Here is a glimpse of our latest comic, introducing our superhero, Google Guy who fights for Internet City against Black Hat! Click here to read the rest of the comic and find out who wins!

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From time to time I use Ranked Hard as my soap box to comment on SEO-related topics such as link buying, SEO Celebrities and Internet spam, but with this comic I decided that I would poke some fun at three well-known Internet personalities: Seth Godin (Founder of Squidoo), Jason Calacanis (Founder of Mahalo) and Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia). Each of these web celebs has created a force on the Internet.

But have they created a force for good on the Internet? Have they made the Internet a better place? In some ways they have, but in many ways–not so much. Of course the negative effects on the Internet aren’t really their fault. Let me explain.

I’ll take each person in order and, since this is my site, I am going to give my opinions. You may disagree, and if so, please post why in the comments below. A good debate is always worth the risk of offending someone.

Want to read more and see the comic? Head over to see “The Battle for Internet City“.

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Here is an excerpt from my post under the comic. Please visit and read the entire rant on link buying.

If you would listen to Google, and why wouldn’t you, you would be led to believe that they are against link buying and don’t reward sites who do buy links. In fact, they will penalize sites that do buy links. Don’t believe me? Read Google’s engineer Matt Cutt’s own words on buying and selling links. They even provide a handy dandy form to report paid links. Find a site selling links? Report them. Find a competitor buying links? Report them. Then, your site, which is honestly gathering links, should rise to the top of the rankings. Right?

Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

Google has been caught selling links more than once. So they understand the temptation and financial rewards of selling a link. But the rewards can be much greater when buying a link: higher search rankings, more customers, more sales and more profits. But if link buying is really being stamped out by the big G, then why, oh why, are so many people doing it and dominating the search rankings?

Read the rest of rant.

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This month’s comic deals with the absurdity of the some of Google’s more spammy search results and touches on the sore point of Google rewarding black hat SEO when their own rules say don’t do it.

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You can check out the comic here

And don’t be shy about leaving comments.

If you have a concept for a  SEO comic you’d like to see us create, write it out and then send it to us at contact [at] bigoakinc [dot] com.  Please try to keep the comic within 5 to 6 frames.  We’ll have our illustrator draw it and give you full credit.

So if you have a comic idea you’d like to send to us, don’t hesitate to shoot us a line.  Now onto a more pressing matter.  A few people have inquired about advertising on RankedHard.com.  We’ve thought about putting ads on the sidebar and possibly even allowing ads to appear in the comic itself.  How do you feel about this?

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View the comic in all of its glory here

Be sure to have a look at Ranked Hard’s rave reviews and find out why people have called it a “very funny comic.”  If you have an idea for a Ranked Hard comic you’d like to see put into action, shoot us a line at contact [at] bigoakinc.com.  We won’t bite.  Well, Roosevelt Jones might, but that’s a story for another time.

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Not sure who Jason Calacanis is? If you are in the SEO industry you would probably have some interest. You can read about him at Wikipedia, of course and you can check out his very opinionated blog as well. Suffice to say Mr. Calacanis doesn’t have a high regard for SEO and that is the crux of this month’s issue of Ranked Hard. Enjoy and please make comments on the comic. We love feedback.

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And for all the conspiracy theorist out there let me make a statement, saying definitively, that we do not believe Google changes the ranking’s of any web site based on whether or not you use Google’s Adwords.

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Thanks to our friends at Internet Marketing Sucks for the April Fool’s Joke using the Ranked Hard comic strip.

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