for me, and I felt compelled to share more about the behind-the-scenes operations here at SEOmoz, particularly as it pertains to the blog and recent controversy surrounding Marty’s YOUmoz post. I’m choosing to share this information via YOUmoz, rather than the main blog, for the simple reason that our blog readers have expressed the strong desire to receive as little “noise” and as much “valuable SEO content” as possible in that feed. Although I don’t consider this noise, it certainly doesn’t have any search marketing advice, and for many, it might seem to be beating a dead horse. I also intend to start writing more here at YOUmoz – talking about less pure “SEO” stuff and more internal issues, SEOmoz news and industry material. I think it’s a great place to share openly without slamming people’s feed readers unnecessarily (and maybe it will even help grow the value of YOUmoz and inspire others to share more here as well).
I have three reasons for writing today:
First – to issue an apology to Lisa Barone, Li Evans, Matt Cutts and Marty. It doesn’t matter who wrote the post, who promoted it, or where mistakes were made in the editorial process. In the end, this failure was my responsibility, as is everything published on SEOmoz or undertaken by this company. Marty had the clear expectation that we’d edit the piece carefully and our readers assumed that everything we publish has gone through our editorial process.
This doesn’t mean that I endorse everything on the site or everything done by the organization, but it means that win or lose, ultimate accountability lies with a single source – me. I was, initially, incredibly frustrated seeing the many comments around the web that blamed SEOmoz for Marty’s choice of words and sarcastic style, but that was wrong. I should always expect that any material on this site, for better or for worse, reflects on the publisher and on me. For the hurt that was caused and the mistakes that were made, I deeply apologize to all the injured parties. We fucked up. Marty thinks he fucked up. I fucked up. And I’m sorry. There’s no excuse.
Second – to explain the course of events that lead to this happening. Last week, Marty pitched Rebecca on a blog post about avatar use in social media. Knowing Marty’s prominence in the industry as a respected expert and speaker at search conferences, Rebecca agreed to promote his blog post from YOUmoz to the main blog. When the post submission came through on Wednesday night, although Marty had requested the editing process, she didn’t carefully read it, and assumed that Marty would be responsible in whatever he submitted.
She promoted and went to sleep. Around 11:00pm that night, I logged onto SEOmoz and saw the post. Like many others, it rubbed me completely the wrong way – the content made good points, but the personal attacks (despite the intended sarcasm) were unnecessary and outing a conversation Matt believed to be private isn’t cool (though, to be fair, even if Rebecca had edited carefully, she couldn’t have known that Matt’s comments were intended to be private and Marty himself apparently wasn’t familiar with Matt’s tradition of small group conversations being off-the-record).
After I saw the piece, I strongly considered pulling it down and/or removing the offending sections. I despise the drama and negativity that sometimes pervades the SEO world, and saw this not only as unnecessary criticism but as a potential pitfall into a much more dangerous arena, where the blogs and social media camps of the SEO world might wake up tomorrow and decide to make the controversy into a full-blown debacle. Like it or not, drama breeds passion, and insulting people inspires others to rush to their defense. This pattern has been abundantly clear in the past, and I feared it in the first few minutes when I read the post. I’ll be completely honest – I certainly did not want that material on SEOmoz, because I hate to think that our publishing platform would ever be hurtful. But, I also thought selfishly of our brand and the criticism it might inspire.
Within that first hour, late on Wednesday night, my email box started to fill (as it often does when controversy finds its way onto SEOmoz). I got messages saying the content was despicable and others saying they had read my comment on the post and implored me to take no action – that censorship was worse than any other action – a (slightly modified) quote:
if you (take down or edit that post) i’ll know I can never trust you or seomoz. Don’t make this mistake again or you’ll lose a lot more members than just me.
And on the other side
(this) isn’t right, Rand. SEOmoz shouldn’t be condoning hate speech like that…
I struggle with this all the time (and you can see similar sentiments in the post’s comments), so it’s nothing new, but it was particularly poignant on this occasion. Ultimately I made the decision to email Rebecca (and Sarah Bird, who has been filling an HR & COO role – more on that in a later post) and let her take action. Although I deeply respect the opinions of our members and our community (and the feelings of Li, Matt, Marty & Lisa), we’ve had internal strife in the past about second-guessing employees after entrusting them with a project. I didn’t want to go down that road again, and figured that it could wait until morning to be addressed.
Thursday morning, Rebecca and Sarah got my email, conferred and made substantial changes to the post. Rebecca realized she hadn’t edited it (as she usually does with all YOUmoz posts, whether promoted to the main blog or not), and removed the controversial language and the conversation Matt intended to be private. She also moved the post back to YOUmoz (as having a banner atop it reading that SEOmoz considered this “excellent” was in truly poor taste) and placed Marty’s apology in the footer of the post. In my opinion, Rebecca made a very easy-to-make and forgivable error – and she quickly took blame and apologized. I’m proud of her work, and her response. She’s always done an excellent job moderating YOUmoz and editing our blog and I think this will make her even better at this job in the future.
