Full Disclosure: Bigfoot Lunch Club is a contributor to Cryptomundo and we have the highest regard for skeptics. Skepticism, in our mind, requires discipline and rigor. We even have a few favorite skeptics we follow, Sharon Hill of Doubtful News and Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com. These are two skeptics that are very good at articulating arguments and they do their research.
Then there are those who don't do their homework. This brings me to Myron Getman of The Mad Skeptic and Bobby Nelson from The Bent Spoon Magazine. Recently, Myron created a truly funny post that could have been respected as satire, had it not ventured into unfounded assumptions. The gist of Myron's argument is, "...Coleman and Craig Woolheater's favorite tactics to generate traffic -- SEO tactics and, more specifically, the use of keywords." Myron bases this assumption on his previous experience as an SEO writer.
To be fair, Bobby only accuses of Loren Coleman using a "Cheap Attempt to get Hits on 9/11" and that Coleman shamelessly plugs his book.
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We know that there has already been an exchange between Myron, Bobby and Loren, but when we read Myron's post today we couldn't help but offer our opinion.
Although this may seem like a Valentine to Cryptomundo, I am hoping I can make reasoned arguments that:
- Cryptomundo does not need gimmicks like bikini clad women and high-profile keywords to get traffic.
- The "tactics" Myron accuses Cryptomundo of using to drive traffic don't work and he may not have a current understanding of how SEO works. (Keywords don't work)
- If the first 2 arguments have merit, then there is another valid possibility for why Cryptomundo uses topical subjects and keywords. Occams Razor: They are being topical. Why the bikinis? Loren Coleman likes women.
ARGUMENT 1. Cryptomundo does not need gimmicks, Below is a graph from Alexa.com. The lower your rank number the higher your ranking (#1 is the highest ranking). Cryptomundo is ranked 100,461 out of approx. 16 Million websites. It is ranked in the very top percentile of all the websites Alexa tracks. It beats about 15.8 Million other websites. If you want to verify Cryptomundo's high traffic you can click on these other reputable ranking/traffic websites (these links will take you directly to Cryptomundo's stats), Quantcast.com and Compete.com.
Traffic rank for cryptomundo.com:
| Traffic Rank | Change | ||
| 1 month | 90,539 | -14,641 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 month | 100,461 | -35,643 | |
ARGUMENT 2 The "tactics" Myron accuses Cryptomundo of using, don't work. Cryptomundo has many organic (non-manufactured) reasons why they already rank high on search engines and get plenty of traffic. These reasons are far more effective than keywords.
One of the strongest reasons is they have over 34,000 websites that link to them, we call them backlinks; very valuable for SEO. The next biggest crypto-site BFRO.net only has 8000 backlinks. Cryptomundo also has a high rate of loyal returning visitors. Bikinis and high-profile keyphrases can't buy that kind of SEO gold.
If the SEO tactics Myron mentioned worked, his post would have ranked pretty high yesterday. TheMadSkeptic didn't show up on the first 120 results for either Andrew Breitbart or Davy Jones. You could argue that if you searched for both of those together you would find his post, but according to our research, almost nobody searched for those two names together. There is the possibility he did get a lot of traffic to that post, which would have less to do with keywords and more to do with the clever lampoon.
Finally, below is the third-party report for Myron's meta tags. Meta tags are called in-page SEO. It is the first place you start when optimizing for search engines. They are not terrible, but do not rate as well as you would expect from someone who had a working knowledge of SEO or keywords.
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Finally the third argument is dependent on the first two. The accusation that Cryptomundo is using keywords and other SEO as cheap tactics to drive traffic is not the simplest possible answer. Cryptomundo already gets plenty of traffic through more effective channels and topical keywords are simply just that, topical.
