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Jill Whalen: “My work here is done”

Didit Editorial
Jill Whalen

November 14, 2013: Eleven months ago, Jill Whalen dropped a bombshell on the SEO industry. “My work here is done,” Ms. Whalen wrote in the final installment of her newsletter, alluding to the massive changes imposed by Google’s Panda and Penguin updates that forced the industry to relinquish the focus on technical tricks she’s faithfully opposed over the years.

“At last,” she wrote, “the only real way to do SEO was what I had been espousing all along, and it’s a beautiful thing!”

While time and algorithmic progression have vindicated Ms. Whalen’s enduring vision of SEO as a long-term, strategic proposition – not a set of short-term tactical tricks – those in the industry who’ve shared her vision felt a palpable loss upon hearing of her withdrawal from the front lines.  So we were very glad that Jill responded to our request for a brief interview, which follows below:

Didit: The nature of SEO has changed so much in the post-Penguin/Panda world. And yet many lay people continue to associate “SEO” with keyword stuffing, article spinning, and general spamming. Is it time to dump the term “SEO” and think of another way to describe what we do?

​Jill Whalen: I’ve been calling what I have been doing “website marketing”​ for quite awhile now. To me, that’s much more descriptive of the work involved. I’ve been somewhat surprised that I haven’t seen many others using that phrase.

Didit: Are you happy with the general state of SEO education? Is it enough that it’s taught at various industry “boot camps” and via paid courses, or it a discipline important enough to teach at the high-school and college levels?

​Jill Whalen: ​It’s pretty sad that it doesn’t seem to be taught at the college level very much. In fact, it’s really hard to fathom! I’ve heard marketing majors straight out of college who have said SEO and online marketing in general is barely touched upon. Which of course doesn’t make much sense with online being one of the largest and most important marketing channels there is today.

I assume the problem is that there’s nobody willing to teach it. Those who know and understand it are making lots of money doing it for themselves or clients. Hmm… perhaps teaching is an avenue I should explore! :)​

Didit: It appears that not everyone agrees with your comment that Penguin and Panda have been good for the health of the search ecosystem. Is such criticism simply “sour grapes” from black-hat types? Or are there risks to Google becoming so effective at “policing the marketing wilderness?”

​​Jill Whalen: I think much of the discontent with Google from many SEOs is that Google has made it much harder now. While I and a small percentage of other SEOs have always stressed long-term SEO strategies rather than the latest trick of the day, most others did not. It was too expensive and too hard to sell. And I’m not talking about hard core black hatters, but most SEOs in general. So yeah, it’s going to be very tough for them in the future and I can see why they wouldn’t be very happy about it. (And no, that has absolutely nothing to do with my leaving, as I’ve always preached “the hard way,” so it’s not been different for me in that respect.) It’s the same for business owners themselves. Where they used to be able to pay an SEO company a relatively small amount to implement the latest tricks, those same tricks got their websites penalized. And yet, they don’t want to spend the time and money it takes for long-term online success. Human nature I guess.

I think Google “policing the marketing wilderness” is a different thing altogether. They do have the ability to make or break any company who relies on organic listings to make sales. And if they wanted to abuse that power (which some say they may already be doing) it could certainly be devastating. That said, if you’re dumb enough to rely completely on something that you’re not entitled to, i.e, free listings, then you get what’s coming to you. Free organic listings should never have been your entire marketing plan in the first place. I’ve always said that the traffic your site gets from organic should only be “the gravy” not “the meat!”

Didit: SEMPO recently announced that SEO salaries are dropping. Do you think that SEO is still a good field for a young person to enter?

​Jill Whalen: SEO doesn’t live in a vacuum, so no, I wouldn’t recommend anyone pursue just SEO. But I would certainly still encourage people to pursue online marketing in general. As long as there is the Internet and people use it to do business, then online marketing could make a great career. Plus, it’s interesting, fun and exciting!​​

Didit: Are women under-represented in SEO? For example, of the 120 speakers listed on the agenda of SMX East — a popular, SEO-oriented trade show — only 30 are women – that’s just 25 percent. At SES NY 2013, of the 124 speakers listed, only 31 are female – again, a mere 25 percent. Assuming that the gender balance of speakers at the trade shows correctly reflects the distribution of authoritative people in the search industry, does this industry suffer from a “gender gap?” If so, what’s the best way to address the issue?

​Jill Whalen: ​I think that only shows that women may be under represented as speakers. I’m not sure that it means they’re underrepresented in SEO in general.

When I first started speaking at SEO conferences back in 2000, there weren’t many SEO speakers of either sex. But interestingly enough I think we were fairly well split between men and women at the time.​ At least that was my perception of it. (Honestly I don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing.) However, I did notice that the audience back then was predominantly male. But each year the audience gender gap seemed to get smaller and smaller until it appeared to me to be pretty close to 50/50.

That tells me that there are plenty of women in the SEO space. Why they’re not speaking as much as the men at conferences, I’m not sure (but many others have written on that topic in the past).

(As an interesting aside, for the past few years one thing I noticed that was different from the old days was how many young people were attending the SEO conferences. Most look like they were fresh out of college!)

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