Sadly, despite the edits, we were too late. The blogosphere, including Sphinn & Twitter, had already run rampant with news of the post’s negativity, and how this must have been clearly condoned and intended by SEOmoz. A proofreading stumble became assumptions of the worst kind – the type I’d feared. Matt Cutts declared publicly that he was unsubscribing from SEOmoz, and this itself became a news item. Blog posts from diverse sources lashed out against the post’s content.
Thursday was also an exceptionally busy day for me. In addition to interviews for a new designer and deadlines on wireframes for our new tools coming out in October, the following day, Friday, featured an SEOmoz board meeting with our investors, and so sadly, I had virtually no bandwidth to personally devote to this issue. In hindsight, this too hurt the handling of the situation.
In the end, some things did get sorted out, and I hope we made the right decisions. Marty asked to re-write and re-submit the post, with the offending materials removed. I know from conversations with Marty that he was shocked by how his words were perceived and he immediately wanted to do whatever it took to make things right for Lisa, Matt, Li & SEOmoz. While we were reluctant to create new problems, we also take it upon ourselves to see the best in everyone, and to accept Marty’s apology and his efforts to want a fresh try as sincere. However, as a lot of members had contributed in the original thread and felt extremely passionate that we shouldn’t edit or remove that material, we chose to leave it up (this wish was also expressed by Lisa & Liana).
I spent a good few hours on the phone with Marty, Li & Lisa on Friday evening (after our board meeting) and on Saturday during the day. While not everyone is happy with all the aspects of our attempts to make things right, I think respect and rapport have been re-affirmed. My thanks to both Lisa & Liana for their graciousness in understanding our mistakes and our efforts to make amends, as well as to Marty for his efforts to set things right.
One more item on the agenda also deserves some attention – the claim that we at SEOmoz promote material that is intentionally negative & controversial because it earns links and traffic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only do we all consider such tactics reprehensible, the traffic stats don’t bear this out. We’ve had 4-5 posts in the last 18 months where this accusation has been leveled, yet each time, despite the links from third-party sites, the mentions on Twitter and the massive numbers of comments, the data shows that these posts get fewer total links (though they certainly feel more visible), fewer click-throughs from the feed and far fewer “conversions” to PRO membership. They’re not good for us in any way, just as they’re not good for the community, either. In a way, I’m thankful for this, as it reduces the potential conflict of interest between drama and business. Just as an example, my post later Wednesday night on Optimizing for Multiple Word Orders received far more “positive” metrics.
This was, by no means, a good experience and even the resolution doesn’t leave me feeling great. We have to be more careful about our editing in the future and we need to institute policies that make us able to react more quickly when problems arise. The 10 hours of paralysis (despite the fact that they were in the middle of the night for us – PST in Seattle) meant that an avoidable problem turned into a massive controversy. We not only suffered in reputation through negative news pieces, but financially as well, as long-time PRO members canceled their subscriptions in protest of the attacks. This number was not large, but anyone who votes with their wallet is making a strong message.
Third – We are taking steps to prevent this from happening in the future. A large number of blog etiquette, admin etiquette and YOUmoz rules are being circulated internally at SEOmoz this weekend. My hope is that we’ll have these ratified and posted in the next 10 days. They include guidelines about what types of content we do and don’t tolerate or accept and the ability for any admin/staff member to edit or remove material that violates these tenants (to help make the process speedier). They’ll also include information about how we’ll handle abuse of the thumbs up/down feature and how requests to remove content will be dealt with. This new material will all appear on every page of the blog and YOUmoz in a link, similar to our current blog disclaimer.
We’re looking forward to moving past the issues that arose from this post and the many missteps we’ve made in the past. I expect that no matter what we do, we’ll never be perfect, and we’ll almost certainly find ourselves embroiled in controversy again in the future. I can only hope that each time we stumble, we find a way to grow, to get better, and to improve the value we provide to the search marketing community.
This sign was on President Harry Truman’s desk during his Presidency. If you’re not familiar with Truman, he made what historians often suggest to be among the hardest decisions in modern humanity. Whether you believe he made the right choices or not, I can take nothing but inspiration from the idea that he accepted complete and final responsibility for every action taken under his command.
To me, that sign represents the ideal of a CEO/President’s role in every type of organization. I hope that I can live up to it, even though I know I haven’t always done the best job. It’s important to me, not as an entrepreneur, but as a person, to forgive the shortcomings of others, to see the best in everyone and to demand better from myself. This journey has been anything but easy, yet I hold out hope that I can end every day having made the right decisions, and that I never forget to doubt myself, embrace humility and relentlessly ask the tough questions.
My thanks go out to everyone who was a part of this episode and contributed in positive ways. Having your support in good times and bad is an honor and a privilege we at SEOmoz strive to earn.
Sincerely,
Rand Fishkin
CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz, Inc.
