Martech: Martech is Marketing Logo
  • Topics
    Digital Transformation
    Marketing Operations
    Data
    Customer & Digital Experience
    Performance Marketing
    Marketing Management
    Special Reports
    MarTech Topics
  • Conference
  • Webinars
  • Intelligence Reports
  • White Papers
  • What is MarTech
    Mission
    Staff
    Newsletter
    Search Engine Land
    Third Door Media

Processing...Please wait.

MarTech » Performance Marketing » SEO Trended On Twitter Thanks To #SEOHorrorStories Hashtag

SEO Trended On Twitter Thanks To #SEOHorrorStories Hashtag

Matt Cutts, Google Analytics and hundreds of SEOs put their worst nightmares into 140 characters and hit Twitter's trends.

Matt McGee on November 3, 2015 at 1:00 am

seo-horror-stories-hashtag-ss-1920

If you’ve been doing SEO for any length of time, chances are you have stories to tell about a nightmare situation or client. And if you’re on Twitter, chances are you were sharing some of those stories over the past few days using the #SEOHorrorStories hashtag — a hashtag that became so popular it actually reached Twitter’s trends on Friday evening.

How #SEOHorrorStories Began

Credit for the hashtag goes to Aleyda Solis, one of our SEO columnists on Search Engine Land, who posted the first tweet Friday morning and then invited other SEOs to do the same.

When all internal pages of the site were canonicalized to the home page #seohorrorstories

— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) October 30, 2015

SEOs: Share your #seohorrorstories … Because Halloween is a good time to laugh (or cry) about them :)

— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) October 30, 2015

And the SEO industry jumped right in, with people all over the world hopping on the #SEOHorrorStories bandwagon.

Every client sentence that starts with…. "I read this article…." #seohorrorstories

— Kristine Schachinger (@schachin) October 31, 2015

"We've gotta launch next week, so we'll 'SEO the site' later" #seohorrorstories

— Aaron Bradley (@aaranged) October 30, 2015

Almost everything that starts with "Our developer says…" #SEOHorrorStories

— Barry Adams (@badams) October 30, 2015

We redid our website four months ago and our web designer said that redirects weren't necessary. #seohorrorstories

— Dana DiTomaso (@danaditomaso) October 31, 2015

"We have 25 GA accounts so we can monitor everything" All for one site #SEOHorrorStories

— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) October 31, 2015

Even Matt Cutts, the former head of Google’s webspam team, got involved. And the official Google Analytics Twitter account sent out several SEO horror story tweets (three are included here).

"I was just discussing your sites with some of the webspam team." #seohorrorstories

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) November 1, 2015

"Our website is written completely in Flash." #seohorrorstories

— Google Analytics (@googleanalytics) November 1, 2015

<meta name="robots" content="noindex"> #seohorrorstories

— Google Analytics (@googleanalytics) November 1, 2015

When your client trusts their gut and not your analytics. #seohorrorstories

— Google Analytics (@googleanalytics) November 1, 2015

With a total of 1.3 million followers between the two accounts (including those who follow both), that’s huge exposure for the hashtag.

Over the weekend, Olivier Duffez started the French version of the hashtag: #horreursduseo.

SEO On Twitter Trends

The hashtag was so popular by Friday evening that it hit Twitter trends, as Martin Macdonald captured in this tweet:

@aleyda lol: pic.twitter.com/xOVfOkBgBQ

— Martin Macdonald (@searchmartin) October 31, 2015

I’m thinking that’s probably the first time an SEO-related hashtag has ever reached Twitter trends. (If anyone knows for sure, one way or another, please let me know via a tweet to @mattmcgee.)

How Far Did #SEOHorrorStories Travel?

In short, pretty far — especially for an SEO-related hashtag. There are a number of different hashtag analysis tools you can use for data. None of them are showing the same exact numbers, but they’re pretty close.

Number Of Tweets

According to FollowTheHashtag, there were 1,668 tweets with #SEOHorrorStories as of late Monday. Topsy says the number is more in the 1,300–1,400 range. HashTracking.com‘s count is also in that same lower range.

Topsy shows how quickly the hashtag took off:

topsy-1

Impressions

FollowTheHashtag also has the highest count here — 10.9 million as of late Monday. Hashtracking.com says there was about 8.5 million “timeline deliveries.”

But numbers aside, as several SEOs pointed out — perhaps none better than Greg Gifford — #SEOHorrorStories is great reading for job-related comedy and proof that misery loves company.

If you're in SEO and you're not following the #SEOHorrorStories hashtag, you're missing out on pretty much the best thing ever

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) October 31, 2015

One last note: Aleyda Solis has written her own recap of how the #SEOHorrorStories hashtag spread, and she also created a Twitter account — @SEOHorrorStory — for SEOs to keep the stories alive.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


New on MarTech

    How clean, organized and actionable is your data?
    Replacement Survey: The top 5 solutions replaced
    What’s the biggest hidden secret in Google Ads?
    Native video tops social media in brand awareness study
    Worsening economy has more shoppers getting online info before making in-store purchases

About The Author

Matt McGee
Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

Related Topics

Performance Marketing

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS The MarTech Conference logo.

September 28-29, 2022: Fall

Start Training Now: Master Classes

Start Discovering Now: Spring



The SMX Conference logo.

Start Training Now:: SMX Advanced

November 14-15, 2022: SMX Next

March 8-9, 2022: Master Classes

Webinars

Agencies: Grow Revenue Streams Through Web Accessibility & Compliance

Protect Your Paid Advertising Spend Against Ad Fraud and Invalid Traffic

Build an Integrated Search Strategy Across Google, Amazon and YouTube

See More Webinars
Intelligence Reports

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Identity Resolution Platforms

Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

See More Intelligence Reports
Featured White Paper

Site Search 101

See More Whitepapers

Receive daily marketing news & analysis.

Processing...Please wait.

Topics

  • Transformation
  • Operations
  • Data
  • Experience
  • Performance
  • Management
  • All Topics
  • Home

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • Search Marketing Expo - SMX

About

  • What is MarTech
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS

© 2022 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.