Introducing the fighter in the blue corner. She’s a blogger known for her strong opinions and profuse Twittering. She’s the co-founder and Chief Branding Officer for Outspoken Media while regularly contributing on a number of top SEO blogs. Fighting out of upstate New York, I give you Lisa Barone!

And now, her opponent in the red corner. A former technical evangelist from Microsoft, current employee of Rackspace, and author of the popular Scobleizer blog. He’s 44 years old and is fighting out of Silicon Valley California. Give it up for Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble!

The Rumble in the Blog Comments

This mega-fight is one of those occasions where you get a hungry up-and-coming competitor calling out and established legend. Scoble established his reputation years ago as an evangelist for Microsoft. He was like Darth Vader, but from Return of the Jedi where you actually kinda like him. He’s an established figure in the industry and carries a lot of influence. Therefore, when he posted this blog: “2010: the year SEO isn’t important anymore?” (question mark included) a lot of people weren’t too happy.

Lisa Barone was one of those people, but she didn’t take this one lying down. She went public with a challenge post titled “Ignore the Silly Man, SEO Still Matters For SMBs“. With everything set up, Scoble came out swinging right from the bell.

Round 1

Scoble led with a strong “you missed the point” argument, saying that businesses shouldn’t focus on only SEO. Lisa blocked with an “I didn’t attack you” and countered with a “you’re pretending SEO hasn’t changed in 5 years”. They traded a few jabs, but Lisa takes the round by getting Scoble to take offense at being called a silly man.

Round 2

In this round Lisa tries to slow down the pace by focusing the fight on the headline of Scoble’s post. However, Scoble has no interest in slowing down and keeps swinging for the fences, even throwing an “idiot” into the mix. Lisa again tries to slow things down, but Robert keeps up the pace, even blocking a commenter on Twitter. The frantic pace continues throughout the round with plenty of blows hitting their mark, but in the end Scoble steals Round 2 on sheer persistence.

Round 3

In this the final round we’re treated to even more fast-paced action with Scoble sticking with his “the title was a question” defense and jabbing with his “I just wanted to start a discussion”. Lisa gets a big boost from her corner as Rae Hoffman changes the title tag of Lisa’s post to include Scoble’s name and moves it into the top 100 Google results for Robert Scoble. While Scoble is distracted, Lisa unleashes the haymaker by calling out George Revutsky’s “I’m disappointed Scoble used our interview this way” comment.

The referee calls the fight at 2:30 of the 3rd round for our winner, Lisa Barone!

Photo by markhillary