There is a ton of bad search engine optimization advice out there. And I’m annoyed by how these so-called SEO gurus are stigmatizing the industry.

Apparently creating a Twitter account with “SEO” in the username gives anyone permission to self-identify as an SEO genius. I’ve even received extraordinary proposals through my contact form, “we guarantee #1 listings on the Google pages.” I wonder what they truly expect from those emails? “Guaranteed rankings? Amazing! Where do I sign up!?! And since you obviously have a way with words, I’m excited for you to copywrite my site’s content!” Yikes! I feel sorry for anyone who gets roped into these scams. Most likely any website “optimized” by these SEO ninjas will get punished to Google’s equivalent of hell, that is until you fix it.

Ok, enough with the rant… on with the post.

I do about 90% of my work from my computer so needless to say; I spend a lot of time online. And, out of curiosity, I often find myself glancing at the SEO structure of websites I visit. The two things I usually notice are either no optimization what so ever or completely ineffective, outdated techniques. Rarely do I find a search engine friendly website. This tells me that the SEO industry is going to see a substantial increase in these “gurus” as more website owners innocently hop on the search engine optimization train. Put in other words, the demand for SEO services will overwhelm the good guys and with low barriers to entry, SEO gurus will flood the market.

With a rise of these bad SEO’s, no doubt there will be an increase of false information. So before you plunk down the dough for a search engine friendly website, please read this list of useless and often dangerous advice:
[Read more...]