Now for a little rant. I finally had the opportunity of listening to Netincome’s podcast that featured randfish from SEOmoz and Shoemoney. As most of you know might already be aware by now, there was bit a little of “healthy” friction between both sides regarding a post made by shoemoney about blogger disclosure, later quoted and replied by randish. When I first read the post, I immediately thought… link bate! But apparently I was wrong .

Whilst I love Shoe’s frontal approach to most issues, I admit that I was fairly surprised to see how he perceives the industry, and his perception regarding trust and confidence in business. Whilst I’m not blind to the fact that it is “all about the money”, I do believe that like in everything, that there are boundaries that should not be surpassed in order to maintain a level of integrity and trust in our readers eyes. If you’re building your business around trust, and if trust is built through impartial honest blog posts, putting this base at risk is a silly move in all aspects.

As an avid reader of Jeremy’s blog, I must admit that I am a bit disappointed to see him not understand this very basic concept of business and well, loyalty. This is mainly because Jeremy, as a SEM, doesn’t rely on costumers, however, I do think this is about to change with Auction ads. “Jeremy, I really don’t care that you admit the partiality of your advice and opinions, I just wish your conduct was different” My view on the issue is simple, as long as you don’t device your readers; you have nothing to worry about, but telling an audience that has trusted you and has been absorbing the information you provide as an impartial well intended information, that the so called advice that you have been giving has an agenda behind it, is horrendous.

Not for a minute do I believe Shoemoney actually meant it down to the letter, and I think that stating that the content on shoemoney.com is no longer valuable because of a silly statement is absurd. One thing I can assure you, every advice that is published in my blog is genuine advice. There is no hidden agenda. All of the links in the SEO tools section were published there because I feel they are valuable to my readers. If I intend to sell you something, I won’t do it in a deceptive manner.