Is Conflict a Legitimate Method of Promotion?

I've noticed a lot of SEO blogs, forums, articles, etc. touting the value of a nasty, down & dirty debate in a community as a great way to build up a profile, get lots of links to your site, and promote yourself or your website in the minds of those in the community.

How do you feel about this?

Is it a legitimate way to build traffic, a reputation & links?

Yes and it is very good.

There is no such thing as bad publicity.
If me and you had an agrument over whose techniques are better i am sure there would be a lot of people interested in watching both sites of the argument.
Randfish clean as a whistle white hat techniques `v` Mick.Sawyer evil black hat cheating and tricking techniques.

I would certainly be interested in watching an argument about that.

As it happens i like the way you do things and would always have too much respect for you to argue but i am sure you know what i am getting at.

All is fair in love, war and SEO ;-)

Good for publicity for sure. The winning side will get reputation

Whatever works! Ok, maybe not anything goes, but I can see the value in stirring the pot to get traffic.

It may not work for all types of sites. Imagine controversy with regard to your client Avatar.

I sincerely doubt they would be happy with that...and any negativity reflected on them would not be beneficial. On the other hand, as mick suggested, a controversy between you and mick might bring activity to both your net efforts.

may work for some and not others.

Dave

Cool...

We should have an e-mail debate Mick and can jointly publish it. I will represent the off-white hats (those that don't use black hat techniques, but have been known to buy a link or two), while you can represent the lords of cloaking, blog spamming and doorway pages.

I'll send you an e-mail in the next 10-20 minutes.

On the subject of this thread, I have to say I'm pleased to see the responses. I agree with you Dave about Avatar to a certain degree, but it would be fun to have a head-to-head argument with a representative from another lender in the industry over anything from the best properties to fund to the requirements to risk, etc.

Arguments could even help Avatar - although direct badmouthing wouldn't be the way to do it.

Update - Mick & I are in the thick of a terrific white vs. black hat debate... updates to follow.

I think any hot debate where a person is able to intelligently present their ideas backed with fact, whether or not that person is the 'winner' of the debate, would net that person some PR (both kinds ). And it can be done without badmouthing the opposing side, no matter how stupid they're arguement is. ;)

But I'm not sure about the format of the debate you seem to be proposing - are you debating with Mick right now, with the result being a pre-packaged, neatly wrapped discussion offered smilingly by both parties? I don't think I'd be interested in reading that. I think there needs to be a visceral and spontaneous quality to it, slowly building to a crescendo without resulting in 10,000 word rebuttals from either side.

But that's just my $.02 on a situation that may not even be occurring.

I feel a real 1-on-1 "live" SC debate coming on, some time after this email test run - of course. Wheeeee

I personally know a "SEO firm" that go a lot of new request after a lot of blogs was very critical of their methods. It looks like business owners like to hire the bad guys.

Conflict as a link building tool? Yes, I guess it could work - I will have to do some thinking on that one.

A while ago there was an attack on a particular well-known optimizer in this and other forums. In my mind it was ugly...but couldn't stop reading the relentless attacks till he revealed the optimizer.

I'm wondering if that professional picked up more business or not after the attacks.

BTW, Rand, real badmouthing would rip into avatar...it wouldn't be a gentelmanly debate about the quality, speed, etc of lending practices.

Controversy, can help...or hurt. Jason posted a while ago how he got a bad meal and continued bad service at a restaurant, put stuff up on the web about the culprit, and sensed that he had a negative impact on their sales.

Dave

[Cornholio]Are you threatening me?[/Cornholio]

I'm sure traffic power would disagree.