Inaccurate and unreliable search engine optimization (SEO) advice is available with alarming regularity, it seems. You can find it almost everywhere you look on the internet.
Bad advice lurks in your e-mail as spam from shady fly by night companies calling themselves SEOs. Suggestions on improving your website’s position, found in the various internet message forums, ranges from tremendously helpful to downright terrible.
There are articles on SEO, widely read and believed, that offer not only questionable opinions, but are riddled with factual errors. Self styled SEO experts can be found on their websites, waiting to ensnare the unwary.
Following such dubious advice, some novice website owners could make some terrible errors, that could drop their website’s placement in the search engine rankings. Some of the advice can even get a website banned from the search engines, for violation of their webmaster guidelines.
Webmasters unknowingly read and hear bad SEO advice on a constant basis. Often, the advice is packaged in a fairly well written format, and carries a fairly authoritative tone. What many website owners don’t know, is how to select the solid and useful recommendations, from the concepts best ignored at any cost.
The internet in general, and search engine optimization in particular, are still very young in terms of years in existence. The idea, that SEO can even make a difference, to a website’s ranking in the search engines, is a concept still very much in its infancy.
The opportunity for the internet version of snake oil salespeople, and for outright charlatans, is certainly very high. The lack of peer review of information, creates an ideal environment, for both the dishonest huckster and the simply incompetent advisor. The best defence for any website owner is to read carefully, and weigh the pros and cons of all advice on offer, prior to taking any drastic action.
Whether the advice arrives from self styled experts, message forums, e-mail newsletters, or from a search result, it’s important for the website owner to be very cautious. While not all SEO advice is bad, there is much that needs to be taken with an entire shaker of the proverbial salt.
Search engine optimization advice is certainly a webmaster beware system.
Watching the words on message forums
Internet message boards offer a great way for website owners to market their site, offer information, and gain knowledge from other members. Search engine optimization is no exception.
A number of very high quality SEO forums are active on the internet. They offer some excellent advice to their members and to the general readership. They also offer some mistaken theories. Along with the gold, there is some baser material in the alloy.
A number of very good SEO message forums can be found very easily. The membership of the various boards, which often overlaps, includes some of the finest and most knowledgeable SEO professionals anywhere. These well informed individuals are to be given credit and thanks, for providing good information, to the rest of the membership.
Along with the SEO professionals, members include others interested in the topic, ranging from complete novices to very well informed individual website owners. There are also some people, freely dispensing advice, that is not very helpful to the webmaster. Many recommendations are even harmful, if applied to a site.
All of the message boards include some extremely knowledgeable people among their memberships in general, and their moderators in particular. While most members attempt to provide helpful information to the general readership, not all posts are of equal quality.
Care must be taken to ensure that the good SEO concepts are gleaned from the forum. Equal care must also be taken to avoid the less valuable, and often incorrect statements.
To do well with any message board, it takes a bit of effort on the part of the reader. Simply posting one time, and expecting an answer to solve all of the website SEO problems, is unrealistic at best.
It can also lead, to making some very grave errors, that may take months to correct. Regular reading and participation at one or more message boards introduces the member to many of the posters.
Over time, the member will become familiar with the knowledge level of the various other posters. Once the highly skilled individuals are identified, it’s much easier to find the sources of good SEO advice.
It also becomes easier to avoid the ideas proposed by the less helpful sources. By spending time at the forums, the SEO novice can learn infinitely more valuable information, than expecting a one time overall response.
A good policy to adopt, for any website owner, is to not apply any new and unfamiliar search engine optimization practices, without first checking their validity. Investigate forum discussions of the topic and advice in question. Seek out second, third, and even fourth opinions. A costly error in judgement can take months of hard work to repair.
Avoiding problems from e-mail
Good and bad search engine optimization advice can arrive in your daily e-mail. There are two major conduits of e-mail SEO advice. One is through internet newsletters, ranging from excellent to not helpful at all. The other means of information dissemination, is by unsolicited e-mail, better known as spam.
The wise website owner would do well to display caution, when it comes to e-mail SEO advice. Much of the unsolicited mass mailed information is of little use to any webmaster. In most cases, the advice offered is not much help to anyone, except the sender.
In many cases, the offered advice, along with the accompanying request for money, is harmful to a site’s search engine rankings. Some of the advice will even get a site banned from the search results entirely.
Often, very inaccurate information is part of the spam e-mail sales pitch. One of the most frequent and blatant examples of misinformation is the alleged need to submit a site, often allegedly monthly, to the various search engines.
There is no such need, as the search engines locate, have their spiders crawl, and index the site by themselves. The spiders simply follow a link, and once a website is indexed, it is included in the listing permanently, with no need to resubmit.
Prior to subscribing to anyone’s search engine optimization e-mail newsletter, be sure to check out the author’s credentials and past recommendations. If you have read the writer’s articles and advice in the past, and found them reliable, then by all means subscribe. There are many good newsletters out there. It’s your job to research the ones that are right for you and your website.
A newsletter that contains guest columns and articles, by noted SEO professionals is certainly a plus. If reputable SEO experts are willing to lend their name and expertise to a newsletter, it’s a fairly safe wager that the newsletter is a good one. If it weren’t, the better SEO pros wouldn’t contribute or be associated with it.
Websites with potentially unreliable content
Much search engine optimization advice is spread through articles appearing on various websites. One example of a site, that features SEO advice, is SEO Chat. http://www.seochat.com. Many other websites provide SEO information. Some are associated with message forums, some belong to various SEO professionals, and still others include posted articles with SEO content.
As with message boards, the quality of information available can vary widely from article to article, and from author to author. If you recognize an author’s name, who you know to be a source of reliable information, there is no problem.
If the writer is unknown, however, your best course of action is to not immediately apply the recommendations in the article. Make certain of the author’s credentials, prior to committing your website, to any unknown course of action.
Not only are some of the opinions offered by many articles of questionable value, it is not unusual to find real factual errors in some writers’ work. Should you find a blatant mistake, of what should be a generally known fact, practice suspicion with the reliability of rest of the article. If factual errors have slipped into the work, then some questionable to even potentially dangerous suggestions, might lurk there as well.
As with message boards, the reader must be wary of unknown writers and articles. Once an author becomes known to be reliable, that person’s SEO recommendations can usually be accepted safely, and applied to your site. Even then, check out all SEO ideas thoroughly.
Even some of the better professionals in the field offer some outdated or counterproductive advice. The entire SEO industry is unregulated, with no agreed upon standards for professional practitioners. Such wide open standards allow for some excellent professionals to provide top notch advice. The lack of regulation also avails itself to charlatans and other SEO quacks.
Caution is advised at all times.
It’s a truly buyer beware world out there on the internet.
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