Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate your concerns. My comments are below:

Miguel: I am pretty upset that you paint the picture like its so easy. Competitor has a PR4 and 47,000 links, therefore all you need is a PR5 and more than 47,000 links?
Dmitry: I totally agree that the goals are not that simple, but at the high-level – the recommendations are correct. The recommendations provided by the tool give user an idea on the complexity of his/her targeting task. For example: the tool might say that the user need to obtain page rank 9 – it means that a niche the user selected is very competitive and most likely (s)he need to find a new one.

Miguel: And all it ended up being was a shameless plug for an SEO tool.
Dmitry: I believe there is a some kind of micommunication occured. Please note that the tool itself doesn't perform any work usually performed by SEO specialist. Instead of this – it's provides recommendations. I believe setting the goals is 5% of entire SEO project. Once the goals are defined – the SEO specialist begins to create the pages with proper keywords, obtaining backlinks, investigating the niche, submitting press releases and things like that.

Miguel: Dmitry I understand that you have a product to promote but please do not suggest that rankings are as easy as obtaining more links and higher PR because that is just not true.
Dmitry: Totally agree – they are not that simple.
But I also believe that the recommendations provided above are very effective first steps when users are in the process of defining the goals for their SEO project.

Please let me know if you have any comments.

Thank you.

Also, the emphasis should be, not on ranking for "buy hat", but ranking for a number of keywords AND optimizing the site so that visitors spend more time there, see more pages and convert better.

I am pretty upset that you paint the picture like its so easy. Competitor has a PR4 and 47,000 links, therefore all you need is a PR5 and more than 47,000 links?

That is ridiculous. Linking and PR is not a pissing match. It is NOT that simple. And IF it was then everyone would be ranked #1!

I mean this is the type of stuff that gives legitimate SEOs a bad name and quite frankly I am a bit upset and surprised to see this post here as I had a great deal of respect for this blog and its staff. Jeff, you really need better editorial on these guest posts. And all it ended up being was a shameless plug for an SEO tool.

I hate it when people "out" but legitimate SEOs cannot let this type of misinformation to continue to spread in our midst.

Dmitry I understand that you have a product to promote but please do not suggest that rankings are as easy as obtaining more links and higher PR because that is just not true.
.-= Miguel recently posted: Cheap SEO Costs More =-.